Week Fifty-Nine

We both get up early (I didn't bother changing the time on my alarm clock), pack and get out before 09.00. We set off south-west towards the Metro station we'll have to use to get to the bus station (if we can't find a closer alternative): it's quite far (past the Ulus Ataturk statue), and will be a real hassle later with the rucksacks. We press on down the hill, past the "19 May" stadium (it's like being back in Romania), and the train station (the trains look okay, and there's lots of departures for a country whose rail network is apparently crap), and stop for a coffee at a little billiard caf$B!&(B(it's empty except for us).

Just around the corner from there is the entrance, or one of the entrances, to Anit Kabir - the hill/park/garden/maussoleum: the cult of Ataturk seems as strong as Islam in Turkey, and this is its Mecca. From here it seems just a road winding up a manicured green park, but there are soldiers everywhere and we have to have our bags x-rayed and step through a magic door: then the armed personnel try to get us to leave Milla's bag - that would force us to return to the same entrance, and we persuade the nice people to let us take it with us. Past the entrance there's a little sign of don'ts - these include eating, smoking, sitting down, having political discussions, sitting on the "lions" and a dozen others. There's a man selling souvenirs halfway up: he's dressed in a black suit, has a little white table, and doesn't hassle or tout in any way - very bizarre for Turkey, and possibly because there's an armed Military Policeman standing beside him. The whole place has a very odd feeling - high military presence, green garden-type park, day-tripper tourists and an oppressive, induced solemnity - the closest equivalent I can think of is the Arlington Cemetary in Washington.

The complex starts with two little towers (with displays inside and armed guards outside - the displays are on the design, construction and layout of the place), each with three monlithic statues outside. The towers flank the start of a prominent walk lined with pseudo-Hittite lions in pairs (these'll be the lions we're not allowed to sit on) - they're actually not very Hittite. The paved walkway eventually ends in a large courtyard: around three sides are low buildings, and on the fourth side are the steps up the main Maussoleum building itself. Cuboid, with external straight columns, we now know from the earlier exhibitions that the original design included a high fez-like superstructure on top (dropped for presumably financial reasons).

The buildings around the western half of the courtyard include the gift shop (selling postcards of clouds, rock formations, skylines, etc. which look like Ataturk's profile), Ataturks gun-carriage hearse, and his collection of Lincolns (one for parades, etc.; one as the general use state car; and his own personal one). The buildings around the eastern half (including the basement of the main maussoleum) house an extensive museum of Ataturk memorabilia (including a solid Meerschaum walking stick) and a life/politics/times detailed exposition. There's a lot of interesting stuff, mainly proving how dictatorial he was, with the consent of his people. There are maps and details of the occupation and subsequent "War of Independence" - the Entente powers occupied most of Turkey, as well as taking most of the Ottoman Empire and parcelling out the best bits. Italy ended up with most of the Mediterranean coast in as far as Konya. The final straw seems to have been the Greeks taking back Izmir and Ionia, and us and the French moving into Istanbul - Ataturk and others set up a National Army and Assembly, ignoring the Sultan, and conducted a series of successful battles against the Greeks.
His complete reform of the new "Turkey" is also detailed, including emancipation of women, setting up a legal system independent of the Koran, changing the alphabet from Arabic to Latin (without W, X or Q) and forcing everyone to choose a family name/surname instead of "from Izmir" or "Son of Mehmet". The decree on the last of these prohibits the choosing of "immoral", "funny" or "foreign" surnames, showing that Ataturk also understood human nature as well.

After the museum, which contained far too many large heroic paintings (to fill up the space) we hit the main building itself. After all the build up, it's just a big empty hall with a sarcophagus at the far end, and hundreds of Turks queueing up to get their photos taken in front of it. We emerge, tired and desparate for nicotine, and take the short way down the hill before heading for New Ankara.

En route we pass more of the military-only housing complexes, more buildings guarded by armed soldiers, more uniformed soldiers casually wandering the streets - at one point I'm stopped from taking a photo of a big Jandarma building by a man in plain clothes: it had a huge Ataturk banner down the front. Actually that's not too unusual in Ankara (though perhaps only because we're nearing Republic Day) - all the large blocks seem to have giant Ataturk or Turkish flags covering at least 20% of the windows. It's a totally OTT peronality cult thing, much bigger than Tito's when I was in Belgrade and apparently much bigger than the Ceaucescu thing as well: coupled with the stuff going up for Republic Day (they were stringing up rows of pennants in the station) are all the patriotic election fever stuff - it's quite overwhelming.

We pass the dull National Assembly building and hit hte modern heart of Ankara, Yenisehir (literally New Town - "city" is Buyuksehir, literally Big Town: we're finally getting the hang of basic Turkish, or at least Milla is). It's completely different from Old Ankara and its tumble of half-derelict houses spilling over the hills - wide, tree-lined boulevards are flanked with glossy glitzy shops: the press of people is even greater, but here they're all in chic suits and European fashions. The percentage of women in headscarfs drops from about 60-70% (it was 90% in Konya, incidentally) to about 20%. And above it all hangs a pale, dull layer of pollution. We shop for a contact lens for Milla, but have the same problem we've had elsewhere in the trip - there are hundreds of opticians, but they only sell disposable and/or coloured lenses: the whole optical industry here is a fashion accessory - women wear pale blue and green lenses for god-knows-what reasons, because they all end up looking a kind of murky, sickly colour.

