Traveling through the emotions

(Photo: Diego Monfredini)

“Touching is everything to us. Then hearing, but hearing is not enough. You have to listen to the people, the music, the streets and even silence, because even silence tells you something.” If every city has a peculiar sound, silence is what Elena Bussino says about Cappadocia.
Bussino who travelled to Cappadocia along with seven other visually impaired tourists says: “I sense that this place is still pristine, silence is the sound of Cappadocia.” Bussino travels despite his blindness. This is pretty surprising to us given that we do not appreciate the most basic senses including hearing, touching and listening. For them, relying on these senses is just normal. They touch, listen, smell and even take selfies. Most of them do not remember how many times they have performed such a trip. Bussino lists some of the places he has been to, “Britain, Spain, France, Prague, Budapest, Ireland…” He tries to visit an English-speaking country every year because he is an English teacher and wants to remain fluent.
Bussino and his friends usually travel with family and exclusive tours that cater solely for the visually impaired is something new for them. Travel agencies tend not to pay attention to these niche events which tend to be organized by specific societies and charity groups. But the “traveling via emotions” project by Enrico Radrizzani is an exception. He believes that he is the only business entrepreneur organizing these kinds tours.

Radrizzani says, “I live wherever my suitcase is.” Cappadocia is the place where his suitcase has stayed the longest. Radrizzani who came to Turkey 24 years ago for the first time has traveled around the country a lot since then. He stayed for short periods of time in countries where he was showing tourists. Currently, he travels back and forth between Turkey and Italy. This is the second tour to Cappadocia that Radrizzani has organized for the visually impaired. The first was not as comprehensive. There were only four people in the first, but this one is totally different he tells us. His job is both hard and easy: “To ensure that they appreciate what is going on around them, we try to tell them that they should leave all other senses aside so that they grasp what their eyes cannot see. This takes a long time.” Of course, this is the hardest part, but the tourists are pretty independent and friendly, they are also pretty brave. Radrizzani, who has held countless tours so far, notes that regular tourists sometimes act childishly where the visually impaired tourists are pretty comfortable. He says: “They are pretty familiar with the idea that the cities have not been built with the needs of the visually impaired in mind and they use all of their other senses to the fullest. For this reason, they are more powerful. For instance, last week, we held a march in the full moon with a group of regular tourists. Most of them were scared of walking in the dark. But these people walk in the dark day and night. They fear nothing.”
We get to see what Radrizzani is trying to tell us first hand when we go on a nature walk in both Meskendir Valley and Mustafa Paşa. The visually impaired tourists did not complain about a thing when passing through the hardest parts of the routes. They never complained of being tired and we realized just how strong their other senses are. We want to talk to them about how they feel. Ester Tornavacca says: “We learn how to use the sense of touch at an early age. It just becomes part of your life over time. My mum taught me how to use touch since childhood. I started travelling with my mum. She told me I should touch everything during the trips. Touching is like seeing to us. I think that this sense is stronger in women. It takes some courage, that's all, true, it is hard, but not impossible.”

Tornavacca came from Turin. She works as an analyst in a company in Italy as well as teaches drama to children. She is one of the two in the group who is partially sighted. She says: “I have no vision in one eye but I do have slight vision in the other. I can just see colors and shades, no details. I know you are in front of me, but I cannot tell how close you are. I need to touch to see that.”
Tornavacca adds: “I have traveled a lot but these were standard tours organized by travel agencies without considering the needs of visually impaired people. I heard about Enrico's company last year for the first time. I wanted to join the tour to Turkey because Turkey is one of the countries I wanted to see most.” Like Bussino, she also dreams that the next stop will be Istanbul.
Tornavacca talks a lot about her mother who encouraged her to travel more: “My mum was looking for me as well, so I was also able to see things around me.” Elena Bussino believes that traveling is not a problem at all for a visually impaired people if they have somebody to accompany them. She holds that the key is scheduling the vacations and travels at the same time. Some people have children and others have conflicting schedules. Normally travel agencies do not allow visually impaired people to travel by themselves. So what they really need is somebody to walk with them.

Almost all of the guests in Cappadocia lost their vision right after birth. In addition to Elena, who has not been able to see since age 3, Consuelo Bconsu has been suffering from the same problem since he was 18. He believes that this carries some hardships: “You lose the world you are familiar with and you are aware of what you lost. Of course, remembering colors and objects makes communication with people easier. When somebody speaks about a ‘red shawl,' you have an idea of what they are talking about.”

Bconsu works in the human resources department of IBM in Italy. Like others, he travels a lot. He has memories of the places he has been to. Every city has its own voice, odor and atmosphere in his mind: “I cannot tell you exactly, but they do have them. Otherwise, every part of the world would be the same to us.”

 

We realized that we do not use our other senses

Radrizzani has a team of six, including himself, on the tours he organizes for the visually impaired travelers. Four young Italians contribute to the tour and he has a Turkish guide as well. Three of them accompany the tourists on the tour: “We do not do anything. They take care of everything. We just walk with them.” Valentina Coviello says, “We have learned a lot from them.” She adds: “During the valley walk, we traveled with two groups. After a while, we realized that the other people in the other group started to smell the flowers and touch stones and trees. I realized after walking with them that we use our senses pretty rarely. Now I touch, smell and listen, and sometimes I even close my eyes.”
Visually impaired tourists communicate with local people and they like to talk to others. Bussino explains why: “If you visually impaired, people around you become more curious about you. You can take advantage of this and communicate with those people and become comfortable with their culture and customs.” Paolo Rivalta, a visually impaired traveler, explains why visually impaired people rely on other senses: “I pay attention to other senses because I cannot see. You most probably ignore them because you are able to see, because eyes are the most dominant sensory organ. Maybe you think you do not need other senses.”

Diego Monfredini is another member of the “Traveling via Emotions” team. He is a professional photographer and the producer of an award winning short film about traveling through emotions. He not only takes photos but helps the tourists walk, too.

‘What you see on your right-hand side is…'

Cafer Gezer is serving as a guide for tourists in Cappadocia. Traveling via Emotions, which is owned by Radrizzani, cooperates with local agencies. The logic of tourism was what drove Radrizzani to introduce this traveling through motions project. The Italian tourism entrepreneur avoids the classic tour approach in his organizations. He cooperates with local agencies to organize slow tours that give more time for the tourists to get to know the local people and their culture. In other words, it is not a standard travel tour where people have a short space of time to see as many places as possible. He had experience with visually impaired tourists for the first time in the Ancona Museum in Italy six years ago. He has received many requests since then. Over the last three years, he took visually impaired tourists to Cappadocia. Radrizzani wants to improve this project and for this reason he is open to recommendations and cooperation. He will organize a tour to Morocco and Tunisia next month but he is also considering tours in southeastern Anatolia and Istanbul. And of course, it won't be just Italians joining the trip.

