Balkan Bulgarian Airlines carried us to Istanbul comfortably, with a
day-long stop in Sofia. They had just opened the Kuala Lumpur route then,
and it showed. Passengers tried to stretch out in the unused two-thirds
of seats, only to be loudly informed that wasn’t allowed. Communist
service standards still prevailed in some areas.
Istanbul seemed a patchwork of contrasting ancient and modern blocks. We
camped in the western suburbs, in a modern campground on the sea, across a
busy road from housing estates which looked to have been transported from France.
Buses and various grades of railway carried us handily into the centre of
town where we disembarked in front of Aya Sofiya, built almost fifteen
hundred years ago by the Emperor Justinian to be the centre of Christianity
in the Roman world. Up the hill sat a busy market which, one felt, had changed
over hundreds of years only in the goods it sold. Roads worked their way
around old fortifications, and the comparatively modern palace and
mosques of the Ottoman Sultans commanded the best views on hills
overlooking the city and across to Asia Minor.
With all this to see, I would feel ashamed to admit that one of the things that endeared me most to Istanbul was its food - except that its food is one of its outstanding attractions, as great as its ruins. Restaurants served up all the usual varieties of kebabs and pides one associates with Turkey, as well as all the various sorts of food to be found in Greece and many Arab countries (which not long ago were Ottoman territories). Smaller shops specialized in fruit & nuts and various sorts of sweets. Fishermen roasted their catch in boats moored at docks, and served up tasty sandwiches. Market stalls served even tastier sandwiches made with kokorec, chopped and spiced lamb intestines.
Seeing the sights took about ten days, although we could have spent months
or maybe even years at it. Workmen were renovating Aya Sofiya but some of
its charm still showed through the construction, particularly the domes in
A giant underground cistern sat where it had since Roman days, disused now
so tourists could descend to it and see its curious carved columns.
the main hall which caught sunlight in such a way they seemed to glow.
The most spectacular of all these sights was the Topkapi, the palace of the old Ottoman Sultans. In particular, the collection of treasure there astounded me.
It featured a statue of the Sultan made from a giant pearl, a miniature palace sketch made of gold and gems from Japan, a dagger with a solid emerald handle, and
the alleged hand and occipital bone of John the Baptist, among other less opulent items.
We made a day-long side trip to Bursa, on the other side of the Sea of Marmara. A cable car ascends a mountain there, where people ski in winter. The city was
pleasant but seemed to be special only in having a particularly good kebab named after it. On another day trip we went to peek at the Black Sea from Kumköy, a
village just outside Istanbul.
Back in Istanbul, I had accumulated a few books and wanted to get rid of them, so we sat for a few hours in a city park with a stack of books and a “For Sale” sign. I’ve used this trick in a few different places; simply setting them out with a notice. The books move quickly and it has the added benefit of breaking the ice with people, making it easier to meet them. In this case we met a man named Hakan who introduced us to his family and friends, and that kept us busy for a few more days in Istanbul. It was getting easier to stay the longer we were there, but eventually we tore ourselves away and started a series of bus rides around the country. Mostly we toured ruins in Turkey.
We first stopped at Çanakkale, which boasted two major attractions: the battlefields of Gallipoli (and war cemeteries), and the ruins of Ancient Troy. We were
interested in the latter. The government had erected a giant wooden Trojan Horse at the site but it didn’t ruin a worthwhile stop. The ruins actually consist of
nine separate sets of cities (presumably ruined before being rebuilt on top of each other). The Troy of Greek legend is thought to be sixth in the sequence.
When I saw the city, I wondered at its small size. The reconstructed ruins would amount to only about fifteen buildings. Does this mean these cities were
much smaller than we would expect? Does it suggest there was a much larger area of wood buildings which haven’t survived? I’ve never found an answer to that
question, but I did hear a good answer to the question "How could Trojans be so stupid as to take a big wooden horse inside?" Supposedly, the horse was
presented as a religious offering and the leaders of Troy might have figured their superstitious soldiers would rebel if they didn’t take it.
After Çanakkale we spent a night in Izmir, a modern and uninteresting city. A day trip from there took us to the ruins of Sardis, east of the city. These had
decayed greatly since the city was built some three thousand years ago, so that now there are only a few buildings to see. One of them is the best-excavated
ancient synagogue known, which still showed elaborate mosaic walls and floors. The town remains in my memory more for an incident that happened here; an
old woman who sold fruit saw us wandering down the main street, then rushed over and jammed a cluster of grapes into Jenny’s arms and ran away before we could
say anything to her. People in general there were very friendly.
We continued to Selçuk, where lay the ruins of ancient Ephesus. I enjoyed tramping
through them despite being accosted by the most obnoxious guide I’ve ever met, who called us idiots and insulted us in front of his paying customers when we
politely told him we’d rather tour on our own. The ruins there compared very favourably to other ancient sites I’d seen, for preservation and scale. In its heyday
Ephesus was apparently the fourth largest city in the Roman Empire, and it was still relatively easy to picture what the city must have looked like then.
