Around Haleb

Qala'at Samaan (St Simeon's Basilica) [Enlarge]

St Simeon's Basilica

The next morning there were no members of staff to be seen in the Spring Flower Hostel, so no breakfast for us. We'd arranged to meet Ali and our driver for the day at 08:30 so we couldn't hang around waiting for someone to appear. We gave up and went outside where the driver was waiting in a 20 year old Mitsubishi Lancer.

One of the most impressive things we've seen on our travels is the vehicles. Cars that would have been scrapped ten, twenty, or even thirty years ago in to UK are somehow kept running. There's always the ubiquitous VW camper van, and after that, each city seems to have its speciality. In Budapest it was Trabants (possibly the most famous hangover from the communist era), and here in Syria it seems to be huge American muscle cars. At times you feel like you're walking through an old episode of the Dukes of Hazzard.

It was no muscle car, but our Mitsubishi seemed sound enough. We drove North out of the city, past modern apartment blocks, heading for St Simeon's Basilica. St Simeon was an early Christian who took a notion to worship God in ways which to us seem a bit barking, but to the people of the day were remarkable. He became a huge celebrity. Whether it was locking himself in a hilltop cave without food or water, or balancing atop a large stone pillar for a few years, St Simeon was certainly the David Blaine of his day, though we presume he had different motivations.

As the years went by, his stone pillar kept being added to until it was allegedly 17 metres tall. Perched at the top in perpetual meditation, Simeon attracted a cult following, although his obscure practices were banned by the early church, fearing an escalation in the strangeness. When he died, still up the pillar, from a gangrenous leg wound he was so famous that his devotees declared his pillar a holy site and built a church around it. Later a monastery was added, then a gate and lodgings went up for the many visiting pilgrims, and finally there were the souvenir shops. The whole thing became big business. Today the church is roofless, but remarkably well preserved, and the pillar is nowhere near its original height because pieces have been taken as souvenirs for centuries.

Ain Dara Temple [Enlarge]

Ain Dara Temple

Syria is littered with archaeological sites. The vast majority of sites are unexcavated hills, or tels. Their unnatural shapes usually give them away. Tel Ain Dara is one such hill. One day (in the 1950s we think) a shepherd was hanging around up there while his sheep grazed and he noticed that his dog had dug up something unusual—a piece of black basalt shaped like a huge ear. When the area was excavated by the authorities, the ear's owner—an enormous lion—was uncovered. See the photo of Isla and the lion. The site turned out to be a very early temple dedicated to Ishtar, Goddess of the Moon.

The temple would have been all the more impressive because the black basalt it is built from is so different to the surrounding limestone. It actually occurs naturally in that one spot amid the pink limestone hills. It must have been a powerful symbol to the pagan worshippers who led their sacrificial offerings around the temple's perimeter before ritually slaughtering them on Ishtar's altar. Best of all Ali was able to get us access to the University Archaeology Department's store room where all the finds are kept. So we saw the face of Ishtar, pieces of carved frieze from around the temple showing sphinxes and prowling lions and other artefacts that the regular visitors don't get to see.

Walking tour of Haleb

Aleppo [Enlarge]

After the finest shower ever, a fresh set of clothes, and a little rest we felt ready for a new day and a new city. We went upstairs to the roof terrace and found our guide for the week, Ali. Over our first glass of Syrian tea, which to our taste was exactly the same as Turkish tea (strong, without milk, and bitter unless you add lots of sugar) he told us a little about himself. He is a student at the university, and has a wife and three young children. He supplements his income by running private tours of Haleb (Aleppo) and Syria. He told us briefly what we would be seeing and doing for the next week, and then our tour began with a walk around the old town of Haleb. The old city, within a still largely intact wall, is a huge, seemingly random pile of buildings: each period (pre-Roman, Roman, Ottoman, Medieval and French) squeezed alongside and on top of the previous ones. Of course the city has now spread far outside the walls and about four million people call Haleb home.

Syria is a country with a long and varied history. A series of invading armies have come, established their rule, bashed the place about a bit and left again. The most recent foreign take over was in 1920 when the French added their name to those of the Egyptians, Persians, Romans and Ottomans. The French Mandate came to an end in 1946 and Syria has been independent ever since. Haleb has been changed architecturally, as well as culturally, as each civilisation has left its mark. And the changes are still going on. In front of the city wall, a row of old shops was demolished last year to reveal the original Roman stonework behind them, and around town new hotels, mosques and apartment blocks are being constructed. A new Sheraton Hotel fills an entire block and dominates the whole area it has been built in. It is due to open any day (as we were there the hotel was running in simulation mode and the staff were being trained).

