Cappadocia

From Istanbul to Ankara, the capital of Turkey, down to Urgup, we went, to visit the must-see region of Cappadocia, land of grapes, underground cities, the mystical Fairy Chimneys, the Silk Road, and histories spanning the Hittites (1900-1300 BCE), the Phrygians(1200-600 BCE), Byzantines, Alexander the Great, Turks, and certainly others my brain has dropped due to amazement overload. Where to begin? How to describe? Will pictures help?

Let’s try the gist. The Fairy Chimneys. Okay, crazy formations by an ice age melt that left a huge body of water with volcanoes spewing rocks into the water, which landed on top of parasite vents at the bottom, water goes away, wind comes along, snow, melt, snow, melt (ad infinim), and viola! You’ve got basalt boulders sitting on top of cones, in which people lived, like Smurfs you could say, and when Marco Polo cruised through here on his little adventure he reported thousands of them on the valley floor, all with little streams of smoke coming out of the tops, people inside snuggly warm and content. Who were these people you ask? Good question. Originally Hittites possibly. But eventually Christians because there are churches with frescoes painted inside of Christ, John the Baptiste, Mary, etc. Then the Byzantines, finally the Turks, and even modern Turks up until the 60’s when the man kicked ‘em out, made a park, brought the tourists. In all fairness the chimneys started to collapse and kill the inhabitants so mandatory removal was probably a good thing?

This whole area, 4000 square kilometers, is covered in these cave dwellings that have been, and continue to be, used by the local people. Everywhere you look you see doors, openings, balconies, carved into the cliffs and hills all around. There are families here still making pottery in the Hittite style, handed down generation to generation, in these caves. We stayed in one for two nights, windows open into the cool Middle Eastern night. The crazy thing about these caves is that the entrances to them are about two stories off the ground requiring a rope climb entry. Why? Because, get this, to stay safe from cheetahs (the last one being killed in 1982?), lions, and other unsavory beasts (there were Gorillas in this area, giraffes, hyenas). I feel like a doofus for not knowing this.

The underground cities. Mind blower. There is believed to be about 150 of them here, 36 have been discovered, 8 are open to the public. Again, probably pre-Hittite people created the first couple of levels (8 levels in all), with the Christians creating the last several levels during the Roman persecution. These people could live down there for months on end without ever having to surface. They had vent shafts for both air circulation and to retrieve water that go down 350 meters into the earth, they have elaborate chimney systems so their smoke could not be detected from the outside, toilets, stables, kitchens, wineries, churches, everything they needed to wait out an enemy invasion. Four to five thousand lived in this two city complex we visited. Most of the cities were connected by tunnels, and really long tunnels went to the tops of mountains so sentries could watch for invaders (mainly Romans) and report back down into the underground city when they left so the inhabitants could surface and return to their homes and lives outside. In this area it is generally believed that 3 out of the 8 wonders of the world should be listed.

Goreme, a cave dwelling complex used by the Christians and later the Turks, was a kind of monastery, the biggest and most important during its time, it being the place where the Christian kingdom sent orphans to be trained in the ways of the church. Here you will see the only image in the world of Christ as a teenager, and the only image of him without a halo (Mary is holding him and it symbolizes that she would love him even if he wasn’t special).

I really feel like an uneducated American since coming to Turkey. Shouldn’t I have known that Alexander the Great spent much time here in Anatolia on his tour? Shouldn’t I have known that the Virgin Mary came here to retire? Shouldn’t I have at least known that the Romans built coliseums here, the Greeks were here, that Turkey was the seat of Islam for the entire Islamic world until Ataturk shut that program down in 1924 after the Independence War? (There is no such thing for the religion of Islam anymore because according to the religion it can only be located in Turkey) Why didn’t I know I was going to cross the Silk Road?

So we now head towards the Aegean sea to visit Ephesus (Roman capital of Asia Minor and the place of the Temple of Diana, Virgin Goddess of the Hunt and the Moon), home to a Roman coliseum and Roman city, the House of Mary (where she lived her last days), and the sea coast of the Aegean.

Other photos: Margaret Thatcher, Camel, you decide, Orca, no really, a camel