However, as pictures are worth a thousand words, I’ll give you a visual smattering of the kinds of sites you’re likely to see in the country.

Turkey is literally strewn with ruins going back millennia. So spoiled are they for history in Turkey that artefacts other countries would put in a museum might end up being used for a new building, a coffee table, parking spot… or be simply forgotten by the side of the road.

For those of us from The New World this means every turn is a wonderful jumble of history, archaeology and anthropology, from Roman amphitheatres to Seljuk outposts to Greek columns.

Some bits, however, end up relegated to the designation I learned from a local guide in Oman years ago, when he was yet again asked the significance of a random historical chunk lying in the midst of unidentifiable ruins. “That” he said authoritatively, “is an A.F.R.” Quietly he turned to me and said under his breath, “It’s Another F*%#ing Rock.”

A quick apology from the Global Nomad for disappearing there for a bit–the World Tour is coming to an end a little more abruptly than planned, for reasons that will become clear in a few posts!

In the meantime I have some catching up to do with a few more Turkey posts, and then it’s on to a few gems in Greece.

Globally Yours,

The Global Nomad

When I was about 12 years old, my mother brought me to a poetry recital. Normally, this would have been a fairly painful experience for a 12-year-old, but this one was different: it was a recitation—accompanied by Indian tabla and tambura to set a meditative mood—by none other than author Robert Bly and Coleman Barks, translator to one of the world’s greatest poets, Rumi.

Aside from introducing me to the beauty of Indian music, the evening changed my life by exposing me to Rumi (properly Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi, 1207-1273), his philosophy and particularly his world-famous ecstatic poetry.

Founder of the Sufi order famous as the “whirling dervishes,” Rumi (known as Mevlana, “our master” in Turkey) was born in modern-day Afghanistan, later moving with his father, himself a religious mystic, to Konya, in present-day Turkey.

Rumi’s spiritual awakening was triggered by a wandering mystic, Shams of Tabriz, about whom much of his writings is centred. Without getting into the long and fascinating story of Rumi’s life, suffice it to say that his writing and the religious order he founded have had a tremendous impact on Turkish culture—and beyond—over the centuries.

The Mevlevi order, sometimes called “whirling dervishes” for their ecstatic, meditative spinning “dance,” is still based in Konya today, and visiting the shrine/museum should be a must-visit item on every traveller’s itinerary.

Konya is one of Turkey’s most religiously conservative cities—alcohol is only served in a few places—and as such represents a different side of Turkish culture, especially if you have come from the more licentious beach areas!

Just to get an idea of what the “whirling” looks like, here is a quick video from a touristy show. Note that the “dance” is considered a sacred religious activity, and so is usually only performed on religious holidays—in Konya this means the first half of December when Rumi’s “wedding night” (i.e. death and union with God on Dec. 17, 1273) is celebrated.

Whoever you may be, come
Even though you may be
An infidel, a pagan, or a fire-worshipper, come
Our brotherhood is not one of despair
Though you have broken
Your vows of repentance a hundred times, come.

A mandatory Turkish experience in Turkey is to partake in one of the oldest rituals in Turkey, the Turkish bath.

Found all over the Middle East, the Hammam experience isn’t exactly your gentle spa experience. First of all, your aesthetician most often resembles a hairy heavyweight wrestler. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Most high-end hotels in Turkey tend to have their own toned-down version, but to experience the real thing, you need to swallow your uneasiness (and modesty) and head to where the Turks go.

Basically, it goes like this: Hang out in a steam room until you think you’re going to faint. Bathing suit optional. Take a cold shower. Jump into an even colder pool. More steam room. Lie on a hot marble circular slab for additional steaming. Put hygiene (or lack of) thoughts out of your mind. Lie on a rectangular marble slab. Get violently scrubbed and exfoliated by a large Turkish man. Get covered in foam. Shower. Remind yourself to put hygiene thoughts out of your mind. Get “massaged” (roughly smacked around). Rinse off in the shower.

Trust me, it’s way better than it sounds.

For some info on Hammams in Istanbul, check out this review:

The stylish, whitewashed beach towns of the Greek Islands are world-renowned as playgrounds of the tanned über-hip Euro-riche, but somewhat less-well known (to North Americans at least) are the sun-baked shores of Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Equally as hip and just as starkly beautiful as their Greek cousins, towns like Antalya and Bodrum attract masses of sun worshipping revelers, where they tan in uncomfortable speedos and lounge at cushion-strewn bars to Turkish electro-chillout soundtracks.