Ali led us through Bab Antakya, one of five gates into the old city, and the one through which the Ottoman army entered when they took Haleb in 1517, led by the curiously-named Selim the Grim. Bab Antakya leads almost directly into the souk, Haleb's amazing covered market. The souk has been in continuous use as a shopping area since before the Roman times, though the current vaulted stone ceilings are only 700 years old! We got to see the souk at its most authentic as it was thronging with people doing their last minute shopping before the four-day festival of Eid al-Adha.

We did our best to keep up with Ali as he slipped expertly through the crowds of the souk. He stopped from time to time to point something out. One feature he showed us was that the vaulted ceiling occasionally opened into an Ottoman dome. The presence of a dome indicates an important place in the souk, usually a caravanserai (also known as a khan). These are open courtyards with a huge wooden door, large enough for a fully-loaded camel to enter, and strong enough to protect the richest load of silks or spices from night-time thieves. The ground floor of the khan had stabling for the animals, storage for the wares, and a place for the shopkeepers to come and buy wholesale. The balcony above was accommodation for the merchants who had travelled with the caravan along the silk routes that pass through Haleb.

For us the khans were a tranquil haven compared with the bustle of the souk, and we could imagine just how welcome they would have been to the merchants after weeks of trekking across the desert from China or India with their ornate central fountains and beautiful decorations. Many are still in use today by the souk traders. Some have even been used for storing exactly the same wares since they were built, although the old tobacco khan we visited now specialises in cheap shoes.

Outside of the souk Ali showed us some of the other notable buildings in the Old Town and explained the interesting stories behind them. One that demonstrates the Syrian acceptance of different religions concerns the Islamic School, housed in a building which used to be a Christian church. In 1097, Antioch (now Hatay/Antakya, just across the modern Turkish border from Haleb, where we spent the night in a cold, near-deserted bus station) was besieged by Crusaders. A conflict was coming which would engulf Haleb, and the Muslim leaders of Haleb asked the city's Christian population which side they intended to support: Aleppan or Christian. The Christians felt that they were Aleppan first and foremost, and their leaders pledged their full support to their Aleppan brothers; but when the Crusaders reached the city they changed their minds. Eventually the Muslim army triumphed, beating both the Western Christians outside the city and the Syrian Christians inside, and the Christian leaders were called to account for their treachery. The Muslim chief realised he had a dilemma. If he punished the Christian leaders with death, he risked civil war in Haleb, but if he let them go unpunished his authority would be weakened. In the end he devised a punishment that avoided civil unrest, but did not damage his control over the city: he ordered that four Christian churches be surrendered to him, to be converted into three mosques and an Islamic school.

By now it was getting dark so Ali suggested that he take us back to our hostel and we resume the tour the next day. We arranged to meet at 09:30 to give us a chance to catch up on some of our missed sleep from the night before. We hadn't eaten a proper meal since breakfast the previous day, so before we could sleep we needed to find a restaurant of some kind: preferably something easy, both culinarily and culturally. We managed to find a nice safe western-style hotel which did an almost recognisable toasted cheese sandwich and freshly squeezed orange juice—and better still they didn't care that we wanted to eat at an embarrassingly early time of night. By 20:00 we were in bed and asleep.

The alarm on the mobile phone woke us at 07:45 and after another fantastic shower (the shower was the best bit about the Spring Flower Hostel) and a traditional Syrian breakfast of cheese, boiled egg, olives, flatbread and jam prepared in a very dirty kitchen area (the hygiene was the worst bit about the Spring Flower Hostel), we just had time to do the laundry before meeting Ali. The first place he took us to was yet-to-be-opened museum in a former mental hospital. He has lots of contacts in the city and we were privileged to get inside before it actually opens. There is a definite feeling that Syria is really gearing up for tourism now. We truly hope that it will manage to accommodate an influx of tourists without sacrificing its cultural identity and ending up like much of Turkey, with people outside every shop telling you that you are their best friend and trying to sell you the same mass produced rubbish over and over again.

Ali had been telling us about the houses and streets in the old town. Each street is named after the family that lives in it. One extended family shares all the houses in the street, and often they even have a small private mosque too. When sons get married their wives come to live in the family street. When daughters marry they go to live with their husbands' families. Ali's family have their own street in the old town, and our next stop, not on any tourist map, was a definite highlight of our week in Syria: having tea with his family. He took us to meet his mother, wife and children and to have some amazing tea with cinnamon (would never have thought of that).