We head north through Kizilay, with its monumental "Confidence" monument - the moral message appears to be that confidence comes when you have a gun (a blank space would have said more about confidence) - up into Sihhiye, with its wonderful Hatti Monument: a kind of modernist pre-Hittite sun disk, with three stylised bulls. And then there's a long walk up a gradual incline to Old Ankara and the hotel. There are several little dolmus termini around Ulus, and a little searching and enquiring reveals that ones for the main Otogar leave from just beside the mosque/Roman ruins which we saw yesterday. At the bus station, there only seems to be one company running buses to Goreme (the company's called "Goreme"), for the outrageous price of 13 million each (no student discount) - it leaves in half an hour, which gives us enough time for a couple of cigarettes.
Ankara gets 4/10: the new town is dull, but the shopping is good; most of the public buildings are really dull; the old town is much more interesting, but pretty seedy; and the museum's excellent.

Thanks to the changing hour yesterday, and stopping briefly to help another bus with problems, the sun's going down at 16.45/17.00 when we pull out of the outskirts of Ankara. As our trip continues, it looks like we'll have to get up earlier in future in order to maximise the shrinking winter daylight hours. En route, they're putting a lovely, but pointless, pavement along one side of the main dual carriageway south: alarmingly, this bus has Japanese, Americans and other foreigners aboard (the first time for a little while that we've heard English being spoken except by us) - I have a bad feeling that Goreme/Cappadocia will turn out to be Tourist Central.

Our large coach eventually (we stopped for 30 minutes en route) reaches Nevsehir, and we're transferred to a minibus which takes us the last ten minutes to Goreme. Only in this final stretch (actually only the final stretch of this final stretch) do we start seeing the strange dune-like ridges and phallic/conical towers for which Cappadocia is famous. It's possible that the entire phenomenon is geographically very limited, though hopefully not as much as it was at Pamukkale (ie. two hillsides). At the little bus station in Goreme there's an Accomodation Information office apparently staffed by a man who later turns out to be a local taxi driver: he offers to book us rooms by phone at the rates posted on the walls (there are details and photos of 50-odd hotels and pensions, all in Goreme). Our man warns that, because of Republic Day tomorrow, a lot of Turks are on holiday and a lot of the places in town are full. We opt to set out on foot regardless and quickly find a number of places which are not only mostly empty (okay, so the one that soudned best in Lonely Planet was full), but also negotiate prices 25%-30% cheaper than those in the office.

Our first option has rooms carved out of caves/rocks, which are (surprisingly) not freezing (outside is getting bloody cold). By the time we figure that the first was our preferred option, it's past the time the guy there said he was going to sleep, so instead we end up in a (on paper better) twin-room with en-suite shower and toilet for the same price. The fact that it's very cold, and is already inhabited by a number of local insects and spiders confirms the wrongness of our second choice. We both take showers in the piping hot water, and decide we'll move first thing tomorrow.

Republic Day. Our host is quite put out that we're leaving (we originally said we'd stay three nights), but hey - we were communicating in German anyway (in which language I notice I've started using the Romanian "da" for yes). We head straight for the place with the cave rooms, pick one with a little terrace which is adjacent to a shower and toilet, and pay the guy for two nights. Then it's off into the centre of Goreme (a pretty small village), pausing only to watch the passage of the local school's marching band - they march up to one end of town, then down to the other, and then back to the sealed-off bus station for speeches and stuff.

We carry on through town, noting the incredible numbers of travel agencies, pensions, bars, and so on: almost everything in town is in English and pricing appears to be substantially in euros or dollars, and substantially . . . well, substantial. Internet, at 2 million, is double what we'd like (267% Antalya), and street food is also high (150% Antalya). We follow the signs to the Goreme Open Air Museum through the increasingly weird town (which is built around, through and against the strange rock formations). As the road leaves town, the unbuilt-upon rocks look stranger and stranger: the tarmac weaves through them and at one point the view stretches miles to the left and right - in the far distance on both sides are seemingly normal landscapes, but between here and there are a wide variety of oddities. As well as the pillars/towers, there are white ridges running all the far side of the valley like solidified sand dunes, and further out are layers of what look like pale red rock.
The bright sunshine, no doubt helped by the reflective white rock, intermittently becomes quite warm and we're glad we didn't put extra layers on this morning. We pass turn-offs for a couple of churches but ignore them, pressing on instead to the museum. There are a number of tour buses and lots of cars in the tourist-stall-heavy car-parks and the (easy) majority are Turkish: presumably they're all on holiday today.

The complex here was a religious centre, focussing on the teachings of St. Basil (Vassily in Romania) and there's a whole network of churches and chapels, often painted - either directly onto the rock (the earliest painting is like that, in mostly red - mostly geometric and crosses, so probably from the time of the Iconoclastic Controversy) or onto plaster (the later, more iconic work). The lower flowers also include refectories, storerooms and kitchens. Accommodation was presumably in higher levels, linked by internal passages and vertical chimneys which we can see but which are barred with locked gates.

