Day 73-74 - Cappadocia, Ankara, End of tour

Thursday 30 September 2004, 19:30 Turkey time

Today was our free day, so we went firstly to the former Greek town of Mustafapasa, formerly known as Sinasos. Like many of the Greek towns in Turkey the town had been built in typical Greek architecture style into the side of a hill, and is now largely populated by Turks who are trying to restore some of the old buildings to use as B&Bs and hotels for exploring the nearby region. I hope it works out - it definitely has potential as an idea.

Next stop was the town of Göreme, where I checked out the small shopping area. I got the chance to properly weigh myself and am 95.3kg - i.e. I have lost approximately 3.2kg net since leaving Perth, and about 7kg since my peak on the journey. I also spent some time in a music shop surveying a range of Turkish traditional and modern music.

Next was Avanos, a somewhat less touristy town where animals still roam the streets, the traffic on the narrow streets is completely mental, and everyone is selling either carpets or pottery. It was good fun but I didn't want to spend too long there.

Finally was the Turkish bath just out of Avanos, which was an experience in itself - I will try to explain it. First, you put your valuables in safe storage, then change out of your clothes and, wearing only swimmers, go into a steam room. This is one hell of a full on steam room - you can't see, your lips and eyes start doing funny things and you sweat like crazy. Next is the cold pool which you bathe in for 5 minutes or so, before going into a less steamy, less hot steam room for about another 5. Then you come out, lie on a hot slab of marble and wait for the (male) staff to call you for a massage and scrub with something only slightly more subtle than sandpaper. After the massage, you lie on another table and another staff member soaps you all over and massages you a different way. After this, you shower, then get a quick neck massage and exfoliation, then shower again. At the end of it all you get dressed and they give you Turkish tea. At the end, despite several somewhat harrowing stages, I was (and still am several hours later) incredibly relaxed.

One final note about Ürgüp. Hotel internet sucks - I paid bigtime for shared 56k and could barely use the net. Go to Campus Internet Cafe at the eastern end of Ataturk Bulvari near the tourist information and they charge you A$2 an hour, the access is fast, computers are modern (and even took my camera), the staff are friendly and if you're lucky you even score a tea for your trouble. I don't normally recommend specific businesses but this one deserved it, I think.

One day left with the tour group. To be honest, I'll be glad to be on my own again, although the tour guide (Ayhan) has been excellent, informative and possesses a great sense of humour, and I will miss his insights. I have whinged and whined about various things along the way, but overall, the tour has been good and I have seen a lot of stuff I wouldn't have seen otherwise. I guess my priorities are just different to a lot of people, though, and this sort of thing brings out an ugly side of me where I look down on people (in this case, some of my fellow travellers) for being so dreadfully normal and predictable. I never have been either, and mediocrity so annoys me in ways which it really shouldn't.

Friday 1 October 2004, 23:45 Turkey time

Back in Istanbul - after most of the day in a bus. I am staying in a room with a broken TV, a broken phone, and a smoke problem. Yes, welcome to Istanbul. :)

Today, we drove from Cappadocia to Istanbul via Ankara - some of the group went up in hot air balloons to see Cappadocia from another angle, but I'd already bought a picture book anyway, and $200-$300 on my present budget was completely out of the question. In Göreme I saw some places charging less than half those rates, but the tour guide pointed to the small print - they only have one balloon, there's no guarantee of the reservation and there's no insurance once you're up there. On the way, we stopped at a petrol station where I enjoyed yet more tea and watched an armoured personnel carrier filling up at the pump. I suppose they've got to fuel up somewhere...

On that note, something I haven't actually mentioned before. The number of military (jandarma) sites here at just random unexpected places, often just out of the city centre, with young guards carrying full-on weaponry who will happily chat to you in English if you say hi to them, is just incredible. The police carry guns here, and I'm not just talking a pistol either. Just before the turnoff to Gallipoli from Tekirdag, almost every intersection was being manned by armed military personnel. It's quite intimidating until you get used to it. Most of the people in question would, at a guess, be young people doing their compulsory national service.

Anyway, to Ankara, the capital city of Turkey and a very modern city completely unlike Istanbul with shiny buildings, good and generally straight roads, leafy suburbs with small mosques, shopping centres, the world-renowned Museum of Civilisations (not part of the tour, but reportedly one of the world's best museums of its kind, considering the sort of stuff that's in Turkey already) and the thing we'd come to see, the Atatürk Mausoleum - the final resting place of modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and the site of a museum dedicated to Atatürk memorabilia (clothes, cigarette cases, photos, his actual office complete with a stuffed cast of his favourite dog), World War I, the Independence War of 1919-1923, where Atatürk led the Turkish people against the Ottomans, and against the Entente powers who'd extracted huge sections of Turkey through the armistice agreement in 1918, and Turkey's post-independence history up until Atatürk's death from cirrhosis in 1938. It was a very moving experience - they'd done the museum extremely well with background sounds and music in some of the rooms, letters and memos written by the man himself, etc. The thing which struck me was how this guy could have had absolute power if he'd wanted it in 1923, but preferred to create a modern, secular democracy and use his power and influence to force Turkey into each of those three aims. Outside was a detachment of soldiers performing a ceremony not unlike the changing of the guard.

The Ankara experience was capped off with a visit to its biggest shopping centre, Migros, to enjoy fast food. While most opted for Burger King or KFC, I found a nice restaurant completely devoted to the Iskender kebab, the original kebab as perfected in Bursa (a city to the south of Istanbul). I finally got to try one, and it was really nice.

Next was the 6-hour drive to Istanbul. At first, we were somewhat hampered by the fact that all of the freeways out of Ankara were dug up for construction, but by guesswork and a bit of cheating, we made it onto a freeway further up. After travelling through the mountains and stopping in Bolu just before sunset, we finally hit the outskirts of Istanbul. At this point, the traffic came to a complete standstill, and we were treated to free entertainment of drivers cutting each other off, driving in four lanes when only two were drawn, etc. Finally, we got over the Bosphorus Bridge and into Istanbul by about 10pm. This was the end of the Fez tour, and we bid farewell to Ayhan, our guide for the past 2 weeks. They say a guide can make or break a tour, and with his sense of humour, intelligence, passion for his home country, excellent English skills, his width of interests leading to a range of interesting discussions, and his local knowledge of places to eat, I think we got an excellent deal.

I'm kind of relieved to be on my own again, but am so far outside my comfort zone in Istanbul that I think the two almost cancel each other out. More later...