Update on Seydisehir

After a shower and a nap we went for a walk round town and to a cafe for tea and baklava . This is a relatively prosperous town, presumably because of the aluminium plant and the employment that is associated with it. There is a very high rate of late model car ownership and relatively few scooters . The motorcycle shop near the hotel stocks bikes and scooters that are small capacity, 125 or 149 cc, but they are all upmarket models.

Again everyone seems to live in apartments, but even the ones in the town centre seem to be in good condition and the shops are full of more upmarket goods than we have seen in other towns of this size.

I may have mentioned before that in Turkey almost every house has solar hot water. That applies also to apartment blocks. Look at this one as an example. There appears to be a separate unit for each apartment.

When I put the name of this town in a search engine I found an article on Turkey's booming economy and the recent massive expansion of this town's aluminium plant was given as an example of what is underpinning it. Turkey has plenty of bauxite and so is reducing its reliance on imported aluminium. It is also expanding its exports of goods like solar panels and has a relatively large well-educated young population and is expected to continue to do well despite the financial woes of it's European neighbours.

Caravanserais

The weather forcast for the next 4 days is 37 degrees so it was an early start this morning, about 7.15, with the plan being to have an early stop before it got too hot.

Out of Urgup on the road we rode in on two days ago, with the plan being to visit two 12th century silk road caravanserais this morning. Caravanserais were a sophisticated version of todays truck stops. Camel caravans and other travellers could stay overnight in the semi-fortified building where their precious silks and spices  would be safe from bandits and they could get food and drink, their animals attended to, harness repaired and medical attention if needed. Expenses for construction and maintenance were paid by the sultan who levied a tax on the goods that passed through. They were built roughly one day's travel apart, 15 to 30 km depending on the terrain.

The first was at Agzikarahan. It was locked up and under repair but I had read somewhere that it is almost unique in that the mosque instead of being either inside, or more commonly immediately outside the entrance, was offset to one side. When I stood at the door I could maybe see the reason why, from the door there is a magnificent view of the snow capped mountain we saw a couple of days ago, so perhaps it was simply a case of aesthetics over religion.

The second was at Sultanhani, 200 metres off the current highway in the middle of the small town. It was constructed in 1229 by the Seljuk sultan Alaadin Keykubad 1 and restored in 1278 after a fire, when it became Turkey's largest. There are two main areas, one open to the sky and ringed by rooms that were used for sleeping, cooking and dining, and beyond that, a domed roofed area of the same size that was used mainly in winter and also housed the animals. The raised mescit or prayer room is in the centre of the open area. The atmosphere in the building was amazing. It was possible to imagine exactly what it was like nearly 800 years ago.

By 1.30 pm after riding across mainly limestone planes with the occasional small town, skirting the city of Konya, and crossing a few ranges of grassy treeless hills, we had reached the town of Seydisehir, a nondescript town with a the country's only aluminium smelter as it's claim to fame. The temperature was now 38 degrees according to a neon sign, so we checked into an equally nondescript hotel and have retreated into our air-conditioned room.

Derinkuyu Underground City

During the 6th and 7th centuries, when Persian and Arabic armies set out to vanquish the Christians, beacons were lit to warn the poulations between Jerusalem and Constantinople within hours. The Byzantine Christians of Cappadocia would pack up their belongings, gather their animals and move through secret tunnels into vast underground cities.

We visited one of the largest, at Derinkuyu, which could house the entire 10,000 population of the above-ground town and surrounding area. There are seven levels, with stables, churches, a meeting room, living rooms and sleeping quarters, granaries, wine stores, kitchens and air circulation tunnels. The tops of the air circulation tunnels were disguised to look like wells so if the invaders threw poison down them it fell harmlessly to the bottom. The real wells were within the rooms below. Smoke from cooking fires dispersed harmlessly into areas of porous rock underground. There was no sanitation so human waste had to be stored in pots until the coast was clear and it could be disposed of on the surface. The smell down there must have been a bit ripe!

This was on a quiet day. At weekends it must feel like there are 10,000 tourists down there.

Stone wheels could be rolled from slots in the sides of the tunnels to block them and could be locked in place from the inside to keep the attackers out.

Back on the surface, near our parked bike, Gail was harangued by three doll makers. She ended up buying one from each of them at 1 lira (thats 60 cents) each. The last of the big spenders! In the meantime I was talking to a bunch of Canadians on Beemers who are doing a tour with a Turkish bike tour company, Bike Turkey Adventures. Their leader gave me his card and said if we have any problems in Turkey to give him a call and he will assist.