As well as the frescoes (which are mostly vandalised both historically - the faces are largely gouged out, and recently - the walls are covered in scratched Turkish names) the mopst impressive aspect is that most of these churches/chapels are chiselled into elaborate (church) shapes. There are columns, arches, narthexes, domes and so on looking like regular Orthodox churches (with no windows of course). Our great oversight, of course, was not to bring torches - in those churches which are not lit, we get by with lighters, my camera range-finder, and the torches of other, more competent people.

To be honest, it gets pretty boring pretty quickly (another church, another dining-room), but still takes 3 hours to go round. This doesn't include the "Dark Church" which has a separate entry fee ($6 and no student discount), or the "Buckle Church" which is just down the hill from the fenced-in museum but is covered by the same ticket. The Buckle Church is easily the best we saw, large and church-like, with far more frescoes and many of them in excellent condition with still-bright colours (after seeing no sunlight for so long, one assumes).

We head back into Goreme looking for something to eat - half the town seems closed for Republic Day, but we still find okay chicken kebabs. Then we spend most of the rest of the day pottering around Goreme. We price tours (too expensive at $25-$35 dollars each), and internet (they're all 2 million an hour), and buy some more water, and wander up the ridge at the back of the village. It's way too windy and cold (it's really getting cold here), so after admiring the view over both Goreme and the other side, we elect not to watch sunset from here and head downhill. We're ambushed at a little carpet shop (with falsetto salesman and suicidal flies - they aim themselves at you), and Milla buys a little woollen hat from them.

And then, after some internet time, back to the Pension (Milla lingers longer than me, and talks Cashmere and looks at headscarves/shawls), where our host fills the evening with Gozleme - a local "pide" which is actually more like a thin omelette. He also becomes "Magic Man" and performs a number of excellent sleight-of-hand tricks with the intermittent "assistance" of one of his daughters.
We eventually reture to our low-ceilinged tufa cave-room (it's 16þC inside, 8þC oustide) and go to sleep early. Very early and very soundly in my case.

Up early, round about 07.00 - both of us! With the suddenly decreased and decreasing daylight hours (sunset's definitely before 17.00 these days), we'll try to compensate by starting the days earlier: today, this is helped by a very good night's sleep last night. We set out, dumping my laundry and having two coffees from our host, and catch the 08.30 minibus into nearby large town Nevsehir (population 75,000 and nexus for bus services all over Cappadocia). Our targets are underground cities today - when the Cappadocians didn't have vertical rock formations to carve their houses in, they dug down into the soft tufa, building little towns which they presumably only occupied in times of war (or in winter, perhaps).

We're trying to take in the town of Selime as well, with a noted carved monastery and where some of Star Wars was filmed. To try and sort out transport, we hit the closest-to-Selime (and coincidentally most popular) city of Derinkuyu first: it's a cheap ride south some 30km from Nevsehir, and the driver helpfully indicates the direction we should walk in when we get off. The first thing we see in Derinkuyu is a large Orthodox church with an elegant bell-tower: it's cross-shaped and very solid, and has a very ornate door which makes it look more like a Seljuk mosque. Inside, peering through the keyhole, it's lines of Romanesque columns.

Underground cities are strange tourist attractions because (unlike most, and inherently obviously) you can't see anything of them from a distance. Here, there's a little line of souvenir sellers (the local items appears to be little stuffed dolls in colourful costumes), and then a small concrete hut. We pay up ($6 normal, $2.50 for students) and fight off the attentions of a guide - he insists it's huge and labyrinthine and we'll miss lots and won't understand what we see: we'd rather wander, though. And down we go, into the strange-smelling (minerally/sweaty/mouldy) depths: stairs take us down to narrow (and low) passages - as Milla points out, the Cappadocians must all have been her height - I'm crouching a lot of the time.

The passages widen in places into more open, communcal areas and there are dwellings grouped around these, as well as dwellings branching off the passages. You can see blackened areas where there used to be fires, and besidelittle high niches where they presumably lit cnadles: nowadays the main rooms and tunnels are lit by electricity, though our torches are invaluable. We get passed by a few tour groups, but as normal we're going a lot slower than them - we keep pursuing little dark claustrophobic side-tunnels rather than simply following the red arrow-marked main route.

They describe the city as having 8 or 10 levels, though "levels" gives a falso impression of regularly constructed strata. Some of these levels are right next to each other, and you can look down and up into them (where either the floors have collapsed, or deliberate openings have been left - presumably for ladders); in other places, you follow long passages down lots of steps to the next levels. In total, the complex winds down 70 metres (225 feet), mainly around a huge ventilation shaft (with worrying hand/foot ledges cut in it) - you can look up/down at several points (often with no safety rim or barrier), which can induce a definite vertigo. Eventually, right at the bottom, there's a large cruciform church with impressively regular chambers and capable of housing several hundred worshippers. There's an adjacent hall, with pillars, a side-room with (apparently) a single grave, and a little passage to the bottom of the ventilation shaft.