This is Cafer Gezer's second experience with visually impaired tourists. He talks about his experiences: “This is just new for us. We learn together with them.” In fact, they do what unimpaired people do on a regular tour. The only difference is that he gives a lot more details. For instance, he sometimes forgets that the audience is visually impaired people, starting by saying, “What you see on your right-hand side is…” But some of the tourists just correct him, saying, “You mean what you see…”

On the Traveling through Emotions tours, visitors are able to do everything regular tourists would do, with a few added extras. Radrizzani explains: “They touch the strings and designs in the rug workshops. We allow them to touch the final product in the marbling workshop. We attended a roof wedding ceremony where they danced and talked to the people. And most specially, they touched whirling dervishes.” Of course, these were all made possible by Radrizzani's connections in Cappadocia after spending a lot of time travelling in the area. People in Uçhisar know him and his friendships and connections enable him to organize special events for the visually impaired visitors. At this point, Radrizzani says that the traveling through emotions tour is not more expensive than regular tours. He says: “People in the region are sensitive. The hotels offer their best prices out of a sense of social responsibility. The people in my crew work on voluntary basis.”

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They touch while flying
 

Visually impaired visitors also experience the helium balloon tour, an indispensable part of any Cappadocia tour. They actually have an added experience in visiting the home of the pilot who steers the balloon. İsmail Keremoğlu welcomes his guests and gives details, including the technical information, about the helium balloon experience. Then they touch the balloon that they will be travelling in the next day. Before sunrise, they move to the spot, once again, they are allowed to touch the balloon. Then we get onboard and rise 300 meters high. Bussino and other friends stand next to the pilot and listen to Cappadocia. Another group of Italians in the balloon are busy taking photos. Those people look at the view, that is for sure, but I am not sure whether they can actually see.

We were busy with taking photos that we would share on Facebook when they were enjoying the sense of serenity and escalation. The silence is broken by a song as one of the visitors starts to sing, “La chante mi cantare.” This is followed by laughter. Our pilot is pretty pleased with the new guests and he has a surprise for them. He does something that he does not normally do and lowers the balloon to pass through trees so that his guests can “see” in their own way. The visitors touch the leaves of the trees. Our pilot turns his face towards us and says, “You will see sunrise in a moment.” And then he turns towards the other side, telling the vision-impaired guests that they will soon feel the touch of the sun on their skin. Then another little surprise follows. The balloon slightly touches a rock and this makes people pretty happy. And silence again. For some reason, I recall my forgotten senses, the ones I have forgotten to use for a long time, particularly my eyes. First, I put my camera in my bag, then I start to take a real look at what is around me. And then I close my eyes to hear the silence because they I have been taught that silence has something to tell us.

Keywords: traveling , emotions

 

source:http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_traveling-through-the-emotions_357013.html 

Slowly along the Turkish Riviera

Akdeniz (Photo: Sunday's Zaman, Selahattin Sevi)

The turquoise coast. The turkish riviera. Don't those words have a romantic ring to them? Don't they just make you want to rush out and take a holiday immediately?

The Turkish Riviera stretches all the way from Marmaris in the west to Antalya in the east. My money's on the bit in the middle though, the bit that is bookended by Fethiye in the west and Antalya in the east. Clear azure seas. Perfect rocky coves. Delightful little beaches. In the hills behind them the ruins of the lost Lycian civilization. What could be more alluring?

Here are some of the highlights of that stretch of the coast, most of them readily accessible on day trips from either Fethiye or Antalya.

Ölüdeniz and Kayaköy

Facing out over a bay full of rocky islands, Fethiye town makes a great place to base yourself with all sorts of shops and restaurants tucked away in the bazaar area along with an old hamam (Turkish bath) and a lively fish market. In the evening few things could be nicer than strolling along the harbor front and sizing up the boats that wait to take holidaymakers out on “12 Island” tours of the bay. There's even a town beach in the suburb of Çalış accessible in summer via a delightful water taxi ride from the harbor.

Çalıs, however, is fairly built-up. To stretch out on sands without a hotel looming over you, you're better off heading out to Ölüdeniz where a spit of sand juts out into a glorious lagoon. These days you'll find it jampacked with sunbeds, although an admission fee keeps things relatively exclusive. Don't fancy paying? Well, then you can stretch out on the sand for free at Belcekiz, which is where the dolmuş from Fethiye will drop you. As you snooze the day away, you'll be able to watch the hang-gliders launching themselves off nearby Baba Dağı (Mt Baba). Daniel Craig tried it in Skyfall should you fancy channeling his James Bond alter ego.

Returning to Fethiye, you can hop off the dolmuş from Ölüdeniz and hop into another one running inland to the ruins of Karaköy, the abandoned Greek settlement that provided the inspiration for Louis de Berniere's wonderful novel, "Birds Without Wings." In 1923, the Greeks who used to live here were sent to live in Greece. A smaller number of Turks “returned” from Greece to Turkey, and so the old houses were left empty. Despite frequent suggestions that they should be rebuilt, the houses and churches still stand abandoned for the time being. This is a great place to come and let your imagination take wing.

Tlos and Saklıkent Gorge

Fethiye travel agents offer combined trips to the ruins of the great Lycian city of Tlos perched partly on a dramatic plug of rock. Most of what survives today dates the later years of the Roman occupation, although the Lycian necropolis with its rock-cut tombs survives with a much-later Ottoman castle plonked down on top of it.

Tours also take in the lovely if no longer hidden gorge at Saklıkent (Hidden City). Here the canyon walls soar so high and are so close together that the sun never reaches the bottom even in summer, leaving the water running along the bottom icy cold. All manner of daredevil sports are on offer here and a string of restaurants line the banks of the river outside the gorge itself. Some tours will take you instead for lunch in nearby Yakaköy, where restaurants wrap themselves in picturesque style around trees and running water.

Butterfly Valley and Faralya

In summer, boats ply back and forth from Belcekiz beach to lovely Butterfly Valley where it's possible to camp behind the small beach off the path running inland to a small waterfall backed by soaring rocks. On top of those rocks sits Faralya, accessible by a path that only the surefooted should attempt. Everyone else is better advised to take the dolmuş from Fethiye to the hotels and pensions lined up to scoop its spectacular sunset views.

A short stop in Butterfly Valley is also a fixture on the boat trips out of Ölüdeniz, if you just want to get a quick look and move on.

Xanthos and the Letoon

Before the Romans came along, this was a part of the world that belonged to the mysterious Lycians about whom little that's certain is known. Their capital was, however, uphill from Kınık, which is easily accessible from Fethiye. Here you can admire another rock-cut necropolis as well as a strange tower-like monument that dates back to the days when the Persians had overrun the site. Most of the finest monuments from Xanthos were removed to the British Museum in the 19th century, but there's enough left here to give you a sense of what the city must have been like in the days before its menfolk killed their wives and children and set fire to the town rather than surrender to the Persians.

A little way away from Xanthos stands the Letoon, the remains of a huge temple complex dedicated to the goddess Leto and her children, Apollo and Artemis, that was the most sacred place for the Lycians. Together these two sites form one of Turkey's world heritage sites.

Patara

Of all the beaches along the Turkish Riviera none can compare with the splendor of Patara, an 18-kilometer-long stretch of sand fading on the western side into dunes planted with eucalyptuses that give off a vague whiff of Australia. Like the beach at Ölüdeniz, the one at Patara is protected with all the hotel development inland at Gelemiş. Not that keen on sunbathing? Well, the area between Gelemiş and the beach is thickly covered in ruins, some of them, such as the old Greco-Roman theater, absolutely magnificent.

