Our campground in the heart of Cappodocia is on top of a mountain overlooking Goreme. The views could not be more fantastical. The area falling away beneath our camp site looks like a million Lilluptian children have taken buckets of soft sand and randomly poured it all over the surface of the land, leaving pyramids, cones, mushroom shapes, and striated raw edged cliffs all touched with the colours of white, rose, cream orange and grey.
This whole area is one of the earliest sites in Turkey that was protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site, which also tend to be our favourite sites to visit in any country. Here are the mushroom shapes at the tail end of Rose Valley. Perfectly natural tuff is eroding exactly where it has stood for centuries. The ground is hard to walk on, yet it looks as soft and shifting as sand. So your brain keeps having to make adjustments when you walk: is it soft? isn't it? Quite disconcerting, tho' Bec doesn't seem to mind.
One day we hiked one of the longest trails into the valley where the Zelve Open Air Museum has been set up. Here, carved into the pyramidical and pointed cliffs, are a collection of monasteries, seminaries, chapels and rock dwellings. One of the monasteries was occupied from early times right up until 1952 when it was finally left left empty. Amazing.
I loved the dovecotes in this valley. My favourites. Carved high onto the vertical face of the tuff, then painted in a geometric Islamic fashion. Imagine taking your life into your hands doing this: hanging on twisted bits of soft vegetation plaited into ropes, mayhap, or building a scaffold out of sinewy branches of surrounding trees, just to create a palace for your pigeons. There are so many of these throughout the valley, too, yet it must have been so dangerous to create. And still they did it.
We took our walking poles for a hike into the amazing formations of the Goreme Open Air museum, which is even more astonishing. Here, we found our old friend from Ihlara Valley, St Gregory, with his best friend, St Basil, along with Basil's brother, who became another saint: St Gregory of Nyssa, decorating many of the walls, showing their iconic status. The work of these three holy men attracted a large community of followers and pilgrims to this part of Turkey, and by the 3rd cent AD there was a thriving Christian community living in these cliffs, leaving many traces of their presence.
I particularly loved the long elegant refectory tables with stone benches that you slip into to sit on. Though this particular one looks as though it has been touched up almost to new. These can fit about 50-60 young monks. Behind, is the carved and beautifully decorated apse, where pride of place was given to one of the elders in the community at mealtimes. Cushions, anyone?
The churches in these cliffs hold some of the most amazing early Christian art in the world. Though, in recent times, teams of specials have moved in and tarted them up, to show what they once were like. Ornate. Dense with meaning. Exquisitely done, considering this is painted on rock with a surface just like sandpaper.
This museum draws never-ending crowds. Busload after busload of tourists pour onto the site on the hour, every hour, every day of the year, and merchants line the pathways much as they did in the days of the silk trade -- making it a little bit like Disneyland, in truth. With tourism generating something like $32 billion last year alone in Turkey, a lot of this has to be coming from sites like Goreme Open Air museum, which so many access. It really is one of the tourist gold mines for the Turkish government. So you can see why they are tempted to bring in specialist painters to tart up the cave walls and ceilings every so often.
Lunch, today, was Testi Kebabi: meat cooked in a clay pot, sealed, and broken open by the waiter after he brings it to the table. This is my lamb dish, still flaming in lemon-scented alcohol sitting on a bed of rock salt layered onto a clay dish. To cook this dish from beginning to end takes all of 4 hours. After the meal is complete the clay is thrown away. So, the cost of the pot is included in the price of this meal, which, with drinks, ended up being $AUD8 per person. In a restaurant where mum is the cook, dad the baker, and the wait service exceptional.
Every day we try something new. Every day we say this is the best we have ever had. Or, this is as good as the best. It doesn't seem to matter whether we eat at a fine dining establishment or a temporary cafe hanging off a cliff edge to catch the summer tourists. The food has been exceptional. And we have yet to have a meal that is disappointing. There is a spicy edge to every dish that makes eating here so interesting. We are just loving the food.
Tens of thousands of tourists stay in cave hotels or cave houses carved into the tuff which make little villages in this part of Cappadocia look as if they are in fairyland. Straight out of the pages of a child's storybook.
Except for the increased incidence of malignant mesothelioma in many of theses villages: 50% higher here than elsewhere in Turkey. So, not quite a perfect happy ending.
oooOOOooo
 |
| Like Lilliputian sandcastles |
 |
| Mushroom rock caps in Rose Valley |
 |
| Sand beneath, giant rock caps above |
 |
| Zelve religious site |
 |
| Otherwordly |
 |
| Palaces for pigeons |
 |
| Sometimes a little too revealing |
 |
| A lit refectory table, seating and beautiful apse |
 |
| Extraordinary Christian art |
 |
| Dense painted dome |
 |
| Visitors from all religions come to see these works |
 |
| Tourist traders are out in force |
 |
| Testi Kebabi: meat in a clay pot |
 |
| Bread and meat, but anything but simple |
 |
| Storybook dwellings of Capadoccia |
Comments
Post a Comment