Hot Air Ballooning

Up at 4.00 am to go hot air ballooning. Picked up by a bus and taken to a spot near Goreme where about 60 balloons were being prepared for take-off. After coffee and cake we took off in our basket which had 22 passengers plus the pilot.

We have been ballooning before but this was the best trip yet. We soared high over Cappadocia, dropped deep into valleys and drifted into peoples back yards. A glass of champagne and a certificate afterwards. Then delivered back to our hotel in time for breakfast. Cost: 100 euros each.

 

Cappadocia

When we arrived in Urgup we found a room at the Cave Boutique Hotel in the centre of town. Our room is built into one of the hillsides and has a big balcony outside. The term boutique is a bit of an exaggeration!

door to our "cave" room

Urgup, like several of the towns and villages round here is in a deep basin and there are hundreds of houses cut into the stone with a facing made of rock blocks.

Many of the rock houses were abandoned centuries ago.

After lunch we went on a ride around the area and visited the Goreme open air museum. Cappadocia is famous for its strange rock formations called chimneys which were formed when lava flowing over volcanic ash which later eroded way down shrinkage cracks and formed isolated pinnacles. Some of them have caps of harder rock resting on top.

Goreme Open Air Museum encompasses a monastery complex that dates back to the 11th and 12th centuries. There are several churches, crypts, refrectories, etc cut into the rock many of them with frescoes.

The Silk Road

This is the view from the 5th floor restaurant of our hotel, where we ate breakfast this morning. I have included it because it shows a typical Turkish medium size town. Note the minarets on the mosque from which the population is called to prayer from loudspeakers several times each day. Gail counted nine minarets visible from the window.

Most of the housing is apartments and there are quite a few trees planted around town. Every town seems to have new apartment developments on the fringes and the whole country seems to be one big roadworks. In two years time when all the current roadworks have been completed this country will have a state of the art road system. But what they will do with all those roadworkers and all the machinery when they finish could be a problem.

We continued south alongside Lake Tuz again and slowly a range of snow clad mountains ahead of us got larger and larger. It was a strange feeling to realise that we were riding the route of the thousands of years old Silk Road. The trade goods are now on trucks instead of camel trains, and were on a motorcycle not a horse, but it still felt very special and the scenery of the lake and mountains must be just the same as it was back then.

A day of highways

On the road at 7.00 am this morning because Gail read her watch upside down and thought it was later than it really was. So we beat all the traffic out of town.

Today was all on highways that ranged from 2 lanes each way to 4 each way. Not a lot of traffic apart from round the city of Eskisehir.  Not far out of Eskisehir we passed what looked like a nomad camp with tents similar to the nomad tents we saw in Iran last year and their flocks and dogs. Not a lot further, on the rolling tundra-like plains became heavily cultivated with what looked like wheat, beans and possibly oats. We could see tractors working the land like isolated ants in the distance but there was no evidence of houses or villages so where the people come from to till those thousands of acres is a mystery. That landscape went on until we reached the outskirts of Ankara, which we bypassed, and then it resumed again but this time with villages and small towns visible set back from the highway.

As you can see the quality of the road is very good so we were able to keep up a good speed. Most of the traffic travels well below the speed limit, probably because of the high cost of petrol at about $2.20 a litre which is a lot of money here, so we spent a lot our time in the overtaking lane. I had a ball but it was boring for Gail on the back.

A major surprise was Lake Tuz which we had noted on the map but until it came into view we hadn’t realised it is a salt lake and a bit of a tourist attraction.

We lunched at a salt-side restaurant and walked down to the lake to crunch around a bit on the salt which probably didn’t do our motorcycling boots a lot of good. There was shop there selling all sorts of salt based “health products” at inflated prices.

We diverted from the highway at Sereflikochisar and found what appears to be the only hotel in town, the Yildirum Hotel, where they wanted 175 lira a night with breakfast but we negotiated it down to 100 (about $56). Probably our best room yet but it ought to be considering last night cost us half that.

We’ve been in Turkey 3 days now and have seen only 2 other bikes over about 150cc. Our bike always attracts attention whenever we stop. A couple of times someone has pointed at the bike and asked if we are from Bulgaria. I think they are confusing the GB plate on the back with the BG plate that Bulgarian vehicles have. When people learn that we have ridden it from England they are incredulous particularly when they see our grey hair when we remove our helmets. One guy asked my age and commented either that the trip was very strange or that I am very strange, I couldn’t catch his English, but they are probably both true.