Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Sixteen: The magic of Cappadocia!!!
I woke up at around 6am… and after a bit of preparation, I left Shoestring… and started walking towards the market place… and then beyond it… to the Goreme Open Air Museum…
Cappadocia is a large area… one actually doesn’t need to buy tickets to see the place… everywhere around you the beautiful monuments of human labor and perseverance are littered around you.
The morning was breezy… I followed a dirt track, which was a horse trail… there are many ways of seeing the area- one is on horse-back following the horse trail… which takes you to different sites. One of them is the Goreme Open Air Museum
In the early morning time… the entire place was desolate… and eerie. Surrounded by hillocks all around, I could actually feel a chill in my spine… I had left the civilization behind… in front of me were a number of hills, carved in various shapes and sizes… and not a soul to accompany me. I was mesmerized with the beauty of the place… some structures had been converted into cattle sheds… some storage areas… but most of the structure were lying virgin… as if you could have just entered them and made them your dwelling place.
I entered a few structures… it was pitch dark, the emptiness all around and beyond instilled a sense of fear in my heart… I turned back… only to hear loud barking sound and a dog charging towards me.
Turkish dogs... especially those of Cappadocia are notoriously aggressive… and rabies-prone. To see a dog charging towards oneself is, therefore, a particularly dangerous site. I looked around… not a stone in sight… my brain was over-working and then I realized I had a weapon in my hand… my Sony Web-shot Camera… I raised my hands and gestured to the dog… if you come closer… I would strike… he stopped… looked at me… I looked back and then lowered my hand and walked away nonchalantly… he got the message- I don’t fear him… and wont attack till he doesn’t… he barked a few more times, unmoved… and then backed off.
Further ahead… there is the enclosed area of Goreme Open Air Museum… the ticket window wasn’t open… I looked at my watch; it was 8 am already… time flies when you are mesmerized by the beauty of this place. I started to go back… later, I read in one of the tourism brochure that Goreme Open Air Museum is a gem… with many old churches with lively frescoes… so colorful that one would think that they are freshly painted… I missed seeing them.
After a quick breakfast, I was ready for the guided tour… there are two tours on offer… the one I took… took me to smaller number of places… but they all were diverse in nature and were far-off from Goreme… the other tour was for nearby places… but as someone cautioned me… it became monotonous after a while… however, if I were going to stay in Goreme for more than a day… I would have taken both of them… you never have enough of Cappadocia… Shoestring also sold cheap Balloon flights… for about 150 USD… much less than what I was offered in Luxor for about 250 USD, a few years ago… it was a lean tourist season and I was getting good bargains… alas I was here for a day only… south-east Turkey beckoned me.
The tour comprised a young Canadian couple, 3 guys from Malaysia, an Iranian couple who used to live in Dubai… and an old Tamilian couple who had been living in UK for last twenty years (but despite sharing the same country, they were quite stand-offish)… and a beautiful Turkish guide Esraa… there was an air of innocence around her… and I took an immediate liking to her… and spent good time chatting and joking with her for rest of the tour.
The tour first drove us to a vantage called Goreme Panorama… it was a wonderful site… standing atop a cliff, you could see fairy chimneys all around… thousands of them… there was a time, when people like us carved them into houses… into refuge… when despair prevailed all around… these people were living in one of the most hostile parts of the world… desert-like climate, enemies butchering them all around… and they sought refuge in the mother nature.
I wondered if I can be overwhelmed more… I was wrong… and when the bus halted near Derinkuyu Underground city, which was a small unassuming place… announced by an equally unpretentious board that it was a UNESCO world heritage site… I wondered if I expected too much out of Cappadocia.
The early Christians were hounded by the Pagan kings, who considered the teaching of Christ and his followers, heretic. The early Christians, therefore, sought refuge in the wilderness of Cappadocia… fending for themselves with minimal agriculture in a barren desert-like land, where only a few shrubs grew... and by rearing cattle.
However, there plight did not end at this… the pagan armies entered even this region from time to time… and butchered them on regular basis… and it was then that they came with ingenuous idea of creating underground cities… where they used to seek refuge from the invading armies…
Once you enter the unassuming enclave… and start descending levels after levels… seeing granaries, churches, living quarters, ventilation shafts, kitchens, cattle pens, wells (the city received water from an underground river, which was often poisoned by the invaders)… you are overwhelmed by the extent and extant of the underground cities… it is amazing that humans created these and many more such underground cities… almost 100 meters deep… distributed over more than 10 levels…thousands of people lived inside them…
And while you go deeper and deeper… you feel the chill (literally and figuratively)… a claustrophobia… it is hard to imagine thousands of people trapped in such rat holes for weeks together… cooking, sleeping, partying, giving births and dying.