Tourists entered on the Arcadian Way, passing a gigantic theatre which could hold 25,000 people, and a smaller stadium which could seat half as many. Along
the ruined road sat ancient facades, including the spectacular ruins of the library. Columns and stones still contained inscribed Greek and Latin writings.
Scattered around sat other less glorious ruins; a temple of St. John, the supposed house of the Virgin Mary, and the mosque of Isa Bey. On a warm afternoon
taking these in, I sat down on a ruined wall to rest, opened my guidebook and realized I was sitting on one of the Seven Wonders of the World - the Temple
of Artemis. Little remained of it.
A brief side-trip from Selçuk took us to Pamukkale, which had a few ruins but was famed as a geological wonder. Hot springs came out of a hillside here carrying
heavy loads of mineral sediment which formed terraced pools as they descended the hillside. This made it a popular place to sit and bathe, soaking up heat from
two directions.
On the road again, we cruised through a number of towns with various sites and landmarks. Bodrum offered the ancient Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, of which unfortunately nothing remained. Fethiye rested beneath cliffs with giant rock-cut tombs. Antalya sported a beautiful harbour and all these places had good food and common ruins such as ancient walls. After Antalya, we turned inland to visit Cappadocia.
This engaged our interest much more and we would have stayed longer, except that it had got quite frigid by that time (late October). A long-dead volcano had covered
the area around Cappadocia with a thick layer of volcanic ash, which with time had become a form of rock that could be dug into fairly easily. As long ago as four thousand years, People began carving
houses into cliff sides here and underground. The area had been an Assyrian trading post, a Hittite state,
a Greek territory, a semi-independent Persian Kingdom, and a Roman and Byzantine territory.
It sat near one end of the Silk Road and thrived on traffic, even making silk locally.
When Islam began to spread and religious wars erupted, Christians dug underground cities here for protection.
So far around forty of these have been discovered in the valley, with two open to the
public. While exploring one I found a long passage running off into darkness, but didn’t follow it.
When we finally had to move on again, we travelled south through the Cilician Gates to Mersin. We debated visiting Northern Cyprus from there but decided not to. Nearby were a couple of famous caves, Cennet and Cehennem (Gennet and Gehenna) which made a nice stop. Then we pressed on to Antakya (Antioch), the last stop in Turkey.
Despite stiff competition, Antakya had perhaps the most dramatic scenery of any of the towns we’d visited in Turkey. It sits in a small bay surrounded by steep and rocky crags. The town is not historically Turkish, and many residents are Arabs. Short walks into the hills led to interesting caves and tunnels and ancient fortifications. They also may have led to Syria, the border of which was very close. Antioch is relatively young by Turkish standards, existing only since the time of Alexander’s conquests, around 300 B.C. It’s most famous for being the location of the first Christian Church. They met in a cave which can still be visited, but which is bare now with only a few remnant decorations on the wall.
The border crossing to Syria involved considerable hassle. After a couple hours our bus got free of it and arrived in Aleppo. A guide met us at the bus
stop, promising to help us find a hotel for no extra cost. I, naturally, didn’t believe him but his tone was unusual: "I think that hotel is full BUT if
you want to go check, no problem, let’s go." We let him demonstrate that he was right and he did find us a hotel and never did ask for any money. I had thought
Turkey easy going but we quickly discovered Syria was even easier still.
Aleppo bustled with a surprising variety of people in all sizes and shapes and with all colours of eyes and hair. Traders visited from as far away as Russia and Armenia. In the centre of the city, a giant citadel towered on a hill, looking down on more modern buildings. The site had first been used by the ancient Greeks, and the fortifications had been built in the days of the Seleucids. Not far from it wound a very colorful souk selling all sorts of small things. Shops and restaurants in the more modern parts of town seemed to love neon signs, which glared everywhere one looked. Walls sported revolutionary posters and pictures of Hafez el-Assad.
Leaving Aleppo, we took a bus ride through dusty brown countryside until we arrived at the port of Tartus, not far from the border with Lebanon.
Modern concrete blocks lined roads in the better parts of town while crumbling brick walls and decaying building interiors typified the poorer parts. The city
itself didn’t have a lot to see. Obnoxious boys chased us around town making lewd gestures and lecherous men made passes at Jenny. The island of Arwad off the
coast was more colourful, an old crusader fort, but the people there seemed actively hostile to foreigners. This was unusual in Syria; the norm were shopkeepers who
would drag us inside their shops to force free coffee on us and chat and sometimes, only sometimes, remember to ask if we wanted to buy anything.
On a day trip from Tartus, we visited the Crac-des-Chevaliers, a giant Crusader fortress built on a strategic hilltop overlooking a gap in the coastal mountains. The ruins are well-preserved and much of the interior has been restored so it is possible to wander around large parts of the castle. The Crac was never defeated; the Mamelukes won the site by forging a letter which tricked the Crusaders into believing their cause was lost and that they should surrender.
After Tartus and the Crac, we spent a few days at Tadmor, in the desert. Here sat the ruins of Palmyra, first built some three or four thousand years ago and
mentioned in countless historical documents. In Roman times it had been a great trading city and the setting for one of Imperial Rome’s more interesting dramas.