Kalkan

A big hit with the British, many of whom have set up home here, Kalkan was once a small fishing village, the memory of which still hangs about the harbor front where chi-chi restaurants compete to see which can vanish beneath the thickest coating of bougainvillea each summer. It's a pretty place with not a great deal in the way of sightseeing on offer. Make it your base, then venture out to explore on day trips.

Kaş and Kaleköy

Built on a hillside that slopes down to another colorful harbor, Kaş offers a great mix of gourmet dining and boutique shopping with a smidgen of local sightseeing and plenty of options on the watersports front. It's also the best base for visiting the delightful offshore village of Kaleköy, one of the prettiest places in all Turkey with yet another Lycian necropolis to explore and a row of fish restaurants lining the waterfront. From Kaş you can also hop across to the Greek island of Kastellorizo (Meis) where a gyro for lunch might make a welcome change from yet another döner kebap.

Demre and Myra

Approaching the small town of Demre, you will be amazed at the serried rows of plastic-wrapped greenhouses. Behind this not very appealing façade, however, there's a town whose life revolves around the ruins of a Byzantine church thought to have housed the bones of St Nicholas, the prototype Father Christmas (Noel Baba), until they were stolen by 11th-century pirates and carried off to Bari in Italy. That aside, the church is worth visiting for its wonderfully colorful frescoes and mosaics. A quick kilometer's walk away, there are also spectacular remains of a Greco-Roman theater and -- yes, you've guessed it -- another picturesque rock-cut Lycian necropolis.

Olympos and Çıralı

Treehouse or eco-pension? Your answer to this accommodation question will dictate whether you're better off heading for Olympos, where most of the treehouses these days are really more like chalets, or to Çıralı, a small beach resort where most of the accommodation has been designed with an eye to protecting the environment (although these days there's a great deal of it). Whichever you choose, you'll have on your doorstep the romantically ramshackle ruins of ancient Lycian and Roman Olympos and the eerie Chimaera, an inextinguishable flame that flares from the mountainside and makes a great sight either during the day when the path will seem less scary or in the dark when the hooting of the local owls will add to the sense of awe.

Phaselis

Close to Antalya with its choice of beaches (including a new women-only one), its marvelous walled Ottoman enclave (the Kaleiçi) and its superb museum lie the ruins of Phaselis set right on the beach so that you can visit them, then take a dip afterwards. Come soon since a planned new hotel development will almost certainly detract from the glory of the erstwhile untouched woodland setting.

Keywords: turkish riviera , turquoise , coast

 

source:http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_slowly-along-the-turkish-riviera_356969.html 

Out and about from Trabzon

Sumela Monastery (Photo: Sunday's Zaman, Pat Yale)

Way down towards the far eastern end of Turkey's black sea coast the great port city of Trabzon has an illustrious history that is somewhat belied by its workaday modern appearance. It was to this distant outpost that the Byzantine emperor fled in 1204 when the army of the Fourth Crusade overran what was then Constantinople (today's İstanbul).
Even after their rivals for the throne managed to seize the city back in 1261, the rulers of the breakaway Empire of Trebizond stayed put here. It wasn't until 1461 that the Ottomans pushed them out and seized it for themselves.
But Byzantine culture had left a lasting mark on Trabzon. It wasn't until 1924 that the last Greeks were forced by the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne to “return” to Greece, while Turks from Greece came to take their place.

For centuries, Trabzon sat at the end of one of the Silk Road trails, its port bustling with merchants exporting the silks and spices of the East and dispatching by road the less exotic produce of the West. Right into the 20th century, camel trains were still a common sight around town.

Today Trabzon is an exciting, energetic city brimming with self-confidence and with a distinctive atmosphere born of its long contact with Russia and the Caucasus. The exquisite Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia (now converted into a mosque) and a pair of elegant museums aside, the town center is not big on historic sightseeing. Very little is made, for example, of the role once played by the Fatih Cami as the Church of Panagia Khristokefalos where the breakaway Byzantine emperors were crowned; most other reminders of the Byzantine era, including the old palace, go utterly ignored.

But Trabzon remains a great place to stay with lots of pleasant local restaurants and tea gardens, and a lively bazaar to discover in between trips out to explore the surrounding area.

Sumela Monastery

The number-one drawcard that pulls tourists by the busload into this area is the Sumela Monastery, clinging like a limpet to a rock-face deep in the glorious pine forest of the Altındere National Park. After the last of the monks left at the time of the population exchange, the once-flourishing monastery fell into ruins. Recently, though, it has been effectively rebuilt, which makes it easier to imagine how life might have been lived on the mountainside if harder to remember just how old the original building was.

To understand that, you need to step inside the rock shelter at the back of the site and look up at its colorful Byzantine frescoes. For it was here that in the fourth century Saints Barnabas and Sophronius claimed to have found an icon of the Virgin Mary painted by St. Luke, one of the four evangelists who had been born in what is now Antakya. Despite the difficulty of reaching the site, a shrine rapidly grew up here. Work on expanding it continued well into the 19th century as can be seen from the somewhat battered frescoes adorning the outside wall of a smaller church on the site making it look rather like a church from deepest Transylvania.

To get the most out of a visit here, it's probably best to come alone so that you can take your time over the climb up to the monastery, then take a good look round before perhaps pausing for lunch in the national park.

 Uzungöl

Second in popularity only to the monastery as a day-trip destination is Uzungöl, the “long lake” that nestles in the mountains to the east of Trabzon, inland from the small town of Of, known mainly for the piety of its residents. Uzungöl is often promoted as a second Switzerland, evoking images of pretty, pointy-roofed chalets grouped picturesquely around the water. Unfortunately, reality comes with a great deal more concrete, although recent years have seen an attempt to improve things by wood-facing some of the older buildings.

These days, Uzungöl finds particular favor with visitors from Saudi Arabia; “they love the greenery and the rain,” a local hotel receptionist explained.

Akçaabat

If you're staying in Trabzon for a few days, you might want to head out west to visit the small town of Akçaabat, which is best known for its tasty köfte, served with aplomb at a string of large sea-facing restaurants along the main road.

For most people, that's about as far as a trip to Akçaabat goes, but really the thing to do is to struggle up the steep hill behind the town center in search of the lovely old Ortamahalle, the part of the town where the Greeks used to live in delightful wooden-framed houses clustered around the early 14th-century Church of the Archangel Michael.

As with Trabzon, so with Akçaabat as it appears that the locals have preferred to forget their Byzantine past: On my most recent visit, the church was open to visitors, although nothing had been done to protect its beautiful mosaic floor or provide any information about it. On the other hand, the lovely houses were being restored and will no doubt provide wonderful new homes with sea views for better-off Akçaabatlıs. In due course, no doubt the church, too, will receive more attention.

Vakfıkebir

Vakfıkebir is known throughout Turkey for producing mouth-wateringly delicious bread in loaves the size of cartwheels. If you are in Trabzon on a Monday, it's worth popping out here to take a turn around a sprawling riverside market. Then you can treat yourself to a sandwich you won't be forgetting in a hurry.