The route leads back up using largely different tunnels and just as we're beginning to feel disappointed, opens into another large complex near the top. There's a winery here, and a large-halled school, and a baptistry (that's "babtistry"), and a number of large storage areas. as with the rest of the complex, there are tunnels leading off which we can't follow - some are blocked with rubble, others with the huge circular slabs which the inhabitants used to block off sections when they were under attack. We eventually return to the surface and daylight after about two hours (the tours seem to take half that time). Enquiries at the bus station reveal that there's no bus from here to Selime, so we buy cigarettes and food and board a bus back north to Kaymakli, where there's another underground city.

There's a ridge at Kaymakli, and the entrance to the city is built into the bottom of this ridge, rather than just going straight down from flat ground. The first difference (apart from the fact there's a lot more tourist souvenir stalls lining the approach, but less tourists) is that the complex starts with small stables, virtually at ground level. The network of tunnels and passages starts properly just after that, and is similar to that in Derinkuyu (well, I suppose it would be). There's a little church (much less impressive than at Derinkuyu) towards the top, and the whole complex is more like a little town than a warren. Some of the tunnels are like streets, with dwellings branching off left and right: also, people seemed to live closer together and more communally - there are little windows looking onto the tunnels, or onto the open areas; and the levels are closer to each other, with the result that a lot more wall and floor sections have collapsed.

There are also more unmarked tunnels to explore, many of them long, narrow, twisting and pitch-black. It is, of course, in Kaymakli that my torch bulb (I assume) gives out and we're down to sharing Milla's. Thankfully we're about done, and MIlla's getting bored with underground cities anyway (this morning she wanted to do lots - now she's "yeah, yeah, another house: yeah, yeah, another tunnel"). We emerge into the daylight and cold (like our cave room, the cities are noticeably warmer than outside) after an hour and a half. Enquiries reveal, again, that there is no direct bus to Selime from here, so we return to Nevsehir instead (on a bus which spends the first twenty minutes going up and down Kaymakli high street - seriously), getting off in the centre of town beside Tourist Information.

Nevsehir doesn't prove overly helpful. We ask after overnight buses to Antakya (our next stop, virtually at the Syrian border), but have very limited (and very expensive) options; we look for a replacement Maglite bulb with no success; we can't get to Selime without changing at Aksaray (and it's mid-afternoon by now - far too late for a two-bus jaunt). We give up and catch a local bus to Uchisar (OOCHheessar) instead: halfway to Goreme, it has a castle carved into a large rock which towers over this part of Cappdocia. Privately-owned, they have a good shop but the inside of the castle is pretty much entirely inaccessible (possibly for safety reasons, looking at the state of the extant rooms and half-rooms) and there's no student discount. Even so, the climb to the top is quite fun and the views are excellent across the whole Goreme area. The sun is setting, but not over anything interesting (ie. over Nevsehir), so we clamber back down and around some of the open chambers towards the bottom.

As a consequence of our eastward progression, and the time of year, it's dark by the time (17.00) we emerge from the castle gift shop: not only dark, but also very rapidly bloody cold. Enquiries reveal that the last public transport to Goreme has departed, but since it's only 3km we decide to walk. Part of our amended/Uchisar plan was to walk back through "Pigeon Valley" - a valley lined with decorated Ottomon dovecotes - but in this light that could be suicidal. Actually the clamber down the hill to the road was pretty suicidal, as was walking along the pavement-free road in the glare of occasional oncoming traffic.
After we'd gone 1km or so, an old car stops to give us a lift - the driver is revealed as a carpet-seller (oh no - the modern equivalent of stopping to give St. Paul a lift during his travels). He drops the subject pretty soon, though, and then leaves us at a local pide salon (that's "salonu" in Turkish), where we sit and eat and plan a walking tour for tomorrow and wash the whole process down with a beer. Then it's back to the pension, where my laundry isn't dry yet (good thing I've got one pair of underwear and one pair of socks in reserve). Once again, back in the room, I fall asleep astonishingly quickly and early - perhaps it's something in the air . . .

Up early, though not as early as yesterday: we still get out just before 09.00 (pausing to collect my laundry, which they've been drying above their wood-burning stove), which sounds good but means we've already missed 2 of the 9.5 hours of daylight! Our plan for today is simple but ambitious - we'll head up towards the museum and take in a couple of the churches we bypassed; then we'll walk through Kiliclar/Swords Valley to the village of Cavusin for lunch; then we'll walk to the Pasabag "Fairy Chimneys"; then we'll see the Zelve Open Air Museum; finally, if time permits, we'll head back south through the Rose and Red Valleys.
We set off late, but despite additional stops to buy food and post cards, we're still optimistic. First up, just outside Goreme, is the El-Nazar church: at the start of the path, we meet our carpet salesman from Tuesday (the one from whom we bought Milla's new hat, rather than the one who gave us a lift). He's chatting with another guy, who turns out to be the ticket-seller, well away from his post: the church is locked at the moment. Our falsetto carpet-seller takes the keys and, before we know it, we seem to have picked up a guide.

