Friday 20th – Day 7: Konya – Cappadocia
Today is the halfway mark on our tour with 6 days to go. We are not counting day 1 & 14 as I don’t consider them as tour days.
We have left by 8am and head off across the Obruk Plateau. Our next night will be in Nevsehir, Cappadocia. It all very flat on a long straight road. Our first stop is the Sultanhan Caravansary. They used to have one of these about every 40km as this was about what a camel could walk in a day and of cause it was the place to park your camel and rest up in safety. This one was the most well preserved and largest in Turkey. It smelt like the camel caravan had just left for the day.
We next stopped at the underground city of Sarhati. Very impressive a large community space built under ground. They were originally built by the Greeks to hide from the Arabs. When they had the land swaps in 1922 the Greeks were moved away with nobody knowing of these underground villages. None were known about by the Turks until a shepherd fell into one in 1957 and then they started looking for them. They have found 16 so far. Apparently this is the safest to show the tourists but still very impressive. It would not have been hard to get lost as I discovered when I started to do my own exploring. As it was three dimensional and small poky little passageways between openings I got disorientated very quickly.
We arrived in Cappadocia and quickly saw the rock houses. Truly amazing conical shape rocks where people had hollowed out to live. You have to see them to believe them. Some had a mushroom top on. The government has now stopped people living in them but there are hundreds all over the place. As we stopped and had only been out of the bus 2 minutes it started to hail. If Gokce need away to get folk on the bus quick this was it. People literary ran for the shelter of the bus as the hail quite hurt.
Because of the weather we headed for a rug co-op that we had scheduled for Saturday and were shown the intricacies of rug making and of cause got the opportunity to purchase the bargain of a lifetime. Doug and Ngaire succumbed so it was our turn to laugh.
Off to the hotel and some wines while some of the group went to a Whirling Dervishes show. At US$40 per person we gave it a miss. Apparently it was very spiritual according to some when they came back. Dinner was good and back to the room as Margaret & I need to be in reception at 4.40am tomorrow as we are going to do the Hot Air Balloon ride in the morning weather permitting. Yahoo.