Tirebolu

Beyond Akçaabat and Vakfıkebir is the small town of Tirebolu where a castle, probably built by Genoese traders in the 14th century, perched on a rock, dominates a pretty fishing harbor. It won't take long to look around here, which means that you can come by bus, then hop on and off at Vakfıkebir and Akçaabat on the way back to Trabzon.

 

Sürmene

The Black Sea Highway roars along the eastern Black Sea coast, a boon to truckers in a hurry to get to Georgia, a nightmare for more or less everyone else. The highway was built on reclaimed land, a fact that's easy to forget when you're in the towns along the way, but that becomes more obvious if you side-trip east to Sürmene to visit the stunning Memişağa Konaği, a huge mansion with a wooden-framed superstructure attached to a stone ground floor, that is known locally as the Kastell. When it was built in the 19th century, the mansion would have sat in enviable tranquility with its wooden shutters opening onto a glorious vista of the Black Sea. Now it's stranded inland astride a bluff above the highway.

The Memişağa Konaği is theoretically open to the public, although you may have to ask around for the caretaker. Inside it showcases marvelous examples of the sort of painted woodwork that once adorned the walls and ceilings of the homes of the Black Sea wealthy. Stroll back in the Trabzon direction towards the center of Sürmene, and on the outskirts you'll find a cluster of the sort of solid wooden mansions that would have been the homes of the more middling class of merchant. Now, of course, they're expensive to maintain and most are standing empty.

Rize

Beyond Sürmene lies Rize, the capital of Turkish tea-growing country with a museum to show off all the fine packaging that has been used to market the product since it was introduced to the area in the 1930s by Zihni Derin, whose bust sits outside the Tea Research Institute to celebrate his achievement. Like Trabzon, Rize is a town that is more focused on looking forward than back, but the tea museum is housed in a fine restored Ottoman house in the town center and the remains of a castle still protect the western flanks of the town. Come here to get a taste of the Laz and Hemşin cultures that live on in the coastal towns and hidden valleys beyond Rize, quite literally if you order one of the tasty local delicacies, lahana çorbası (cabbage soup), mıhlama (cheese fondue) or mısır ekmeği (cornbread).

Keywords: Trabzon , black sea coast

 

source:http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_out-and-about-from-trabzon_357666.html 

From Harput to Lake Van, Erzurum and Trabzon with Henry Fanshawe Tozer (2)

Akdamar Church, Van

Disembarking at the Black Sea port of Samsun in the spring of 1879, the British geographer Henry Fanshawe Tozer made his way southwest over several mountain chains to the Central Anatolia plateau. Here he explored the fascinating remains around the Hittite capital of Hattuşa, east of Ankara, before riding southeast to the crucial trading hub of Kayseri. After a quick detour west to the fairy tale landscape of Cappadocia, Tozer and his party headed northeast to Sivas, then southeast across the biblical Euphrates to Harput (outside modern Elazığ).
From Harput onward, the territory the curious Tozer would venture through was inhabited largely by Kurds and Armenians. It was a remote and mountainous region that the Ottoman authorities were struggling to keep a firm grip on -- especially in the wake of the crippling 1877-8 war with Russia. Britain, motivated by its own interests in the region, had stepped in to help Ottoman Turkey against imperial Russia. In return, the ruling sultan, Abdul Hamid II, had been forced to accept the presence of British officials roaming at will over Anatolia -- handy for British travelers' such as Tozer in the short-term, but the resentment caused by this partial ceding of independence to a foreign power was to eventually have devastating consequences for Anatolia's Christian population.

From Harput to Muş

From Harput, Tozer headed east to the today little-visited town of Palu. Here he was shown some rock-cut chambers in the Urartian fortress, which his guides informed him “were the dwelling place of St Mezrop, the Armenian saint, who invented the Armenian alphabet about 406 AD.” The party then skirted the mountainous Dersim region (today the Munzur Mountains around Tunceli). Having mainly fraternized with Turks, Greeks and Armenians up until now, the party had their first contact with Kurds. The group they met “hardly spoke a word of Turkish, so that we had difficulty communicating with them, and we found them very suspicious, and demanding high price for articles such as milk and cheese, which we bought of them, and demanding the money be paid on the spot.”

Today the Surp Garabet Monastery on the Muş Plain, the party's next destination, is completely ruined and desolate. Tozer reached it on Aug. 24, 1879 and found this important monastery -- believed by Armenians to contain a very holy relic, the body of John the Baptist -- and pilgrimage stop “full of men, women and children … picnicking on the ground. … Some of the women had one nostril pierced for a silver ornament.”  The monastery was then home to 20 monks, the head priest of which spoke fluent French, and 180 lay brothers.
The town of Muş was quite the contrast to the monastery, being “quite the filthiest town we had met with in Turkey … the pavements were broken and ragged; every street was an open drain, and the stenches were fearful.” After lodging in Muş with a well-off Armenian, the travelers set-off the next morning on fresh horses for Bitlis, nestling deep down in a valley below Lake Van. Here they were hosted by a well-known American missionary, Reverend George Knapp, who was working with the local Armenian community. According to Tozer, Bitlis -- today a fascinating place clustered around its imposing old citadel -- consisted of “3000 houses, 2000 of which belong to Kurds, 1000 to Armenians, 20 to the Turks and 50 to the Syrians.”

Up Mount Süphan and by boat across Lake Van

Every traveler to eastern Turkey today longs for their first sight of Lake Van. Back in 1979, Tozer first saw it following a five-hour ride from Bitlis. “A beautiful view, owing to the numerous bays, the succession of headlands, and the finely cut outline of the ridges.” The party rode around the north shore of the lake to Ahlat, famed for its Selçuk tombs and gravestones, before reaching the pretty settlement of Adilcevaz. Having conquered Mount Erciyes outside of Kayseri, the lure of the even higher Mount Süphan, a volcanic cone towering above the village, was irresistible. Despite camping 7,000 feet up on the slopes of the peak and leaving at 3 a.m. the next morning, Tozer, who was weakened by the journey, failed to reach the summit. He did, however, enjoy the splendid lake and mountain views from the rim of this crater-topped, 4,058-meter-high peak.
Tozer and his companions reached Van by sailing from Adilcevaz and lodged in the old, walled town at the foot of the dramatic Rock of Van. Today Van is an undulating sea of rubble, bar a couple of well-restored Ottoman mosques and the scant remnants of a church and a couple of caravanserais, but it then had a prosperous population of some 30,000 “of whom three fourths are Armenians.”

The Rock of Van

Eager to explore the Rock of Van, Tozer first had to get permission from the commandant of the Ottoman garrison then stationed atop it. Then, as now, the view from the summit of the sheer, 100-meter-high, 1.5-kilometer-long rock was spectacular: “The panorama from the highest point was enchanting, for on one side lay the expanse of the blue sparkly lake, with its circuit of mountains, among which Siphan [Süphan] and Nimrud Dagh [Nemrut] were conspicuous, while on the opposite direction the broken Varak Dagh [Erek] formed a noble object.”
The oldest historic remains on the rock are now known to be Urartian, a unique civilization centered in Van between 900 and 600 B.C. At the time of Tozer's visit, they were thought to be Assyrian and the cuneiform inscriptions that mark the rock-cut tomb of Urartian King Argishti I that Tozer saw were “still a riddle to philologists.” Before leaving Van, Tozer visited another American missionary promoting the Protestant variant of the Christian faith to the sometimes unwilling Apostolic Armenians led by Dr. Reynolds.