Ali was 17 and his wife was 15 when they married nine years ago. They now have three children, two boys and a baby girl. When he rang the doorbell, we were surprised that he didn't have a key to his own house. The eldest son, aged 8, answered the door and we realised that he was giving the womenfolk time to go and get veiled up. During tea, Ali's son showed off his English to us, asking us our names and how we were, and reciting the English alphabet. His dad realises how important it will be for him to be able to speak English in the 21st Century, and he has been teaching him well. By contrast, we later discovered that Ali's wife cannot read or write at all—neither English nor her native Arabic—and he is quite OK about this. We wondered whether he will teach his baby daughter English as well as his sons.

After more tea we walked into the Christian Quarter, where we paid a quick visit to the 'Greek Catholic' and 'Greek Orthodox' churches. Not being totally clued up on all the different versions of Christianity practised around the world, we didn't know the difference between Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox, and to our relief Ali didn't know the difference either. Things were further confused when he told us that the Arabic signs on the churches translated as 'Roman Catholic' and 'Roman Orthodox'.

In what would become a major theme for the week, Ali kept repeating how tolerant Muslim society is of the other religions. Well, at least the other Abrahamic religions (Christianity and Judaism). He has no time at all for what he called the “tree worshippers”, by which he presumably meant Hinduism and the other Asian religions. He went to great pain to point out that yes, Muslims really do respect Jews: their problem is with the state of Israel and its policies, not Judaism. Sure enough, we discovered that the mosques in Haleb have Star of David symbols on the minarets and above the doors.

Incidentally, before we entered Syria, we realised that we would have a far easier time to call ourselves Christians rather than admit that, while we respect the beliefs of everyone, we personally think that all organised religion is claptrap. Of course Ali quickly saw through us. But so intertwined is he with his faith that he didn't seem able to grasp the concept of non-belief, so he labelled us 'nonpractising Christians'.

The highlight of the Christian Quarter was two 18th century houses, once private residences but now restored and converted into hotels and restaurants. Like the khans they had a central courtyard with a fountain and elaborately painted walls. Obviously they had been home to some very wealthy families.

We had hoped that the weather would be warm by the time we got this far south, but we have found that winters in the region can be vicious. Glenn's thin fleece wasn't warm enough and as he'd seen plenty of lovely thick jumpers in the souk, we asked Ali if we could stop and buy one. Ali found us a stall and Glenn tried on a couple and settled on a style he liked. The Jumper was available in two different colour options and when Glenn asked Isla's advice on which one he should buy, Ali remarked “Who says European women are repressed?!" (This is very interesting, because the West thinks that Muslim women are repressed, but Muslims think exactly the same of western women, who they see as being 'forced' by society to go out unveiled and wearing make-up, for men to ogle over. Remembering the state of our home town in England on a Friday night, we thought that just maybe Islam has a point).

It was 15:00 and we were all hungry. We stopped at a food stall in the Christian market and Ali wanted us to try a cooked wheat patty served in a wrap, but when he ordered one of these for each of us the stall holder protested that it would be too heavy for our delicate western stomachs and refused to serve it to us. We had a lamb shawerma instead, and it was very tasty. Our fragile digestions coped with it admirably.

By this time we had managed to wear Ali out with all the walking around so he asked us if we would mind calling it a day and he dropped us back at our hostel. We sent a quick email to let Glenn's mum know that we were safely in Haleb, knowing that she would pass the news on to the rest of our families. Then, after a little rest we went to find somewhere to have dinner. Tourath House, one of the lovely converted Ottoman houses we had seen earlier, had given us their card and leaflet which advertised them as a 'Hotel and Restaurant' so we decided to go there. Unfortunately the advertised 'Restaurant' wasn't quite open yet. So we went two doors down to the similar Sisi House. It was a lovely setting and the local cuisine was excellent and very cheap.

It was quite late by the time we headed back to the hostel, but we weren't the last to bed. The staff seemed to be having some kind of party, which went on into the night, long after we'd plugged our ears and dozed off.

Into the axis of evil™

Antakya bus station [Enlarge]

We had nothing planned for boxing day apart from our evening journey to the city in the south of Turkey called Antakya or Hatay (it can't seem to decide which name to use, but anyway, it's the Biblical city of Antioch). From there we would be taking the overnight bus which would see us arriving in Aleppo, Syria some time in the morning. As it had snowed during the night and was still snowing (pity the people doing the mountain hike that day), we thought we would spend the day in the warm uploading our photos to flickr. Up to the point where we left İstanbul we had found enough free internet access to keep up to date with the photos and the blog, but now we were in the sticks we hadn’t been near a computer for over a week. We were in the internet café for so long that the owner eventually gave us a free glass of tea.