The first church, El Nazar, is fairly dull and has quite a bit of restoration work which has probably preserved the frescoes but destroyed that crumbling carved-from-rock feel. After that we go for a clamber up the side of the valley for good views back towards Goreme and Uchisar, and over the other side of the ridge for views across towards Rose and Red Valleys and the Goreme Open Air Museum area. Then, along the ridge and just below its summit is a flight of steps leading down to the locked Hidden Church (which we would never have found without "Ibrahim - my friends call me Ibo" - possibly he and his buddies have removed all the signs). It's locked but, as with El-Nazar, Ibo has the key. We spend a while in there, largely pointing things out to our guide - between us, Milla and I are much more professional at Orthodox church interiors than he is. We identify St. George, the excellent Dormition of Mary, Constantine and Elena and so on.

As we head back to the road, we detour by a number of rock-carved houses and with our guide's aid finally figure out how they used to get from level to level: there are little vertical chimneys between the floors, with tiny niches cut in them - these are hand- and foot-holds. After some rambling, we announce our intention to follow Swords Valley (all the valleys have names, based on their colour or physical appearance - the most amusing is "Love Valley" which has a number of very phallic formations) as far as Cavusin. Our guide, Ibo, offers to accompany us, but we pay him off and hope that refusing his offer of a glass of tea isn't too rude.

The wander along the valley is excellent: there are loads of rock buildings in various states of disrepair, with no safety fences and no little modern ladders and no explanatory signs and (best of all) virtually no other people. We find a couple of churches, and take some really good photos (hopefully) and clamber down a few steep inclines without killing ourselves or breaking our arms. On the downside, we also find a few definite dead ends, where the land just stops at a sudden, often serrated, drop. We spent an interesting fifteen minutes with a Dutch couple, trying to get to a high, ruined church complex which we can see from the ground, but fail to find any way inside any floors other than the first: access routes to the upper levels seem to have eroded away. The valley eventually peters out and we follow a cart-track (and dried-up stream bed) further north towards a little village we've spotted in the near distance. On the outskirts, a man in a horse-drawn cart offers "Horse taxi?", but we decline.

The settlement turns out to be Cavusin, which initially confuses us - we were sure we'd passed Cavusin earlier: we later work out that that must have been Goreme again - good thing we didn't head for it. Cavusin has two really excellent rock-complex-communities, one in a massif to the south of the town and the other in a massif to the north: it also has a few places to have coffee, but nowhere to have a reasonably-priced (ie. cheap) snack. We look in a few places, watch an American totally failing to haggle a taxi-price (the driver starts at 8 million, the guy ends up paying 7 million), and end up settling for two pretty revolting thick bread sandwiches from a caf$B!&(Bminimarket. Cavusin, after about half an hour there, gets 1/10 on account of being tiny and having nothing in the town.

It's already 14.30 (our walk took ages) and we know that the sun will go down in a couple of hours: we guess that we don't have time to do Zelve - by all accounts it's a large area, bigger than the Goreme Open Air Museum. We reckon we've still got time to visit Pasabag and its "fairy chimneys", though, and on that basis we decide to skip seeing Cavusin's rock complexes and instead strike north-east across the volcanic landscape (again) on the assumption that we'll recognise Pasabag when we reach it. The going's pretty tough - it has been all day: the entire landscape is either near-vertical or (on the flatter bits) covered in thick volcanic dust. When you shine a torch around inside dark cave-rooms, you inevitably reveal a colloidal swirl of dust: you can see moving vehicles in the distance because of the clouds of dust they throw up behind them. Unbelievably there are people out here growing vines and stunted trees in pathetic fields of dust (like on Lanzarote) - we passed a farmer earlier using a horse and plough to . . . . well, to kick up a dust-storm, actually.

We needn't have worried about recognising Pasabag (we were getting concerned after topping a progression of blind summits and seeing nothing hopeful): it's easy to spot on account of the stalls, tour buses, car-park, and little swarms of people (Japanese and French here, mostly). There's a road of stalls right through the middle, which nearly ruins a lot of the best photos: actually, the individual rock chimneys aren't that much better than the intermittent ones we've been passing all day - it's the fact that there are so many gathered together here which makes it a worthwhile trip. The highlights are a triple-headed chimney, the little Church of St. Simeon (with its own attendant group of souvenir stalls), and the Jandarma office - it's about the most phallic one in the site, its got a big "Jandarma" sign outside, and best of all it had a uniformed and armed Jandarma standing in the doorway. Unfortunately it was too dark for a photo by the time we spotted it (if anyone else ever goes there, please take a photo and send a copy to me). Milla's high point was buying a pashmina shawl (70% Cashmere, 30% Silk): she's been pricing and haggling over them for the past few days - this guy started at 16 million (pretty good already) and she still managed to get him down to 12.5 ($B!W(B5/$7.50). I hope it's worth it.