Üç Kümbetler, Erzurum (Photo: Cihan)

Past Kurdish encampments and a biblical peak to Erzurum

They left Van on Sept. 6, riding north along the eastern shore of the lake and then following the gorge of Bendimah River. Led by a local, they overnighted at a Kurdish encampment “with numerous tents forming a long line, some large and black, others smaller, round and white. The men who were hanging about them were a wild and surly looking set, with hair streaming down in long locks … all of course were armed. Their possessions might be seen about the encampment -- sheep, goats, oxen and cows, herds of horses, big mastiff dogs, and greyhounds clothed in small coats. The whole formed a highly picturesque scene.”

Avoiding Doğubeyazıt, which according to the locals had been ruined in the war with Russia, they headed across high, volcanic peaks to Diyadin -- today known for its hot springs -- reveling in the fine view of 5,165-meter-high Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağ) en route. From Diyadin they continued westward towards Erzurum, passing “a long line of 170 laden camels.” Tozer was impressed with Erzurum as they approached, noting, “As seen from without, it seemed the most imposing city, with the exception of Amasia, that we had reached on our journey, owing to the numerous minarets and other striking buildings that rise from its midst.”
In Erzurum they were “received with the greatest kindness by our consul, General Major Trotter, who entertained us during our stay.” Trotter had been in the city during the recent Russian siege during which the strategically crucial outpost nearly fell, and according to Tozer, the population had fallen to around 20,000 as a result of the recent difficulties. Tozer reported that the whole region was in disarray as the Kurds were taking advantage of the lack of central control (the Ottoman troops had not been paid in four years) to pillage the Armenians. Worse, the Circassians (Çerkez) who had arrived as a result of Russian advances “came with nothing but their arms … they follow no pursuits save those of highway robbers and petty pilfering, and being well-armed with rifles, revolvers and swords, whilst the Zapitehs (Ottoman police) often have nothing better than flintlock guns.”

Uzungöl, Trabzon (Photo: Cihan)

Over the Pontic Alps to Trabzon

From Erzurum Tozer's party headed north, over the Kop Pass, to the top of the Pontic Alps from where they “looked down into a deep valley, in which were cheerful, well-built villages, with walls of stone and red-tile roofs; beyond this rose forest clad mountains … delicately cut ridges … the snow-topped mountains of Lazistan and, completing all, the expanse of the soft-blue Euxine (Black Sea).” The cultural, topographic and climatic contrast between the arid Anatolian Plateau and the Black Sea hinterland still shocks travelers today, how much more marked it must have been in Tozer's day.
Tozer waxed lyrical about their next stop, the famous cliff-hanging monastery of Sumela, then still inhabited by Greek Orthodox monks. They were hosted by the gracious monks and as they left the next day for Trabzon the normally reserved Brit was moved to write that it was “one of the loveliest spots we had ever seen.” It remains a picturesque place with the monastery recently restored. The monks, though, are long gone, prey to the post-WWI population exchange between Greece and Turkey.
Finally they reached Trabzon, or Trebizond as Tozer knew it: “We came in sight of the city, which was the term of our wandering. We had concluded a ride of 1,500 miles, which had been accomplished without illness or incident of any kind.” It was indeed quite an achievement. In Trabzon they explored the various Byzantine churches turned mosques, but couldn't gain access to the famous Haghia Sophia (Aya Sofya) as it “had been appropriated for military purposes.” Then on Sept. 27 Tozer and his companion, TM Crowder, boarded a French steamship bound for Constantinople.

Sümela Monastery, Trabzon (Photo: Cihan)
Henry Fanshawe Tozer's “Turkish Armenia and Eastern Asia Minor” can be read online at https://archive.org/details/turkisharmeniaea00tozeuoft.

Keywords: Tozer , Turkey

 

source:http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_from-harput-to-lake-van-erzurum-and-trabzon-with-henry-fanshawe-tozer-2_377007.html 

From Samsun to Cappadocia and Beyond with Henry Fanshawe Tozer. Part 1

Hattuşa remains (Photo: Sunday's Zaman)

When Henry Fanshawe Tozer embarked on a long journey across Anatolia in the spring of 1879, the fascinating region that was then the heartland of the Ottoman Empire was on the edge of crisis.
Muslim refugees had flooded in from the Balkans and Caucasus, victims of the expansionist policies of imperialist Russia. Their arrival upset the natural balance of the longer-established Anatolian people -- Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds and other ethno-religious groups. In 1874 a major famine had decimated the population, state taxes went uncollected.
The sultanate was in disarray with Abdul Aziz forced to step down in 1876. His successor, Murad V, had a nervous breakdown and was deposed later the same year, paving the way for the paranoid Abdul Hamid II to take over the ailing empire. The war with Russia, which began in 1877, was to have disastrous consequences as well. Faced with the loss of vast swathes of territory, the Ottomans had no choice but to accept the help of Britain, who in 1878 obtained the island of Cyprus in return. The sultan also agreed to respect the rights of the empire's substantial Christian population and British officials penetrated the remotest parts of Anatolia to supervise the implementation of the agreement.

Amasya’s famous apples (Photo: Cihan)

Over the mountains from Samsun to Amasya

Given the parlous state of Anatolia in the 1870s, it's no wonder that Tozer cancelled his original trip, scheduled for 1874, and waited until the final year of the decade to set out into Anatolia. Like so many travellers' before him, he made the first part of the journey -- from Constantinople (İstanbul) to Samsun -- by boat. Tozer's travelling companions were TM Crowder, the bursar of Corpus Christi, Oxford, and a Greek dragoman whom Tozer noted with faint praise as “a rough and far from first-rate travelling servant, but hardy and healthy, and possessing a thorough knowledge of Turkey.”
Tozer was less than enthusiastic about the Black Sea port of city Samsun when his ship docked, writing: “Samsun is inconsiderable in size and by no means imposing in appearance. … There are few minarets and the most conspicuous building is a church of recent construction.” Rather like a backpacker today setting off for some less visited part of Turkey, Tozer sought information about the lay of the land from other foreigners who had been there before, in his case the French consul in Samsun. His words were a stark warning: “You must not think of starting for several days; you must wait until a caravan is formed. … The roads are thoroughly unsafe owing to Circassians and other brigands.”
Undeterred, Tozer eventually managed to scrape together five horses for the journey and set-off at three o'clock that afternoon. “Fortified by a firman from the sultan,” Tozer and his companions were officially sanctioned to roam across Anatolia and were able to enlist a couple of military guards, one Turk and one Circassian to accompany them. A “post boy” also accompanied them to care for the steeds as Tozer had persuaded the official postmaster in town to provide him with horses -- Samsun then being the last stop before Constantinople on the postal route between the Baghdad and the Ottoman capital.
Four mountain chains and one “verminous inn” later the party reached Amasya. They stayed in a caravanserai right by the turbid Yesilırmak river, opposite the chief draw of the town even today, the “famous ‘Tombs of the Kings,' which were the principal object of our visit.” Equally exciting to the Oxford-educated geographer Tozer was that he was now in the birthplace of one of the most famous geographers in antiquity, Strabo (63 BC-AD 24), “to whom everyone who is interested in ancient geography is so much indebted.”