Having fully caught up, we returned to the Cappadocia Palace hotel at 15:15 ready for our transfer to the bus station. Yuki drove us down the hill to the bus station, and with the snow and ice on the road we were glad we hadn't walked. The following is what the Yuki tours guy had told us would happen next:

• Catch the 16:00 bus from Ürgüp to Adana, arriving at something like 20:00. He gave us a pair of handwritten tickets for this leg.
• Someone would be waiting for us at Adana, to give us tickets and show us where to catch the bus to Antakya. It would leave at 22:00 and arrive at 23:30.
• Someone would be waiting for us at Antakya, to give us tickets and show us where to catch the bus to Aleppo. It would leave at 00:00 and arrive at something like 08:00.

This bore no resemblance to the itinerary we had been given by Hayden in İstanbul (for a start, he said we would go via Kayseri rather than Adana), but the Yuki man was insistent that everything would be fine, this was better and faster, and there was "no problem". Again those two words. We had no real option but to go with it and trust that it would work out. Here is what actually happened next.

Catch the 16:00 bus from Ürgüp to Adana, arriving at something like 20:00.

We went into the office and walked up to the Nevşehir bus company desk to ask about the 16:00 bus to Adana. "No bus" came the response. "Servis to Nevşehir, then bus to Adana." He refused to answer any questions about when the next servis would be leaving for Nevşehir, again saying "no problem". Unable to debate in Turkish we just had to wait it out, and eventually after much confusion a minibus pulled up and the man pointed at it and said "Nevşehir" so we got in.

We arrived at Nevşehir at about 16:45 and found out that the next bus to Adana was the 17:00. We now had no idea whether we were on track or not, and we were a bit worried because our changeover times didn't have a great deal of slack in them. Nevertheless it looked like we would be OK to get to Adana for 20:00.

Someone would be waiting for us at Adana, to give us tickets…

Because of the snow and ice our bus was badly delayed and we actually arrived at Adana an hour late at 21:00. However, since our bus out of Adana was not until 22:00, we were relieved that things seemed to be working out OK, just as we had been promised. And then it started going very wrong. There was nobody waiting at Adana to meet us. We walked around the coach and stood in the bay for twenty minutes or so, but it was obvious that we were not going to be met. We heard a voice from a nearby coach shouting "Hatay! Antakya!" (these are the same place, remember). This was where we needed to be so maybe it was just a matter of getting on. The steward was very happy to see us and showed us to our seats, but he spoke no English. He got out a pad and wrote "24.00" on it. We waved our itinerary and vouchers at him, and insisted that we had already paid, but of course this meant nothing. He wasn't expecting us, and if he was going to take us to Antakya, he wanted payment. So we got off the bus again and watched as it drove out of the station. The last leg of the journey had been with the Nevşehir bus company, so in desperation we went in search of the Nevşehir desk. Maybe they would know what was going on. They didn't. Our itinerary and vouchers from Hayden in İstanbul meant nothing to them.

Now we were pretty pissed off and out of options. Throughout the journey through Turkey, we would have saved a fortune and had a much easier time if we had bought our own tickets and made our own way. We could have bought all the tours locally, again much cheaper. We were much more annoyed that we had been so badly ripped off by Hayden in İstanbul and belived his crap about "don't worry, it always works out", than we were about being stranded in a vast unknown bus station with night approaching, hundreds of miles from where we needed to be.

We got out the mobile and rang Yuki Tours. It being 21:30, nobody answered. Remembering that the owner of the Cappadocia Palace Hotel was also the owner of Yuki Tours, we rang there. We managed to communicate the problem to them and they promised that someone would call us back. Sure enough, someone did, and he told us to find the office of the 'HAS Tours' bus company, and ask them to phone the Cappadocia Palace Hotel. A way forward at last. We found HAS, but could we convince the man behind the desk to make a long distance phone call to the other side of Turkey on the say so of a couple of backpackers who spoke no Turkish? Of course not. He flatly refused. So we took his card and called the Cappadocia Palace again to tell them to phone him.

Over the next few minutes much animated negotiation went on over the phone between Yuki Tours and HAS. Eventually the HAS man said "come". We followed him to the Nevşehir desk—they were the only bus company with offices in both Ürgüp and Adana, so they were going to be the intermediary for what was about to happen. After a lot more gesticulating and speaking on the phone, the Nevşehir man gave some money to the HAS man. The HAS man told us to come back at 23:00, and he would give us a ticket on their 23:15 bus to Antakya. Presumably Yuki would sort it out with Nevşehir in their Ürgüp office. Whatever.

It was 10pm. We had an hour to kill, and we now knew we were going to have exactly the same problem at Antakya. We decided to phone Hayden on the mobile number he'd given us. Amazingly, he answered. He confirmed what we'd suspected: that Yuki should have given us cash or vouchers for the buses all the way to Aleppo. He said he'd call them and make sure we would be OK at Antakya.

