Our tour guide looks and sounds frighteningly like Borat. He’s decked out in a safari vest, a neck scarf, and he’s sporting a moustache Merv Hughes would be proud of.
It’s 7am, we’re still rubbing our eyes awake and he’s already 45 minutes into a marathon introduction to our three day trip to Turkey’s Mount Nemrut. I’m trying to concentrate, my eyelids are drooping, but our guide’s relentless drone and quirky English keep grabbing my attention; I snap to just in time to hear ‘after before during Seljuk Karatayhan Caravanserai, we stop to test ice cream with knife and fork’. Pardon?
As it turns out, I wasn’t hearing things and we do ‘test’ some very tasty goat’s milk and orchid ice cream, with a knife and fork even. It’s just one stop of many on a fascinating tour from Cappadocia through the Taurus Mountains to Mount Nemrut in Turkey’s southeast – all under the hilarious guidance of Borat’s Anatolian cousin.
At Mount Nemrut, we find ourselves rubbing our eyes again, this time as dawn lightens the sky over the peak and its impressive 1st century BC tomb-sanctuary of King Antiochus. At over 2,100 metres, we’re already awed, but as the rising sun turns the nine-metre high stone statues watching over the eastern terrace gold, and their toppled two-metre high heads gaze at us silently, it feels for a moment like we’ve stumbled into Middle Earth.
Breath-taking Mt Nemrut…or is it Gondor?
From Nemrut, we venture intriguingly close to Syria, passing through ancient villages straight out of the Bible (like Harran from the Book of Genesis with its mud-brick beehive huts), via ruined Seljuk tombs and the ancient Roman Severan bridge, past the Euphrates River and into a holy cave in Sanli Urfa, where legend has it Abraham (the same Abraham who appears in the Bible, Koran and Torah) was born, today an important pilgrimage site.
After, before, during the tour of the south-east…
After returning to Goreme, we cap off an awesome couple of days with a dawn flight in a hot air balloon over the fairy chimney rock formations that Cappadocia is famous for.
We go on to explore many more of the cave churches and rock-cut houses of this historic World Heritage site over the coming days, once we’ve adapted to all the dawn starts.
Get up close and personal with weird and wonderful formations on a hike.
Prior to taking off on our south-eastern expedition, our Turkey adventure had started with four excellent days in Istanbul, a city with an extraordinary history and a picturesque setting on the Bosphorus Strait. Our days here were spent walking through the past, albeit in the company of hordes of cruise-line pensioner groups bussed in for the day. But even the crowds couldn’t detract from the sheer awesomeness and appeal that goes with the city of Byzantium and Constantinople.
Captivating Constantinople…
The 5th century Byzantine Chora Church, the 6th century Aya Sofya and Basilica Cistern, and the 17th century Blue Mosque were just some of the places that stole our senses in a city of immense ancient walls, Ottoman palaces, rare mosaics, smoky tea houses, ubiquitous kebap stalls and colourful carpet shops.
Istanbul highlights: Blue Mosque, Aya Sofya and Basilica Cistern.
We’re not sure where to next from Goreme, but from what we’ve seen of Turkey so far, it’s bound to be amazing – after, before and during.
Good to know
We travelled from Istanbul to Cappadocia by overnight bus, and organised our 3-day / 2 night minibus tour out to Mount Nemrut, Harran and Sanli Urfa through our hotel in Goreme.
Cappadocia is one of the world’s best places for hot air ballooning and is well worth the expense. You’ll share the skies with dozens and dozens of other balloons, which might seem like it would lessen the experience….in fact, a sky full of silent balloons as the dawn sun lights up the fairy chimneys adds a surreal quality to this magical ride.