A lot of the tourists seem to be waiting for sunset, but we don't reckon it'll be that good from here (the rocks in the late afternoon light were good though) so we set off on foot after enquiries turn up no dolmuses - there's 2km to Cavusin, 6km to Goreme. We get about 1km and a passing man with horse-and-cart (jingly horse with bells on - it had been slowly gaining on us) offers us a lift to Cavusin. There's no suspension, the wheels are wooden with a metal rim, he drives half off the road, it's barely faster than walking and is considerably colder, but at least it's not walking. He drops us at Cavusin's bus-stop (there's a French-speaking couple waiting there too), where we wait ten minutes until 17.05 (there was supposed to be a bus at 17.00) and set out on foot again (reasoning that any bus will pass us and we can flag it down).
Again, after 1km, we get a free lift - this time it's a tractor/trailor which is much faster but also much colder and leaves us pelted with dust and grit as we progress. Still, it's kinda the romanticised way to travel and is a lot less time and effort than walking, especially in the pitch-black cold. It drops us in the outsirts and we have a chicken kebab in town before returning to the pension where I write and Milla sleeps: she's been suffering toothache all day, popping ibuprofen - it sounds like a gum infection to me, so she starts a course of antibiotics. I also retire pretty early.
Finally, being Hallowe'en, it's only appropriate that at 0.10 the bedroom light switches itself on - I mean, I hear the lightswitch click down and then there's light: very odd. Me being me I get up, switch it off again and then go to sleep.

Following on from last night's light incident, Milla is briefly convinced that there are two people in the room when she gets back from the shower this morning - me, and someone standing behind me. Ah well, as long as we don't have to buy bus tickets for them as well . . .

We've decided that this will be our last day in Cappadocia ("Kapadokya", so it's a hard "c"), so our first move is to transfer our rucksacks to Left Luggage in Nevsehir since we've already worked out that you can't really get anywhere from Goreme directly. Goreme, partly because of that and because (in winter at least) there's bugger all to do and the bus connections stop really early, gets a lowly 2/10 despite the magnificent setting, the reputation and cool 'n' groovy cave-rooms. While in Nevsehir we check our southbound options to Antakya - it turns out that there's only one direct bus a day at 13.30 (most north-south buses go through Aksaray to the west, rather than Nevsehir). We toy with (and quickly dismiss) the idea of taking a bus to Aksaray (there are hardly any anyway) and instead opt to change at Adana in the wee small hours. That settled, we take a little local bus to Urgup (all the local town councils, or in some cases local co-operatives, run their own little fleets of buses shuttling between themselves and nearby tows - this gives the advantage that the destination (often on a tiny plate on the window) is normally also the name of the bus company, in large letters along the side. Our target destinations today are Mustafapasa to the south of Urgup and Zelve (trying again) to the north - which of these we see will depend on what buses we can find.

Urgup looks pretty good as we pull in - it's like a larger version of Goreme, at the bottom of a valley, with rock-carved houses still apparently inhabited along the approaches. The centre's much larger than Goreme, with the same selection of bike-hire, balloon-trips, day-tours and so on but it also appears to have supermarkets and far more places to eat. From the little bus station there seems to be regular buses to Zelve (there's one in ten minutes), but no sign of anything to Mustafapasa - we resolve to look round Urgup instead, if that turns out to be the same situation when we return. In the meanwhile, though, we hop on the little bus to Zelve which, irritatingly (because we didn't previously know of its existence) does a little circuit of the various tourist sites - including Goreme, Cavusin, Pasabag and so on. We watch them pass by out the window, and muse on how small a region Cappadocia is - yes, the tufa extends south giving rise to sites like the Ilhara Valley, or the underground cities, but the real density of both human and natural attractions lies in a tiny triangle between Nevsehir, Urgup and Avanos.

Not really knowing what to expect, we get out at the cluster of souvenir stalls that marks the entrance to the Zelve Open Air Museum. The last tourist literature we picked up said that the carved rocks were too unstable for visitors - in which case, why is Zelve still open? Not only still open, but charging 10 million for entrance (4 million for students). Before going in, we read the information boards outside: it's at the confluence of four valleys, has lots of religious foundations, and was inhabited until comparatively recently. The government seems to have decied it was too unsafe for locals and moved them out in 1952 - apparently it's safe enough for tourists, though, since it was opened to the public in 1967.

For want of a more constuctive plan, we head up the right-hand valley, passing near a couple of "Danger - Keep Out" sort of signs. Against the wall of the valley are a number of huge concave hollows, where the natural rock formation has collapsed, presumably because of all the houses and tunnels and churches and stuff - massive chunks of tufa lie on the ground, some with doors and parts of rooms at jaunty angles. So much for the tourist industry's claim that Cappadocia is man and nature in harmony. It makes for some good clambering, but not as good as the huge Monastery further up the (open part of the) valley - they've put some steps in and there are some precarious climbs up into the rock: damn crazy monks. There are also truncated stairs leading into the air, so at least some of the collapsed rock here has been since the Monastery was built (or carved, rather).