We found a warm place to sit in the waiting room and Glenn went off to find out where the bus to Antakya would be leaving from, leaving Isla to guard the bags. He hadn't been gone a minute when a man in a chair opposite Isla suddenly clutched his chest, fell forwards onto the floor and began to have some kind of seizure. Through the glass wall of his office next door a transport policeman hesitated and then seemed to resign himself to the fact that this probably was part of his job and came through to help. A few other men clustered round the man and tried to restrain him. After a few minutes someone came in with half an onion to hold under the poor man's nose. In spite of their help he came round after a few minutes and seemed to refuse any other assistance. Glenn had come back, talking on the mobile, half way through the performance and Isla admitted that she was so on edge she had at first thought it was some kind of scam. Late night bus travel makes you very cynical.

Glenn was on the phone to Hayden's boss, who had obviously been on the line to Yuki. He was very sorry and promised he would sort everything out. There was a direct bus from Adana to Aleppo, so he would get us a ticket on that and we wouldn't even need to change at Antakya. He told us to go back to the HAS desk and wait there—he was about to phone them. There was some more behind the scenes negotiation and we were given a paper ticket to Antakya and YTL 15 to buy a ticket to Aleppo from there. We protested that we had been assured we would get a ticket all the way to Aleppo, at which the HAS man told us that Hayden's boss was wrong, there were only direct buses in the summer. We would be changing at Antakya after all, and, even better, we'd be arriving into Antakya at 02:00 and the bus out was not until 09:00.

There then followed a night bus experience pretty similar to the previous one.

At 02:15, the coach dropped us outside Antakya Otogar. We walked through the freezing night into the concourse. The place was deserted and almost everything was closed, but there was someone at the HAS desk. We wanted to buy our ticket to Aleppo with the 15 Lira we'd been given at Adana, so that at least we would know that we were going to be on the 09:00 bus out. The man sitting behind the HAS desk was wrapped in a blanket, and had an electric heater on behind him. Another man was lurking close by. We asked about the bus to Aleppo. The man behind the desk didn't seem to speak English, but the lurking one did, and his face fell. "Border closed—festival of Eid al-Adha." He would have fooled us but for the fact that he then tried to persuade us that although the border to Aleppo was closed, he knew a man who could get us across by taxi—for a consideration, of course: 70 US dollars (GBP 36). By now we had realised that the man at the HAS desk was just some sort of squatter who wanted to use their heater, and we managed to get the lurking man to admit that the HAS desk would open for business at 07:00. He told us that we were wasting our time, they would only confirm what he was telling us. We didn't believe it (even Ayala Travel in İstanbul wouldn't be so incompetent as to sell us a tour of Syria that we couldn't actually take, surely?) so we decided to sit the night out and wait. We told him we would think about it and would get back to him at 07:00.

There was no warm waiting room at Antakya—the seats were all in the freezing cold concourse. We found a seat as far away from the fierce draught from the main door as we could. We zipped up our coats and pulled on our hats and gloves. At about 03:00 we were approached by a man with a HAS uniform on. What were we doing here? Why didn't we come upstairs to the café upstairs where it was warmer and we could drink some tea. We liked the sound of 'warmer'. When we got upstairs the HAS man disappeared, but another guy immediately pounced and asked if we would like to change some money. From one of his many pockets he pulled out a huge wad of notes in some sort of attempt to prove that he was serious. We did need some Syrian pounds, but not until we had a bus ticket and knew we were actually going to Syria. We told him "not yet—when we have a ticket" and he took this as an opportunity to bargain. His exchange rate improved. We said "really, not yet". Throughout the rest of the night he came over at regular intervals to try to convince us, and by the end of the night we actually looked forward to his visits because they broke the monotony. At 05:30 the owner of the café turned up for work and having tried to sell us some breakfast, made it clear that if we weren't planning to eat or drink, we were no longer welcome in his café. So we walked back downstairs to the concourse. The place was definitely beginning to come to life, but the HAS desk was still not populated by proper HAS people. We hung around near the desk trying to get some warmth from the heater at the back of the office. Finally, at 06:58, the desk opened and we were straight in there with our money. Of course the border was not closed, and in a matter of minutes we had our tickets. The money changer was waiting for us because we had told him that we would change some money once we had a ticket. He honoured the rate he had promised us, which was actually much better than we would have got at a proper booth. OK, it could have been funny money but we had seen him getting plenty of business with locals through the night, and we only wanted a little to get us started in Syria. Ticket bought and money in the pocket, by now the sun had risen and we only had the small matter of two hours more to kill, so we bought some Doritos for breakfast and went to the back of the bus station where the sun was coming in through the windows. We stood in the sunlight to thaw out and eat our breakfast.