En route to visit another foreign consul stationed in Anatolia high up above the river, Tozer “stopped to admire the magnificent view… the town lying beneath you, with its trees and minarets, the river spanned by several bridges, the rocky heights on both sides.” For the British academic this was heady prose and praise indeed, as rarely did the phlegmatic Tozer allow romance to colour his descriptions.

From the land of the Hittites to Kayseri

Next the party rode across yet more mountains to Çorum and then onto Alaca. Today the impressive pair of Hittite-era sphinxes flanking a gateway there are replicas, while the originals are on display in Ankara's splendid and recently renovated Museum of Anatolian Civilisations. Tozer was privileged to see the originals still in situ, noting, “It was impossible not to feel astonishment at these strange objects lying in such a remote place.” Archaeology was very much in the embryonic stage at the time of Tozer's travels, so it is not surprising that at the party's next goal, Boğazkale, there is virtually no description of the extensive remains of the former Hittite capital of Hattuşa. It had simply not been uncovered. Tozer did manage, however, to view the delightful relief-carved scenes of Hittite warriors and deities at nearby Yazılıkaya.
Continuing their journey southward, the party reached Yozgat, then a settlement of “3,000 families, 50 of whom are Greek, 1,000 Armenian, the rest Turkish” and were struck by “the unusual cleanness of the town.” Tozer attributed this to the wealth generated by Yozgat's principal product -- Angora wool. Their next destination was Kayseri, a four days ride away. There they lodged in the Armenian quarter, hosted by Kerope Yakobian, a protestant pastor who had spent two years undergoing training for his ministry in Scotland. Today booming Kayseri has a population of well over 1 million. According to Tozer, in 1879 it comprised just 60,000 souls of which 16,000 of were Armenian, 4,000 Greek and the remainder Turkish.
Like many visitors to Kayseri both before and after him, Tozer was fascinated by the spectacular volcanic peak of Mount Erciyes, rising above the city in unearthly, snow-capped splendour. Unlike the vast majority of travellers, however, Tozer was determined to climb this 3,916 meter high-peak. Guided by an elderly Armenian called Stephan the party camped at 2,700 meters. The next day they rose at 2 a.m. and carrying only “a piece of meat and some bread each” made their way up a snow-filled gully to the summit ridge, which they reached at 6 a.m. They reached the actual summit well ahead of their guide, who struggled up manfully behind them. The spectacular views were “as wonderful a sight as can be conceived,” allowed the normally guarded geographer.

Cappadocia (Photo: DHA)

From Cappadocia to Sivas

The next day they headed west to Cappadocia. Today this unique and beautiful region is so rammed with boutique cave hotels and overflown by squadrons of hot-air balloons that it's hard to imagine it as the little-visited backwater it was at the time of Tozer's expedition. They lodged in Ürgüp with a Greek called “Capitan Oglu” who took them to Göreme the next day. Tozer described the area as “a valley, perhaps three-quarters of a mile in length, which has been scooped out to a depth of five hundred feet. … The cliffs fall steeply on both sides, sometimes with sheer descent, sometimes in a succession of terraces… and about these terraces… were pinnacles, obelisks, pyramids and broken towers of tufa, presenting the wildest scene of confusion.” At least Cappadocia's topography has changed but little since Tozer's day.
The party returned to Kayseri before setting out on the four day ride northeast to Sivas. En route they visited the Armenian monastery of Surp Garabed, passed a salt lake and explored the famous caravanserai at Sultanhanı. The village surrounding it is still a scruffy sort of place, out of keeping with the grandness of the remains of the caravanserai. Even back then it was “a small, poverty-stricken village.” Of Sivas itself Tozer had little to say, but he used the time he spent there to talk to the locals and reflect on what they thought of the current state of affairs in Anatolia. “The opinion prevailed that the present regime was intolerable. On this subject there was no difference; Mahometans and Christians, natives and foreign residents, all thought alike.”

Çifte minareli medrese, Sivas (Photo: DHA)

Across the Euphrates to Harput

Tozer and his entourage left Sivas on Aug. 12 and after a further four days riding they reached the Euphrates, always a thrilling moment for the traveller, especially a geographer. The famed river presented “a wild but most impressive scene” being “about 300 feet wide…the current strong.” Tozer wasn't so impressed by the craft that would take them to the eastern shores of the biblical river for “it was of extremely crude and primitive construction… 30 feet long by 15 feet wide, flat bottomed…had it been roofed over, it would not have made a bad Noah's Ark.”
They overnighted at Keban, today best known for its dam. Even then the silver mines, which had previously brought much prosperity to the settlement, were exhausted. They lodged at the house of a wealthy Armenian before riding on to Harput. Today a rather forlorn collection of ruins outside Elazığ, Harput was then a flourishing Armenian town and a centre of American protestant missionary activity in Eastern Anatolia, well-known for its theological seminary and English language school (renamed Euphrates College not long after Tozer's visit), but is now completely destroyed.
Tozer was enchanted by Harput, writing of the panorama from the ruined castle at its heart. “After the dreary scenery of the Anti-Taurus, I hailed with delight the change to bold, sharply cut mountain outlines and brighter colouring… we now seem to have reached a new and more romantic land.”
For Tozer, the real adventure was about to begin.
Henry Fanshawe Tozer's “Turkish Armenia and Eastern Asia Minor” can be read online at https://archive.org/details/turkisharmeniaea00tozeuoft.

Keywords: Henry Fanshawe Tozer 

 

Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_from-samsun-to-cappadocia-and-beyond-with-henry-fanshawe-tozer-part-1_376433.html 

Turkey through a traveler’s eyes: Frances Elliot, an ‘idle woman in Constantinople’

Hippodrome, Sultanahmet

“The real beauty of Constantinople is in its water.
Water everywhere, clear, blue, and shimmering; away to the far south the placid sea of Marmora … To the north the long, low stretch of the Bosphorus teaming with steamers…and at hand the watery bosom of the Golden Horn cuts into the densest portion of the city, and disputes possession with the land.”
In these words at least I'll agree with their author, Frances Elliot. The self-styled “Idle Woman in Constantinople” visited the great city known today as İstanbul back in the May of 1892, and was more than justified in her assertion that the city's visual appeal derives, then as now, in large part from its situation astride these three great waterways.

Bleak and bigoted first impressions

But overall, Elliot is so negative about one of the world's great cities that it's hard to fathom why she bothered visiting at all, let alone writing a book about it; and that's allowing for the bigoted and imperious attitudes of the average Westerner of the period and the fact that the city was then, like the Ottoman Empire of which it was capital, in precipitous decline.
Arriving from Europe by train, her first impressions were scathing. The handsome Ottoman-era wooden houses, the surviving examples of which today sell for exorbitant sums to be transformed into boutique hotels and the like, Elliot decries as “common little buildings, not two alike in the whole city, piled one on the other. … The diminutive windows half-closed with wooden shutters to conceal the life of the harem.”
Of a city packed with splendid Ottoman-era mosques, fountains, bath houses and other buildings, she writes: “Ruin more complete, more ruthless, never was beheld. Absolute, sordid ruin, without dignity or pathos. Dust, dirt, neglect and noise everywhere.” About the vibrant hustle and bustle of a city at the crossroads of Europe and Asia she is equally dismissive: “No quiet, no repose! A train rushes by, a passing cart raises clouds of dust out of the dry soil, a troop of Turkish children try to finger you. … a dragoman at your heels, whom you must have for protection […] mumbles incessantly in a sort of pigeon English; the cries of the vendors of cakes and water. The grunts of Persian and Armenian porters with their heavy loads, the click of the laden horses and donkeys […] make up a discord enough to crush the spirit of the most enthusiastic stranger.”