Palmyra then was a Roman Colony, but around the year 269 AD its queen, Zenobia, declared independence and tried to set up her own independent state. Since Palmyra
sat squarely on the Silk Road and was in a position to control its traffic and get rich on taxes, there was considerable advantage to this. The Romans disagreed,
however, and so invaded and carried away Queen Zenobia in chains. The Arabs took Palmyra early in the spread of Islam and it declined to ruins as its importance vanished.
There are few intact buildings left to see now from the Roman era, but compared to contemporary sites such as Ephesus it nevertheless looked quite well preserved.
The area itself (an oasis) was interesting in its own right, with an Arab castle on a nearby hill and Bedouin wandering not far from town.
Before leaving Syria we stopped in Damascus, arguably the oldest city in the world and certainly one of its most famous. It nevertheless wasn’t as colourful or interesting as other places in Syria. The Umayyad Mosque and National Museum were good sights to see, and there was lots of food, but a couple days of this was enough and then we were ready to move on to Jordan.
We crossed the border in a shared taxi, piled high with people and goods, then wound our way through anonymous roads and alleys and lanes without much idea where we were until we finally appeared in Amman. Although a pleasant and relatively modern city (sporting a huge Safeways) built on the site of the great ancient Roman city of Philadelphia, it nevertheless didn’t offer a lot by itself. Still, it was a comfortable base for a couple of day trips. North of Amman lay the ruins of Jerash, another ancient Roman city and much better preserved than the few ruins around Amman.
South of Amman, another convenient day trip took us to the Dead Sea. This gigantic puddle holds so much dissolved salt that it is very difficult to sink on it, so
legions of tourists come to lie on their backs and soak up a bit of sun. Many considered it a beauty treatment to obtain a salty crust this way, or from a mud bath.
While floating high on the water there, the thought struck me that I could have floated all the way across to Israel, except of course that Israeli border guards
might have shot me. I couldn’t sink if I tried, so any time I got tired of swimming I could just stop and float.
The greatest and most famous sight in Jordan was our last stop, the ruined city of Petra in a canyon in the south of the country. The Nabateans, an early Arab nation,
had carved temples and monumental facades into the sandstone walls of the canyon, adopting a Greek style without actual freestanding columns. Nowadays one enters
through the Siq, a narrow winding crack which suddenly opens into a sort of natural courtyard overlooked by the Khasneh, an ancient treasury which you might perhaps
recognize as the temple of the Holy Grail from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. Many other imposing facades had been carved around the site, but inside almost all
these led to simple squared rock chambers. I found that somewhat disappointing.
Tourists in Syria and Jordan were pretty rare so we got to know each other fairly well. About a dozen of us from Europe, Canada and the USA were on our way to Egypt and from there to such scattered destinations as Capetown, Pakistan and our homes. In Jordan we also met an interesting variety of non-tourists: several Iraqi refugees and a man from "Congo-Kinshasa" who has since been vindicated in his insistence on this name for the then-Zaire. One of the Iraqis told us fondly how they had been close to having nuclear weapons with which they could have annihilated Israel. Then he let out a wistful sigh, shook his head and reluctantly admitted that was all over now, since the war with the Americans. One could almost see his happy dreams of mushroom clouds over Tel Aviv. Jordan also contained many Palestinians, some of whom had been born after 1967 and thus never actually been to Palestine, but who had fiery nationalist ambitions nonetheless.
An easy shared-taxi ride took us from Petra to Aqaba. From there we caught a ferry across the Red Sea to Nuweiba, in Sinai. Differences between Egypt and Jordan
made themselves obvious very quickly. No sooner had we cleared passport control in Sinai than a crowd of people began cajoling us and trying to coax us into
a taxi for the trip to wherever we were going. Since the night was pitch-black and we could see nothing of where we were, this didn’t require a lot of decision.
It did require some bargaining to get a reasonable price, but we managed that and found our way to a simple beach camp site at Tarabin. This was quite spartan
but there was enough to eat and its primitive surroundings proved relaxing, so we rested there a couple days before heading inland.
Our only other stop in Sinai was at St. Catherine’s, under Mount Sinai. We arrived there partway through the day and didn’t plan to stay too long. Jenny wasn’t
interested in climbing so I scrambled up Mount Sinai by myself, collecting scenic photos and negotiating an interesting descent in the dark down three thousand
steps which had been carved into the mountainside by a penitent pilgrim. We settled into a hotel that night and in the morning began looking for transport. This
was easy to find; a taxi driver appeared and announced he would take us to Cairo as soon as he had collected everyone who wanted to go. We thought this assumption
boded poorly for our wallets and began looking for a bus. It didn’t take long to discover there was no convenient bus, and in the end we were quite satisfied with
his driving and reasonable cost anyway. Sinai went by quickly. At the Suez Canal we had to decide between taking a ferry and riding through the tunnel. We
opted for the ferry, snapping a few illegal photos of the canal along the way, and entered Africa.
© 1997,2004 Stephen Bougerolle - all rights reserved