At 09:15 we discovered that the transport to Aleppo was a minibus rather than a coach, but minibuses are actually better for crossing borders in because the waiting around for the other passengers to get the passports stamped and luggage searched is much less. Our fellow passengers were a Turkish mother and daughter and two Syrian men. After a while we arrived at the sprawling border crossing complex, which was also a building site as they are doing some major renovations.

As we arrived at Turkish customs, a border guard walked over to the minibus and our driver got out. He came round to the side door, and pulled a crate of bottled water from under Isla's seat. He handed it to the guard, who walked away happy. No words were exchanged and it seemed that this was HAS's way of ensuring that we had a nice easy border crossing. Contraband water!

Then at Turkish passport control we got out and queued at a window for our exit stamp. A man pushed us in at the front of the queue and then wanted some baksheesh for the privilege. He got one of our last Turkish coins and seemed pleased with it.

No-man's land consisted of about a mile of countryside and included at least one abandoned village. It also contained thousands of lorries queuing up to enter Turkey. They lined both sides of the road, nose to tail, and as we turned the final corner before reaching the duty free shops, the queue opened out into a four-wide stream of lorries who were queuing up to be allowed to enter the main queue! Throughout no-man's land there were mountains of rubbish, and the remains of several camp fires. The lorry drivers must have been there for days or weeks.

Our minibus's next stop was at Duty Free, followed by another at Syrian passport control. The sign on the Syrian building said 'Post Office', but the driver told us that was where we needed to be so we went in and up to the counter. There was no queue at the 'foreigners' window and the official behind the desk took Glenn's passport and gave him a small blue form to fill in. It asked exactly the same questions as the visa application form had. Obviously they wanted to make sure that they got the same answers as they had done previously, or maybe they just don't have a joined-up database. When Glenn had completed his form, the official stamped it, and the visa. Then he took Isla's passport and gave her a form. While she was filling it in, the man got bored, and gestured for her to pass it through the window to him, only partially completed. He stamped it and said she could take it away and fill the rest in later! We would need the blue forms when we left the country. With our passports and forms we got back on the bus.

Another box of bottled water changed hands at Syrian customs and we drove through without any checks.

And then we were inside the Axis of Evil. It didn't seem very evil, although it did look and feel different from Turkey. Firstly, the soil is very red and there are olive trees planted everywhere. Secondly, the moment we crossed the border the two Syrian men on the bus suddenly became very friendly and started talking to us in pretty good English. They were working in Turkey, but were going home for the festival of Eid al-Adha, which would be happening for four of the days that we were spending in Syria. They were very happy to be going home for a while. The final difference we noticed immediately was that the bus driver turned into a horn-honking, headlight flashing, death-wish overtaking maniac, which seems to be the Syrian way of driving. At every new country we have been in, the driving standard has made the previous country seem like a model of consideration and mild manners. We stopped at the first fuel station we came to and the driver filled up with petrol which cost a third of the Turkish price (diesel is a tenth the price). After 40 km on fast, four-lane road we arrived in Aleppo. We fought our way through the traffic and finally came to a stop in a square of tarmac called the bus station. Yet again we were due to be met by someone, and for a change we actually were! Hayden's boss had clearly been on the phone. Our contact walked us round the corner to the Spring Flower Hostel, showed us to our room and suggested that we take a shower, have a rest for an hour or so and then come upstairs to the roof terrace to have some tea and to meet our guide. We liked Syria already.

Day 032
Urgup to Aleppo

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Christmas in Cappadocia

Flintstones Cafe, Cappadocia [Enlarge]

Loaded into two Yuki Tours minibuses, our group headed off into the heart of Cappadocia for the first of two one-day tours. It was cold but bright and despite the lack of sleep we were feeling surprisingly energetic. We stopped in a parking area, got out and clustered around Ahmet, our guide. He explained about how the geology of the area had created the right conditions for 'fairy chimneys' to form. Every time the ancient volcanoes in the area erupted, they left a layer of ash, which set like cement when it rained. Occasionally, lumps of hard basalt were thrown out of the volcanoes too, so they are spread through the ash layers like raisins in one of Glenn's gran's famous Scottish scones. Over millions of years the relatively soft ash eroded and blew away, but when the erosion uncovered a lump of basalt, it protected the ash beneath it, so a column formed, topped by the piece of basalt. Eventually, thousands of columns were formed over the whole region. Some are so big that they were hollowed out and made habitable.

Over the centuries Cappadocian cave dwellings have been home to many different peoples. They must have been very fit, judging by the amount of climbing up walls that they had to do, using precarious hand and foot holds. Some of the caves were used as churches, and we saw many with the original tenth century wall frescos in pretty good condition.