There's a little modern mosque in this valley (part-rock, part-concrete), dating from its days as a village. There's also a "tunnel" which turns out to be something of a euphemism - it's a multi-floor scramble, mostly in the pitch dark (we have Milla's torch, not mine). Being pathetic, we actually give up and end up approaching it from the second valley (exit side) instead, where we follow it to the top of the steps which we earlier opted not to risk. There are good views across the first valley from the upper section through windows (ie. holes). The second valley meanwhile contains more good collapsed and semi-collapsed houses, and evidence of comparatively recent occupation (concrete walls and so on). An interesting observation, in a church dating from the Iconoclastic Controversy, is that a couple of the crosses on the walls here have the three-ring Turkish Lucky Eye at the centre (near as damn it), which makes me wonder how old its symbolism is and which community started using it.

After a couple of hours, Milla's getting bored - too many days clambering inside dusty tufa holes: she's already summarised Cappadocians as "stupid people carving houses into penis-shaped rocks", so I feel some of the wonder has gone. We nip into the third valley (the sun's beginning to go down), but not much further than a couple of adjacent and partially collapsed churches, and then head back to the car-park for a quick ice-lolly before we catch the (packed) dolmus back to Urgup. I sit on an unstable crate, Milla sits between someone's legs (!), and the journey seems to take much longer than it actually does.

There's still no sign of any bus to Mustafapas, so we have a wander around Urgup instead, do a bit of shopping, have something to eat from a place with tandir outside (stew cooked in earthenware pots, sealed with bread), and pretty much confrm our initial impression that it would have been a better place to base ourselves than little Goreme: it's a bit like the Cesky K-Ceske B situation, except that the Czech bus service is better. Ah well. We catch an evening bus back to Nevsehir and sit and write, and get our tickets, and our rucksacks out of Left Luggage.
It's pretty much at this point that we realise I no longer have my hat: a process of elimination leads us to the deduction that I must have left it in the little lokanta in Urgup. After some debate (short debate - our bus is about to leave), we decided to press on: if we went back then we'd forfeit our bus tickets, and have to stay overnight in Nevsehir (the last bus to Urgup is long gone) and there's no guarantee either that that was where I left it or that, going back, it would still be there. I console myself that it was bound to happen sooner or later (I'd have preferred later) and as we head south into the night I muse on possible ways to get it back.
I fall asleep a little after Nigde bus station, Milla slightly later.

At 01.40 we get off the bus at Adana - it's time to find a connection onwards to Antakya, ancient Antioch, next to the Syrian border. At the start of our hunt we're intercepted by a guy who takes us to a little office where a man wants to take our money without giving us a ticket or receipt or anything. We take our many back, thank you, have a cofee and a toilet stop and then talk to the HAS (a big bus company) office - they have a coach coming through at 03.00, which'll do us fine. We wait a bit longer (the best thing about waiting here is that it's suddenly warm again - even at 02.30!), the bus arrives 15 minutes late, on we get and off we go - pretty much straight to sleep again.

We're woken by a steward a few hours later, in the bright early morning sunshine, as we pull into Antakya: the first, instantly obvious thing we notice is that it's not remotely a typical Turkish city. The buildings are too low (only two or three storeys mostly), and monochromatic white, and the streets are too non-straight: it feels much more like an Arab city. We get off and, while looking for a Left Luggage office, are aproached by a whole host of people pressing us to take a coffee, take a taxi, change money, buy tickets to Syria and so on. We eventually escape the bus station (virtually the first in Turkey with no Left Luggage office) and with our rucksacks on our backs, finding accommodation is obviously more of a priority than it might have been.
Ramazan, who worked at the pension in Goreme, recommended us a place next to the bus staiton, so we try there first. Nice, big rooms which we get them to offer us for 20 million - even so, no thanks. Lonely Planet's "cheap" recommendations come in about the same (20 million is $B!W(B8 or $12.25): instead we follow our finely-tuned instincts and end upon the other side of the bus staiton in a double with pretty manky ensuite toilet and shower for 10 million - we had the option without ensuite for 6 million, but the shared facilities are pretty . . . unpleasant. That settled, we freshen up a bit (long bus journey, dollowed by a multi-hotel hunt) and set out to explore - the streets which only an hour before were dark, empty alleys have sprung (Konya-like) into colourful stalls: excellent, we're on the fringes of the bazaar district.

Our first few steps are utilitarian: we look for Tourist Information (for maps, and we want to see if they can contact Urgup Tourist Information for us - smart, huh?), but they're closed (it's the weekend). Next we find the main Post Office post some postcards: we realise we don't have the phone number for Urgup Tourist Information (we can phone them directly from the Post Office), so we return to the hotel to collect it via a kebab and coffee. Finally (at about 09.45), we phone Urgup Tourist Information ourselves and find that they're also closed (it's still the weekend). Instead we phone Ramazan in Fethiye and explain my hat problem (he remembers washing it a couple of days ago): he claims to be going into Urgup later today and will look for it on the basis of my directions: could I phone back tomorrow morning? No problem.

