Adventures in Eastern Europe: Turkey Part 1: From the Coast to Cappadocia

The month I spent in Turkey was so rich and full, it’s hard to capture. The time allowed me to enter more fully into the culture and the landscape than I did in any other country. The sights and smells and tastes are so distinctive and the warmth of the local people is really something special. From the moment I arrived I felt that warmth and a willingness to share the food and rituals and history of the place. Not to say that Turkey was all the same because the feeling of the Mediterranean coast in the West and the desert highlands of Cappadoccia and the Kurdish cities in the east and the frenzied madness of Istanbul are all so different. But still there is a unifying sensory memory that I will always associate with Turkey.

That memory includes: the sound of the call to prayer (sometimes a soothing chorus in the distance and other times a much more jarring scream in my ear starting at 5 a.m.), the taste of ripe figs oozing with nectar in the August heat, the smell of that pungent black tea brewing and the accompanying sights of cafes with old men tossing dice across a backgammon board. Turkey is never short on color, in the spices and hand woven carpets and headscarves and mosaics, it is just such a vibrant world, I miss it already.

Turkish Delight and spices at the market in Kas

My time began outside the town of Kas (pronounced Kaash) in Cuckarbag village (pronounced Chu-kur-baag). I made both of those pronunciation mistakes within minutes of my arrival and realized that I had a few things to learn about the language. In Cuckurbag I was staying at an Eco-Art camp of sorts called Eflatun but I had no idea what to expect. My host Aydin and his wife Ebru and their 6-month old son Ata greeted me with a cup of tea and a tour of the property. In just a few years they have restored an old collection of crumbling buildings into a charming guesthouse with 10 rooms where visitors can participate in art workshops or yoga classes or hiking excursions. Almost all the food served comes directly from the sprawling garden and as I soon learned, Ebru is a magician in the kitchen. I also met, Jing Jing, another volunteer from the states that had just graduated from Dartmouth in the spring. A few days later, a third volunteer, Martin from Australia, arrived and so for a good portion of my two and a half week stay it was Martin and Jing Jing and I, weeding and harvesting vegetables and watering the trees at the almond plantation up the road.

The Gates of Eflatun

The view may not be as nice, but this is definitely an upgrade from my cave

The meditation (nap) area

Untamed basil going wild

The spicy kick in all our Turkish meals

Looking down toward Kas from the cliffs above

We had busy days. Between preparing and serving meals for guests and keeping the whole property looking neat and tidy, we were usually working from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. with a couple hours to rest and shower in the afternoon. The lifestyle was full and challenging, but rewarding. The routine of work and food and sleep, with some relaxation and Turkish tea and card games in between, was beautifully simple. Martin and Jing Jing and I bonded filling big barrels with water and driving an old Toyota with no power steering up a frighteningly steep dirt road to water row upon row upon row of young almond trees. The fig trees provided a happy distraction on some of those scorching afternoons. And on our days off we hung around Kas sampling the many things we had no access to during the week such as: ocean swimming, internet, Turkish ice cream, meat, and beer.

Martin and Jing Jing walking to the bus stop

My partners in crime and a delicious lunch

The lovely Ebru and Ata

Watering the almond plantation

My favorite cow (notice the evil eye on the halter)

Ebru, Ata, Martin, Jing Jing, Me and the indomitable Aydin

After a while, the lifestyle at Eflatun all became a bit exhausting and I was eager to explore other corners of Turkey so Martin and I (we became fast friends) plotted our next move. We decided to head inland to the wild honeycombed rock formations of Capadoccia.

After a final morning of sweeping and cleaning and washing the now flea-infested dog Badum (a nice parting gift of a chore) we packed our bags and started a long afternoon and then overnight bus journey to Capadoccia where we arrived with the sunrise.

From the pictures I had seen, I was expecting Capadoccia to be something akin to Monument Valley in Utah: there would be a limited number of cool formations that we could hike to and check out and that after a couple days we would have seen the main attractions. But what I realized when I got there was that Capadoccia isn’t a place, it’s a region, spanning a 60 mile radius around the central town Goreme.

Wait but those kind of look like...no they don't, get your mind out of the gutter

As soon as we stepped off the bus we were bombarded with offers for tours and hot air balloon rides and everything you can imagine. In reference to a particularly arrogant and embarrassingly typical American tourist I met in Prague who after two days said “I’ve pretty much seen everything”, Martin and I had a running joke that we would just ask for the all inclusive “everything” tour.

In reality, like almost everywhere on my journey, we realized we would only be able to scratch the surface. So in order to avoid the sites that 95% of the visitors were heading for on their bus tours, Martin and I rented a motorbike (more like a scooter) and picked the first dirt road we could find to get lost in it all.

On our way to somewhere

Right before we hit a jump and landed our first backflip

We were like 6 year-olds who, after living their whole lives in isolation, were released into the biggest coolest jungle gym ever. We were hooting and hollering running down passage ways and clambering along sharp ridges of soft rock, picking grapes from the vines we ran past and filling our shoes with dirt. Our scooter performed marvellously and as Martin demonstrates in the pictures below we looked really cool the whole time!

Martin, heel-clicking his way through Cappadocia

Storm trooper in a dress shirt riding a scooter...good look Martin

Late into the afternoon we ditched the bike to wander down into one of the many canyons. Think Utah slot canyons with towering red rock and narrow passages and then imagine that in the wider section of one of those canyons you come across a thriving farm with fruit trees and donkeys and a little teahouse with a barefoot farmer smiling widly, this was the Red Valley Tea Garden.

Farmer in training with the shirt tucked in and everything

It’s incredible that after decades of promotion on the front of guidebooks, Capadocia still has so many hidden passages and places lost to time. Martin and I felt so fortunate to get just lost enough to find such magic. Over the next couple days we applied the same philosophy of wandering aimlessly but faithfully. Sometimes our efforts were rewarded with wonderful surprises, like when we hitchhiked to the town of Neveshir and then followed a random dirt road to a farm house where we were treated to tea on a small carpet in the grass. And other times the surprises were less rewarding, like the time when I led us a long trailless and precipitous way down a canyon only to be dead ended by a large cliff. But we decided that if you are searching for unexpected things then you certainly have to be prepared for unexpected things and that by not knowing what you are looking for you take whatever the universe offers up in stride. At least I decided that, Martin may still be cursing my name about the detour we had to take after the dead end canyon.