I closed my eyes… and thanked God that I was not born in the dark ages of religious intolerance… I was wrong… when I came out of the underground city… I saw an old Greek church… nothing had changed…
Cappadocia is a large area… one actually doesn’t need to buy tickets to see the place… everywhere around you the beautiful monuments of human labor and perseverance are littered around you.
The morning was breezy… I followed a dirt track, which was a horse trail… there are many ways of seeing the area- one is on horse-back following the horse trail… which takes you to different sites. One of them is the Goreme Open Air Museum
In the early morning time… the entire place was desolate… and eerie. Surrounded by hillocks all around, I could actually feel a chill in my spine… I had left the civilization behind… in front of me were a number of hills, carved in various shapes and sizes… and not a soul to accompany me. I was mesmerized with the beauty of the place… some structures had been converted into cattle sheds… some storage areas… but most of the structure were lying virgin… as if you could have just entered them and made them your dwelling place.
I entered a few structures… it was pitch dark, the emptiness all around and beyond instilled a sense of fear in my heart… I turned back… only to hear loud barking sound and a dog charging towards me.
Turkish dogs... especially those of Cappadocia are notoriously aggressive… and rabies-prone. To see a dog charging towards oneself is, therefore, a particularly dangerous site. I looked around… not a stone in sight… my brain was over-working and then I realized I had a weapon in my hand… my Sony Web-shot Camera… I raised my hands and gestured to the dog… if you come closer… I would strike… he stopped… looked at me… I looked back and then lowered my hand and walked away nonchalantly… he got the message- I don’t fear him… and wont attack till he doesn’t… he barked a few more times, unmoved… and then backed off.
Further ahead… there is the enclosed area of Goreme Open Air Museum… the ticket window wasn’t open… I looked at my watch; it was 8 am already… time flies when you are mesmerized by the beauty of this place. I started to go back… later, I read in one of the tourism brochure that Goreme Open Air Museum is a gem… with many old churches with lively frescoes… so colorful that one would think that they are freshly painted… I missed seeing them.
After a quick breakfast, I was ready for the guided tour… there are two tours on offer… the one I took… took me to smaller number of places… but they all were diverse in nature and were far-off from Goreme… the other tour was for nearby places… but as someone cautioned me… it became monotonous after a while… however, if I were going to stay in Goreme for more than a day… I would have taken both of them… you never have enough of Cappadocia… Shoestring also sold cheap Balloon flights… for about 150 USD… much less than what I was offered in Luxor for about 250 USD, a few years ago… it was a lean tourist season and I was getting good bargains… alas I was here for a day only… south-east Turkey beckoned me.
The tour comprised a young Canadian couple, 3 guys from Malaysia, an Iranian couple who used to live in Dubai… and an old Tamilian couple who had been living in UK for last twenty years (but despite sharing the same country, they were quite stand-offish)… and a beautiful Turkish guide Esraa… there was an air of innocence around her… and I took an immediate liking to her… and spent good time chatting and joking with her for rest of the tour.
The tour first drove us to a vantage called Goreme Panorama… it was a wonderful site… standing atop a cliff, you could see fairy chimneys all around… thousands of them… there was a time, when people like us carved them into houses… into refuge… when despair prevailed all around… these people were living in one of the most hostile parts of the world… desert-like climate, enemies butchering them all around… and they sought refuge in the mother nature.
I wondered if I can be overwhelmed more… I was wrong… and when the bus halted near Derinkuyu Underground city, which was a small unassuming place… announced by an equally unpretentious board that it was a UNESCO world heritage site… I wondered if I expected too much out of Cappadocia.
The early Christians were hounded by the Pagan kings, who considered the teaching of Christ and his followers, heretic. The early Christians, therefore, sought refuge in the wilderness of Cappadocia… fending for themselves with minimal agriculture in a barren desert-like land, where only a few shrubs grew... and by rearing cattle.
However, there plight did not end at this… the pagan armies entered even this region from time to time… and butchered them on regular basis… and it was then that they came with ingenuous idea of creating underground cities… where they used to seek refuge from the invading armies…
Once you enter the unassuming enclave… and start descending levels after levels… seeing granaries, churches, living quarters, ventilation shafts, kitchens, cattle pens, wells (the city received water from an underground river, which was often poisoned by the invaders)… you are overwhelmed by the extent and extant of the underground cities… it is amazing that humans created these and many more such underground cities… almost 100 meters deep… distributed over more than 10 levels…thousands of people lived inside them…
And while you go deeper and deeper… you feel the chill (literally and figuratively)… a claustrophobia… it is hard to imagine thousands of people trapped in such rat holes for weeks together… cooking, sleeping, partying, giving births and dying.
I closed my eyes… and thanked God that I was not born in the dark ages of religious intolerance… I was wrong… when I came out of the underground city… I saw an old Greek church… nothing had changed…
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