After lunch we made a stop in another pottery 'workshop' for what we had by now termed a shopportunity. The Lonely Planet guidebook had warned that organised tours included these un-advertised and unwanted stops and that the guide would be on serious commission, but we enjoyed watching the demonstration and looking round the showroom at the beautifully crafted pieces. This particular workshop, Chez Galip, specialises in replica Hittite wine jugs; though it's hard to say what was more amazing: the workmanship or the price tags! One had a starting price (negotiable, of course) of YTL 15000 (GBP 5374 / USD 10399).

After the final stop of the day, the five storey Moulin Rouge fairy chimney café, we headed back to the Cappadocia Palace Hotel. We were so tired that we went to bed immediately, at about 19:15. We fell asleep with the light on and woke up at 23:10. We set the alarm for seven the next morning, brushed our teeth and went straight back to sleep.

Christmas morning, and as we tucked in to the excellent breakfast in the hotel we pitied the latest crowd of overnight travellers who had arrived early in the morning expecting a shower and breakfast, just as we had the previous day. While friends and family back home would just have been waking up to find out what Santa had brought them, we were setting off on a hike through the Cappadocian hills led by our enthusiastic guide, Şükür, to see the red valley and the rose valley. Again it was very cold with patches of ice on the ground, but the sun was even stronger than the previous day and walking uphill we took off our hats and gloves and unzipped our coats.

The views were breathtaking. Spending Christmas day amongst the spectacular scenery of Cappadocia with cobalt skies and blinding sunshine certainly made missing the family gathering a little easier to bear. Also the fact that 25th December is in every way a completely normal day in Turkey.

Our next stop was a village where the houses had been built into the cliffs. Over many years the Turkish and Greek villagers had extended the naturally occurring caves both by digging further back into the rock and by extending them outwards using the excavated stone. In addition to houses there was a mosque and a church. Difficulties between Turkey and Greece eventually reached a stage where the governments agreed to conduct a 'population exchange'. Greeks living in Turkey were forced out, and vice versa. The Greek cave houses and their church were abandoned. Not long afterwards, in 1939, a rockfall prompted the Turkish government to declared the village unsafe. The villagers moved a few hundred metres down the valley and, using stone from their old homes, constructed new houses. The buildings that now remain intact are those of the Greek villagers. These were untouched by the Turkish who felt that it was disrespectful to demolish someone else's home.

After lunch we visited a fascinating underground city. The location of Cappadocia, between the various civilisations which have come and gone, means that it has been prone to hostile invasion for centuries. Exploiting the naturally occurring caves beneath them, local people built an underground city capable of supporting 4000 people, storing their food and housing their animals, for three months. Only ten percent of the city has been excavated so far, but that extended for hundreds of metres through twisting, narrow passages and up and down stairs.

On the way out of the underground city there was another shopportunity: a collection of touristy souvenir stalls. One sold every variety of blue glass evil eye charm and someone asked the origin of the eye. It appears that all Arabs are suspicious of blue eyes, believing that they have the power to put a curse on you. This may date back to crusader times, but in Şükür's version of the story it went back to pre-Christian times when Turks believed in sky-gods and earth-gods. The different shades of blue in the lucky charm signify the sky and earth in the day and night, and the amulet stops someone putting the evil eye on you. Isla's eyes are blue already so we figured she's got inbuilt protection, but Glenn haggled for a one Lira evil eye key fob, which he figured might help him out when we get to the Syrian border.

After a quick visit to Pigeon Valley for a picturesque view we had a final stop to make. Yes, another shopportunity, this time at a stoneware workshop where we had a demonstration of onyx turning and a look round the associated jewellery showroom.

Our final booked excursion in Turkey was scheduled for that evening and we were so tired that we nearly didn't bother going: a Turkish Night Show. The Dervishes whirled; the Raki flowed; it was cheesy but harmless until the audience participation part. We exercised our British reserve and left the folk dancing to our South Korean companions. After re-enacting a 'traditional courtship dance' the dancers, audience and band conga'd their way out of the hall and we sipped our Raki and enjoyed the peace, along with a few others (presumably also British) who had stayed behind. It couldn't last for ever, of course. Eventually the sound of the band grew louder and louder and they burst back in.

There was only one possible way to round off a Turkish Night Show. The lights dimmed and the audience grew quiet as the belly dancer descended from the ceiling in a neon-lit cage. Her performance included the ubiquitous booty-shaking and men from the audience were encouraged to tuck paper currency into her underwear. Not sure how belly dancing fits into modern Muslim society, but it was a memorable way to spend Christmas day night. Wonder what we'll do next year?

