Exploring Turkey

I traveled across turkey by bus from Istanbul to the Western ,Central and East-Central locations for 2 weeks.

Turkey, with its population being 98% Islamic , has separated religion from the state and is quite westernized after the transformation started once the Ottoman rule ended.





Istanbul , with its old mosques ,road side eats out, cobble stoned streets and cosmopolitan crowd was fun to just be part of and walk around. I spent a few days here and simply enjoyed walking around the old parts of Istanbul (Blue Mosque,Haphia Sophia ,Top Kapi Palace and walking around the narrow streets all the way to the Galata Bridge ) and on another day crossing over to Istanbul University all the way to Taksim and Eminou ferry dock . On the first day at Ramzan ,the area around the mosques had a different buzz with more food stalls , benches and as the sun set ,it slowly had a huge gathering of families seated together breaking their fast, travelers, passersby and live music at some places.

Canakkale
is a sea port town of the Dardanelles river and also the nearest town to Troy, where the Galipoli battle took place. This was my 2nd stop and loved the slow paced life of the people here and walked around to the fort, the troy horse from the 2004 movie and also spending time on the coast watching school kids enjoy a game of basketball , divers enjoying their dip in the river. Also tasted some local Turkish cuisines - kepabs, lentil soup, wraps, ayran(turkish buttermilk) etc



Selcuk and Sirince
Selcuk is a small quaint little town 3kms away from the famous Ephesus(Efes) archaeological site and one of the most frequented places by tourists. It has the temple of Atremis and Efes, which is one the seven wonders of the Ancient World . Efus was an important part of early chirsitianity and also has the largest collection of Roman ruins in the eastern Mediterranean. I also took a dolmus upto Sirince, a greek village nearby but was quite disappointed to find a touristy village rather than the village I thought I would discover.



Pamukkale
Traveling alone sometimes can be tough, where one needs to try hard to talk or meet liked minded travelers and having spent my first few days in Turkey all by myself I met someone as we got down at Pamukkale bus station also looking out for a hostel and we headed to the same place and ended up traveling together next few days.
Pamukkale meaning "cotton castle" in Turkish, is a natural site .The calcium oxide-rich waters flowing down have built up deposits of white travertine on the plateau where exists the ancient ruins of Hierapolis (Holy City) and also the modern one of Pamukkale.

Cappadocia
This was the highlight of my stay in turkey where I explored the various rock formations in different colours and shapes including fairy chimney mountains, mushroom shaped ones, caves with frescos or the underground cities of Derinkuyu. These quaint rock formations took effect from erupted ancient volcanoes and the villagers who stay in cave houses including the pension I spent 3 nights in . I spent 3 days hiking around the mountains and valleys and all the interesting places with Brendan, whom I had met at Pamukkale bus station.

Nemrut Dagi
Mount Nemrut has a vast bunch of statues from 1st century BC and something that I was interested in right from the start of the trip and also had to be part of a 3 day trip from gerome and back since doing it solo was out of bound. However , it was quite a journey with 2 days out 3 being on the road but was worth with it when we had to wakeup at 3am travel a bit and then hike up the mountains to see an awesome sunrise and the statues.





Useful links

Rough Guide
Turkish travel planner

Pics from my trip
Istanbul
Canakkale
Selcuk and Sirince
Pamukkale
Cappadocia
Nemrut Dagi

Comments

Kanchan said…
Very nice! Your attempt at the movie maker is good too.... Flickr is blocked here so was not able to view your pictures till I saw them in your film.
You deserved your vacation.
8:46 AM
Anuradha said…
Yes, a long break after a long time and was all worth it :)
8:57 AM
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