With the hat situation hopefully progressing independently, we do some shopping and sightseeing. The shopping mainly consists of finding somewhere to develop my films and then finding an internet place for a late morning/early afternoon stop. The sightseeing is equally limited: Antakya may have been a thriving Roman metropolis of 500,000 people (seriously - after Rome and Alexandria, this was the place), but there's nothing left of those days now - or what is left is under the modern city. When Christianity hit the scene, Peter and Paul headed straight here - all that's left if the St. Peter Grotto/Church, some kilometres north of town. The "Grand Mosque" turns out to be a large shed with a nice minaret. The river is a quite alarming shade of brown: the river banks are concrete-and-stone, and the bridges are all modern. The nicest thing about Antakya, except for a clutch of interesting older (18th/19th century) buildings is the backdrop of mountains.

We hit the Antakya Museum and discover the highlight of the town. It's full of magnificent, mostly wall-mounted, mosaics - even better than the huge one in the Mosaic Museum in Istanbul. The colours are still rich, and most of them are mostly complete: naturally I don't have my little tripod, but I take a few long exposure (almost certainly fuzzy) shots - I must start buying souvenir postcards in places like this instead. The museum has some pretty average sculptures as well, but hidden away in a locked room (we had to ask) is the "Antakya Sarcophagus" - a magnificently intact c. 250AD marble sarcophagus, found with all its contents (including skeleton, also on display). There are actually three rooms closed for renovations, but what we saw was easily worth the (student) entry price.

En route to the hotel we detour slightly south, but are dissuaded from going further by a loud and long cavalcade of vehicles on a last canvassing attempt before tomorrow's election. Some have loudspeakers, most have flags (the Ak Parti - their emblem is a lightbulb), and all are sounding their horns. It's all baffling to me, since we have a block on canvassing in the 24 hours preceding an election and anyway - if any party tried an approach like this then a.) hopefully no-one would vote for them on principal and b.) they'd probably be arresting for causing a breach of the peace. Turks have explained that all of this is because they take their politics seriously - frankly, if this kind of cavalcade can actually change anyone's mind about who to vote for, then I don't think they understand the word "seriously". In addition to the cacophany (which takes at least seven or eight minutes to pass), Milla's exhausted and dizzy and in pain. After our all-night bus trip, she needs proper sleep and complains that no-one could keep up with me - I'm apparently not normal (I thought that was one of the reasons she married me).

We get back to the hotel at about 17.30: Milla goes quickly to be (the sun's already gone down). I read and write and look through the index prints of the recent films (I'll get some prints tomorrow - we found a place doing them for 5p each) and eventually crash out about midnight. I elect to use my sheet sleeping bag, on the basis that I don't trust the hygiene of the sheets here.

Election Day in Turkey - a day mercifully free of campaign vans with blaring loudspeakers. For us, a day of nothing really: I get up at 06.30, potter around and am ready to go out at 07.30. Milla wakes, persuades me to wait for her, and we set off at 08.45. Essential stops include buying cigarettes, telling the guy at reception that we're staying another night (we still have the hat situation to clear up) and getting more cash out (now that we've seen places to change it for Syrian pounds here in Antakya). A little after 09.00 we hit the post office and again use their phone to contact Ramazan in Goreme: he had no luck last night finding my hat, but will try again today. Hey-ho. Next, we trudge up to yesterday's photo place but it's close - in fact, almost everything's closed - a combination of morning, Sunday and Election Day, I suppose.

We cross back to the east bank of the murky brown river Orontes and take a wander through the twisting, narrow, Cordoba-like maze of Arabic-style streets. Following one lane we emerge directly into the courtyard of central Antakya's Orthodox church - Milla stays in for the service, while I retire to a bench outside and write. It's a fairly uninteresting building (1850?), but the congregation is fascinating since the service is in Turkish - Turkish Orthodox Christian? Apparently so. The next obvious question is whether this is therefore a continuous community from the Peter/Paul early church - hm. Also it makes me wonder how many (if any) original orthodox Christians remain in Cappadocia - there are all those churches, and some are only a few hundred years old. We leave the Orthodox church (the Turkish language eventually proved too much for Milla): the courtyard also exist onto a main street, but is heavily disguised. A helpful local, a hundred metres or so from the entrance, points it out to us and pantomimes crossing himself so we get the message: great. All around Antakya, incidentally, are non-Arabic/non-Turkish faces: a lot of Mediterranean, and a sprinkling or (very tanned) north European faces keep passing in the streets: clearly locals, and talking Arabic or Turkish, it makes me wonder if they're descended from the Crusaders? Or just normal immigrants?

There's also a Roman Catholic church near the centre, but it's more difficult to find despite being sign-posted! It's also closed (the little lane ends in a locked door with the words Turkish Catholic Church above it): did the Catholics also come with Bohemond and the Crusaders? Or did they come much later with the French?

We try the photo place again (it's open now), and then we wander about looking for mandarines (Milla has a craving) which we eventually find in a little open corner shop in which various discussions take place on the subjects of both mandarines and the preparation of olives (in mixed German and Turkish). Then, after a coffee, I go to the internet place and Milla returns to the pension to wash clothes. I join her a couple of hours later, she finishes off, and we go for a kebab in the evening at the same place as yesterday - the cheap table on the pavement doesn't really have an ambience, as such, but we like the guys there. With their help we even locate someone selling late night bread, and then retire to our room - by all accounts, most of Turkey will be staying up all night to watch the election results come in. We decide not to bother this time.