Across the Golden Horn to Pera

Travelling only with her maid, Elliot was relieved to be met at İstanbul Sirkeci Terminal by a splendidly dressed Greek kavass (consular guard) sent by the British Embassy. He soon has all her luggage piled into a horse and carriage, which proceeds along “the most execrable road I ever was shaken on in my life,” reaching the Galata Bridge in the “full evening splendour of the setting sun.” Here at last she begins to appreciate the beauty of the old city on its peninsula, noting approvingly “the Moslem side crowned with a noble line of mosques with gilded minarets” and “the long dark point of the Seraglio [Topkapı Palace], running far out into the water, crowned with its dark mysterious groves, so weird and beautiful.”
She appreciates too the cosmopolitan hubbub of the Galata Bridge itself, with its “English with white umbrellas and low hats … Armenians, with coloured sash glaring out of rags … Greeks in white petticoats and gold embroidered vests … blind beggars in threadbare turbans… Albanian sellers of sesame, honey and sweets; Greek and Bulgarian fruit sellers (and oh! what tempting strawberries), dervishes in white turbans and long dark kaftans.”
These and a whole host of other colorful characters briefly lighten Elliot's spirits, but as her carriage proceeds up the narrow streets of Galata she is soon back to criticizing the city she has come to write about, with its “miserable-looking open shops, about the size of cupboards,” street dogs whose plight “became a great grief to me” and the “cynical desolation” of a Moslem cemetery they ride by. Even the British Embassy, just off the Grande Rue de Pera (today's İstiklal Caddesi), designed by the noted architect Charles Barry and completed in 1855, she castigates as “most incongruous in architecture. Tuscan Gothic, copied from the Palazzo Pitti at Florence! Now this for an Oriental capital strikes one as absurd.”

Exploring Sultanahmet

Elliot based herself in the long-gone Hotel Royal, situated near the British Embassy, and set off daily to explore the city. Like so many visitors both before and after her, Elliot makes the cathedral built at the behest of the sixth-century Byzantine emperor Justinian, the Hagia Sophia (Aya Sofya), her first port of call. You won't be surprised to earn that this iconic building fails to impress the peevish Elliot. Berating its “agglomeration of shapeless roofs” and the “four clumsy minarets” added piecemeal after its conversion to a mosque following the Ottoman Turkish conquest of 1453, she was “quite bewildered with disappointment” before she'd even entered the holy building.
On entering her mood was not improved by the “slippers, dirty and old” she is compelled to wear over her shoes on entering the church-turned-mosque, which are too large and “keep dropping off, which enrages the door-keeper.” The cavernous interior, glittering with gold mosaic, its soaring dome floating of ethereally 55 meters above the floor the nave, she dismisses summarily: “The squareness of the church detracts from its size. […] the openness of the church offends by its plainness […] it did not impress me, and I am bound to tell the truth.”
Of course, the art and architecture of the Byzantine period had yet to undergo a rehabilitation that did not begin until the 20th century, and the Victorian world, of which Elliot was a typical product, remained in complete thrall to Classical Greece and Rome. But to find nary a good word to say about one of the world's most important buildings feels harsh even when judged by the standards of her time.
Her next stop, the nearby Hippodrome (At Meydan) fares no better, despite having its origins in the late-Roman, rather than Byzantine, period. To Elliot it is “an oblong area of a most vulgar and unpleasant aspect” where “horses ready saddled stand in the dust for hire, held by Turkish youths, and a crowd of fiacres with tourists, arabas, and ox-carts are drawn up in the shade; sellers of Turkish delight, water carriers and beggars” make the ancient chariot racing arena “a most unclean spot, and bitterly disappointing.”
The adjacent Blue Mosque, built by Sultan Ahmed I in 1609 and today one of the most visited sights in İstanbul, she describes as an “ugly mosque, with its six heavy minarets and four great domes.” Of the city's renowned mosques in general, Elliot writes, “If you have seen one mosque you have seen all, the variations are so trifling, the absence of art complete and the monotony so excessive.” So much for the great works of Sinan and other notable Ottoman architects!

Trips up the Golden Horn and Bosporus

At least Elliot was moderately adventurous, heading up the Golden Horn by caique, then following the line of the fifth century land walls of Theodosius. At last she finds something to praise, noting, “The walls of Rome, of which we hear so much, are not to be compared in height, strength or picturesqueness with those of Constantinople.” She also clearly enjoyed the pomp of a spectacle denied to today's visitors to the city, that of the sultan (Abdülhamit) and his entourage making his way from his palace in Yıldız to Friday prayers, and also reserved rare praise for the Süleymaniye Mosque complex, “of which the Turks are justly proud. It is by far the most artistic among the mosques which crown the hills.”
Enervated by the city's June heat, Elliot abandons the Hotel Royal and heads up the Bosporus to Therapia (today's Tarabya) by steamer, noting en-route, “Taken as a whole, the Bosphorus, though the slopes never rise to commanding heights, is excessively picturesque.” Arriving at Tarabya she heads for the “comfortable establishment of Petali's Hotel, with a charming view from every window” and settles herself in “a suite of airy rooms.” Here she has a very pleasant time of it, picnicking in the Belgrade Forest and hobnobbing with the Persian and British ambassadors. Elliot's last trip was to attend a social gathering across the Bosporus at the Sweet Waters of Asia, close to the fortification of Anadoluhisarı. Next day she “bade adieu to Constantinople from the deck of the ambassador's launch, and steamed by Vienna home into the Western world.”
Turkish readers will likely be very offended by Elliot's bigotry about their race and religion, but her visit does provide some useful and colorful information about İstanbul in the late 19th century.

---

Frances Minto Elliot

Born in 1820 in Berkshire, England, Frances Vickriss Dickinson married John Geils of Scotland when she was only 18. The marriage was a disaster, and after seven years she moved to London and filed for divorce. During the acrimonious and long-winded divorce proceedings she began writing for several noted London magazines, and soon got to know some of Victorian London's leading writers, including Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Although the injured party in the divorce, she was ostracized from polite London society and moved to Italy, eventually remarrying an elderly widower, Gilbert Elliot, though this marriage too foundered. She wrote four books in the “Idle Woman in” genre, several other travelogues and three novels. Little known today, she was very popular in her time. Elliot died in Italy aged 78.
“Diary of an Idle Woman in Constantinople” is republished by Ulan Press through Amazon.co.uk

Haghia Sophia

Sirkeci train station (Photo: Sunday's Zaman)

Sirkeci

Keywords: Turkey , traveler

Cappadocia’s other churches

Saklı Church, Göreme (Photo: Pat Yale)

When it comes to Cappadocia, visitors are spoilt for choice of things to see and do. They can take to the skies in a hot-air balloon for a bird's-eye view of the spectacular scenery. They can explore the myriad valleys with their extraordinary rock formations on foot or on horseback. They can make their way to Avanos and try their hand at throwing a pot. Or they can delve beneath the surface quite literally in one of the many underground cities that riddle the area.
 But most of all, they can take time out to inspect some of the wonderful medieval churches hollowed out of the rocks during the centuries when Cappadocia was a remote province of the Byzantine Empire. These churches are astonishing, partly because of the extraordinary way in which they mimic the shape of conventional masonry churches right down to columns and domes that serve no structural function in a cave context. But most of all they are astonishing because of the colorful frescoes that cover the walls and ceilings -- utterly mind-blowing when you see them for the first time.