One of our favourites was Kaş (pronounced “cash”) a quintessential hip Med party town. Blessed with a rugged coastline filled with restaurants and bars and a restored old quarter where stone caves have been converted to cafés and even a groovy Jazz bar, Kaş is the kind of place I could hang out for a week and not even notice the time.

Take a look at my “office” while I was here and you’ll see why it was hard to leave:

One of our favourite Kaş-ian treats was the happy moment our waiters called “cake time.” That’s right, for no reason (and at regular intervals) someone would appear at our lounge chairs brandishing…well, cake. We didn’t even have to move or order.

And so we raise a glass of rakí to Cake Time. Sherefe!

The Jazz Bar
image courtesy of Flickr

In the heat of the summer, Turkey can reach unbearable temperatures. And since the scorching weather isn’t anything new, Middle Eastern architects have been using ingenious ways to stay cool for centuries.

From tall walls and small windows to maximize shade, to wind towers that suck hot air out with the desert wind and qanat (underground aqueducts) to cool air from below, I’ve encountered many different approaches to “natural air-con.”

The most ubiquitous though, has to be the use of water in Middle Eastern architecture—just look at the Moorish Alhambra in Granada, Spain for one of the world’s most exquisite examples.

In Turkey, even today the use of running water and fountains is everywhere…and for good reason. A relaxing meal reclining on a cushioned platform over a cool stream and next to a squirting fountain is a welcome respite to Turkey’s baking desert (or mountain, or coastal) heat.

At the moment I seem to have misplaced the details about the fun restaurant pictured below (although the photo is accurately geotagged; if you click on them you’ll see them placed on the PlanetEye map), but there are a few similar places in the vicinity of the Chimaera. Here, not only do you eat on platforms above a wide, rushing stream, you can even fish for your own lunch!

One of the strangest natural phenomena I’ve ever seen is Turkey’s bizarre Chimaera, a hillside pockmarked with flames coming out of the ground. Seriously.

No, this is not some volcanic phenomenon we’re talking about, but a clean flame, as if there were some huge barbecue running under the hill. It’s not just one or two, either, but dozens of them, all over the hill, snaking out to crevices in the rocks. Seriously weird.

Gas leaks out of the earth here and somehow ignites spontaneously—if you cover it and the flame goes out, as soon as you uncover it lights itself again. Weird…

Easily the best way to see the otherworldly landscape of Cappadocia is from a balloon—and ballooning here is now so popular as to have become de rigueur.

There are several operations that run ballooning trips, everything from a quick up-and-down packed into a basket with a big crowd to four hours in a smaller basket where everyone has a view.

We chose the Rolls Royce of balloon trips (hey, when’s the next time we’ll be in Cappadocia?), with Kapadokya Balloons, an outfit run by Lars-Eric Möre and Kaili Kidner, a Swedish/English duo that have been running ballooning trips for over 10 years.

At €250 per person, the price is steep, but the ride is a once-in-a-lifetime experience…and is this the time to cut corners? If the price is too steep but you still want the experience of getting up in a balloon over the crazy landscape, there are some more budget options available—ask around town. Kapadokya Balloons also has a larger-basket, shorter option available so give them a call.

Oh, and the photography opportunities are incredible! (as you can see) Make sure you bring extra batteries and memory cards—between the two of us we shot over 400 photos in one morning!

One of the most famous landscapes in the world, Cappadocia (pronounced like the Turkish spelling, Kapadokya) is a huge, arid Dr. Seuss-meets-bad-acid-trip region of fairy chimneys, knife-sharp gullies and scalloped hillsides. The result of millennia of rain and wind eroding what was once a lava-covered plain, Cappadocia is world-renowned not only for its mind-boggling geography, but also for its human inhabitants: generations have taken advantage of the soft tuff by making their homes in caves dug into the hillsides.

Cappadocia was inhabited by early Christian settlers, who found the often hidden and inaccessible caves the perfect refuge from persecution. They left a legacy of cave dwellings carved out of the rocks, frescoed, rock-hewn churches and chapels hidden away in the many valleys, as well as sometimes entire complex subterranean cities.

Today the mushroom shaped, pinnacled, capped and conic shaped formations and unique history are a major tourist draw, and Göreme National Park and the formations themselves have been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1985. Fewer and fewer of the cave dwellings are inhabited, but many have been converted to restaurants and hotels, where anyone can get a taste of life underground.