Overnight bus to Ürgüp

Ahmet refused to tell us when he would be transferring us to the bus station at Denizli for our 21:00 bus, even though we asked him at least three times. "No problem, no problem" was the stock reply. This is a very common reply in Turkey, and true enough, there usually is no problem if you just trust that things will happen in the right order.

We were drinking tea and talking to a Canadian-Filipino guy (who owns a guest house in British Columbia and has some sort of exchange programme going on with Ahmet in Pamukkale) when Ahmet suddenly said "Right! We go now". We were bundled into a Renault Clio driven at usual Turkish speed by our guide from earlier in the day, along with the Japanese guy (the one who had lost his passport earlier) and his girlfriend. We found out that we were all going to the same hotel, the Cappadocia Palace cave hotel in Ürgüp. We arrived at Denizli, just as Ahmet had promised, with "no problems". The bus turned up at 20:45 and we got on. We had the front seats on the other side from the driver. Usually this is a good thing as you get a better view, but on a night bus it means: headlights in your eyes all night, second hand cigarette smoke from the driver and steward all night, weird Turkish pop music from the stereo that the driver presumably has on to keep himself awake all night, and cold air up your trousers every time the door opens, yep—all night. And no legroom because of the barrier thing in front of you. Not that we are complaining, but suffice to say that we got no proper sleep at all.

The experience was very surreal. You try to sleep and the rocking, strange music and hypnotic lights from cars coming the other way send you into a sort of trance. Eventually you are so tired that you start dozing and waking up every few minutes, unsure of whether you've been asleep or how much time has passed. We woke up at around 03:00 in the large town of Konya. As we came round, we were doing a U-turn on a dual carriageway. When we finished the manoeuvre the driver opened the door and the steward jumped out, and the driver shouted something at him (probably instructions on which brand of cigarettes he wanted the steward to buy). But then the door closed and we drove off, through two sets of traffic lights, and then stopped again at the side of the road. Then the driver got off too. We stayed there for at least 20 minutes watching boy racers doing burn-outs on the other side of the road and listening to the snoring of a large Turk behind us, before the driver and steward finally got back in and we drove off. We still don't know what it was all about (or even whether it was a strange communal dream we both had, but we both definitely remember it happening).

At 05:15 we were again brought round from our strange half-sleep by the driver saying "Ürgüp—off here. Servis!" This wasn't in the script, as we thought our bus went all the way to Ürgüp, arriving at 08:00. Glenn went to the back of the bus to wake the two Japanese backpackers (they seemed to have no trouble sleeping) and tell them that we were being thrown out.

The engine of the servis (mini-bus) was off, and the bus was freezing cold. It had a thermometer on the dashboard which was reading –8°C (17°F) and warming up by a degree every few minutes. This confirmed to us that the temperature inside the bus was indeed minus 8. There was no sign of a driver. After 20 minutes or so, the door flew open and someone shouted in "Ürgüp! Otobus!" and pointed at the coach which we had got off! (It was still at the bus station for a stopover.) We were not particularly impressed but we complied as we just wanted to be in the warm. When we walked over to the coach however, we saw that another coach had pulled in beside it and it had a sign for Ürgüp in the window. We got in to the haven of warmth and luxury and shortly afterwards it pulled out of the bus station.

The journey to Ürgüp was quite short and we arrived at the small, deserted bus station (actually a square of tarmac) just after sunrise. There was no sign of our transfer, Yuki Tours, and we resigned ourselves to another trek through another unknown town to our hotel. However just after we got off the coach a minibus hurtled in and stopped alongside us. It had a 'Yuki' sign stuck in the windscreen. Before we knew it we were in the warmth of the Cappadocia Palace hotel lobby.

It was 06:45 and we had a tour of North Cappadocia starting at 09:30. Before we had booked the tour, we were promised by Hayden in İstanbul that we would be able to check in to the hotel at this point, take a shower, change our clothes, have some breakfast and maybe even lie down for a short while after the overnight bus. It really would be "no problem". This was not how it turned out. The hotel was full so we couldn't check in (the previous guests in our room wouldn't be checking out until 10:30), and breakfast was most definitely not included until the next morning. If we wanted some, it would be 6 Lira each (GBP 2.17 / USD 4.26). Oh, and we were free to use the toilet in the lobby if we wanted to. Have a nice day.

Christmas Eve and no room at the inn. How apt.

The toilet was actually large and very clean and we were able to wash, change our clothes and clean our teeth. On principle we refused to pay for the breakfast so our first meal of the day consisted of a large bag of Doritos each from a shop round the corner. At 09:15 we came back to the hotel, tired and a little battered, but ready to start our tour.

Day 029
Pamukkale to Urgup

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.