Some of the finest of the frescoed churches are to be found in the Göreme Open Air Museum where several are grouped together to form what must once have been a very lively monastic settlement. But what if you arrive at the museum and find the car park jam-packed with coaches as can easily happen especially over a bayram (public holiday)? Luckily, there are plenty of other stand-alone churches to explore. And there's a fair chance that you'll have some of them to yourself.

The following list offers a mere taster. There are many other rock-cut churches to discover especially in the Ihlara and Soğanlı valleys.

El Nazar Church, Göreme

If the car park at the Open Air Museum is indeed full, one of the easiest alternatives to find is the El Nazar Church, which is signposted to the left off the road leading back to Göreme. After a walk of perhaps 300 meters, you'll come to a conical formation that looks rather like an outsize molar. Inside, it is a small but impressively frescoed 10th-century church, its neat, small dome decorated with a painting of the Pantocrator (God the Almighty).

Aynalı Church, Göreme

Alternatively, you could head for the 11th-century Aynalı (Symmetrical) Church, which is uphill behind the museum and clearly signposted off the road to the right. In place of the frescoes of the El Nazar Church, it's decorated with lively red and white geometrical patterns. Like the Yusuf Koç Church in Göreme, the Aynalı Church appears to have been part of a monastery with a huge hall running back from the church and tunnels leading to other rooms at least some of which could be sealed off with rolling stones as in the underground cities.

Yusuf Koç Church, Göreme

If you're staying in Göreme, there are several impressively frescoed churches right on your doorstep. The closest is the 11th-century Yusuf Koç Church, named after a man on whose land it used to stand. The church is part of a rock-cut monastic complex that includes an open-sided cave with a rock-cut refectory table running along one side. But it's the church itself, accessed via a metal ladder, that is most impressive.

Inside, what looks just like any one of the fairy-chimney cones standing around it, you'll find a brilliantly colorful church with twin domes and the tops of lost columns hanging from the ceiling where they were probably axed at the same time as a pigeon house was sliced into the walls. Here you'll find a painting of St George spearing his dragon, a popular image in an area that revered him as its patron saint. Here, too, you'll see life-size portraits of Saints Helena and Constantine holding the True Cross, which she is believed to have discovered while visiting Jerusalem.

Durmuş Kadir Church, Göreme

Close enough to be visited together with the Yusuf Koç Church, the Durmuş Kadir Church probably dates back to the sixth or seventh century, making it one of the oldest in the area. It may lack the glorious frescoes that are such a pull but offers instead one of the best examples of the sheer ambition brought to bear on creating the cave churches since it's at least as large as many masonry ones. The church is also worth seeing for the free-standing ambo (pulpit) that dominates the naos (nave), the partially surviving stone screen, and the synthronon, a tiered bench ringing the apse that is a feature of the most impressive Byzantine churches.

Haçlı Church

If you're walking in the Güllüdere (Rose Valley), you should make a point of looking for the wonderful Haçlı (Cross) Church, accessible via a steep metal ladder at the back of a small café. Here you'll find some of the most wonderfully colorful frescoes, including a magnificent 10th-century Pantocrator painted onto the apse and virtually undamaged despite its great age. Visitable on the same walk, especially if you have a guide to show you the way, are the Üçhaçlı (Three Crosses) Church, with more damaged frescoes, and the Kolonlu (Columned) Church, which, like the Durmuş Kadir, is more impressive for its virtuoso architecture, including the soaring pillars from which it takes its name.

Church of John the Baptist, Çavusin

On the way to or from Avanos, you can easily hop off the bus at Çavuşin where, right by the road, you'll see a 10th-century church whose façade has sheered away leaving some of its paintings exposed to the elements. Once again, access is via a metal ladder that lets you inspect at close quarters the huge painted archangels thus exposed before stepping inside the church to swoon over a barrel-vaulted ceiling entirely painted with pictures showing Bible stories in continuous strips. More unexpectedly, here, too, are images of the Emperor Nicephorus Focas and his wife, who visited the area in the 960s.

 Church of St John, Gülsehir

If you have a car, it's an easy drive south of Nevşehir to Gülşehir where the Church of St John (AKA Karşı Kilise) lurks on the northern outskirts unpromisingly hidden behind a cluster of modern houses. From the outside, the cone that houses the church looks equally unpromising. Inside, however, the frescoes have been wonderfully restored. What's more, they're easy to view from a platform reached by a spiral ladder that brings you up close enough to admire the details, especially of the dramatic Last Judgment scene painted on the west wall, an image that is rarely shown in Cappadocia.

Some local tours take in this church, which can also be visited by bus from Nevsehir to Gülşehir.

Church of St Theodore, Yesilöz (Tagor)

Virtually impossible to reach without private transport, the Tagor Church is, not surprisingly, one of the least well-known marvels of Cappadocia, despite the fact that it has a unique upper gallery, perhaps intended for women worshippers, that overlooks the central naos. Windows let into the raised dome allow light to flood into the church, which probably dates from the late 1lth or early 12th century.

Sakli Church, Göreme

The Saklı (Hidden) Church is a small gem of a building tucked away beneath a plateau within walking distance of the El Nazar. Unfortunately it's obvious from the fractured state of some of the ceiling paintings that it is not entirely safe in its current state, so the church is kept locked unless the El Nazar custodian feels like showing it to visitors. Should you be lucky enough to get inside, you will discover more glorious frescoes painted with a more restrained palate than those of the El Nazar.

Church of Forty Martyrs, Sahinefendi

One of the finest of all Cappadocia's less-visited treasures is the superb Church of Forty Martyrs hidden inside one of the dramatic fairy chimneys dotting the roadside at Şahinefendi, a village too often whipped through by minibuses on their way to Soğanlı. Access is problematic despite the fact that the frescoes on the walls and ceiling are newly restored and that the church has been readied for visitors. For the time being, the keyholder also has to guard the Roman ruins at nearby Sobesos so may be reluctant to divert to unlock the gate. If he does, you will discover a dramatic rendering of the strange story of the 40 martyrs, a group of early Christians from Sivas who refused to give up their faith and were driven out onto a frozen lake to freeze to death. There's even an image of the one man who recanted being replaced by a local official who converted to Christianity and who is shown casting off his elaborate robe to join the men on the lake. Unusually, an inscription permits the paintings to be dated accurately to 1216.

Keywords: Cappadocia , church

 

Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_cappadocias-other-churches_358483.html