“Patron and Patronessa!”

We come to Urunlu for a real village experience where we spend the night en route from Cappadocia to Antalya on our way to the Mediterranean as we have done for the past 20 years. When we first made arrangements with the Topkara family and they invited our groups to stay in their home, the parents Shefika and her husband made all the arrangements and their young children were delighted to have foreigners coming to stay. Among the many Wildland travelers who have reported this home-stay as a standout highlight of their trip to Turkey, I remember the multi-generation Whitmore family told me later when their young grandson arrived to the home, the Topkara's grandson Onur, who was also 10 years old at the time, took his new young American friend by the hand and they disappeared to play in the village as two young boys do anywhere in the world.

    

Today, on our visit Onur was home from college, Shefika and her husband have passed away, and their sons and daughters-in-law are now heads of the Topkara family village home. I had never met the sons Naim, Nazif and Nail as adults, so when Alper was introducing everyone in the group and he came around to us as the owners of Wildland Adventures, Naim's eyebrow's arose and he exclaimed, "Ah, Patron and Patronessa!" kissing our hands and thanking us for sending such wonderful people to their home all these years. And we thanked them for their generous and warm Turkish hospitality.  

    

We are so grateful when we have the opportunity to develop close personal and working relations with local families throughout the world who invite us into their homes for mutual exchange and sharing, and as an opportunity for them to earn a little extra income. The Topkara's actually live in Antalya where Naim runs a motorcycle repair shop and Nail is a plumber. The brothers kept the old village home built from cedar and stone as a family refuge when the heat on the coast becomes too much. Their wives prepare a delicious home-cooked dinner the night we arrive and a fresh "village breakfast" the next day.

    

They wouldn't allow us in the kitchen other than to take a peak at what they were preparing, laugh together,  and take some pictures. For dinner they prepared Turkish green beans, zucchini in olive oil, rice with pine nuts, stuffed pumpkin flower dolma, grape leave dolma, and baklava for desert. We broke out the case of wine we brought from the Turasan Winery in Cappadocia and had a great night together relaxing on their patio under the grape vines. The next morning they prepared a typical Turkish breakfast with cheeses, olives, fresh bread, homemade jams and local honey with chai and Turkish coffee. The wives taught us how to make gozleme, a typical flat bread delicately rolled out and cooked on a convex skillet over an open fired stuff with local white cheese that we dipped in our favorite tahini-yogurt-grape molasses mix. Hmmm…

It All Starts With “Merhaba”

We wander aimlessly around the small village of Urunlu in the Taurus Mountains early in the morning. Smiling, making eye contact, saying "Merhaba" and "Gunaydin" (Good Morning) was like saying "Open Sesame"! It literally got us behind closed doors and connected to so many people in this tiny Turkish village. We had no guide, no one to translate, only curiosity about village life knowing that everyone here is friendly and is just as interested in us as we are of them. Sure enough, Anne approached a few men sitting around the small plaza by the mosque having chai and before we knew it, the 6 of us were whisked off among small side streets by a gentleman who took us into his yard shaded by dense grape vines hung with big ripe bunches of grapes that he proudly shared along with delicious ripe figs.

    

Then we were waved hither through another open wooden gate where an old gentleman was stomping grapes in rubber boots, the juice pouring out a wooden funnel through a sieve into a container. Two heavy-set women in baggy shalvar pants with scarves neatly tied around their necks signal to follow them around the corner as they carry the grape juice and deposit it into two huge boiling vats in the street where the grape juice condenses down into a delicious molasses they call pekmez.  They let us sample fresh pekmez made the day before. We purchase some from them for the forthcoming boat trip to mix with tahini and fresh yogurt in the morning…yummm!

 Then two women who were somehow related to him dragged us out of the yard, down the winding cobblestone street and insisted that we see their lovely old wooden home. Leaving our shoes outside they proudly gave us a tour room by room, always one step ahead of us tidying up tossing loose items out of sight for their unexpected foreign visitors. They were all giggles and smiles and although we couldn't say much (other than "hello", "good morning" and "beautiful"), we spoke the same language of hospitality and appreciation for the moment sharing our lives, if only for a short time.

 

Konya: The Center of Islam and Birthplace of Sufism

One member of our group, David has read poems and studied writings of Rumi every day for the past 30 years so traveling through this bastion of Islam region where Sufism and whirling dervish orders flourished and Selcuk culture was centered was especially a highlight for him. If you have any interest in Rumi, Sufiism and Whirling Dervish, it's worth reading up a bit before arriving here about Rumi's life and teachings, but if not it's such a great opportunity to learn more especially the way we do it on this trip. Konya is not just a bus stop to see the Mevlana Museum ("Mevlana" is another name for "Rumi") and his mausoleum. Visiting the mosque in Konya and where Rumi is buried along with the displays of  beautiful Korans and many objects of life used by mystic Meveli Sufis, some of whom were also Ottoman Sultans are impressive, but what's even more moving here are the 1.5 million Muslims who come here to worship and pray for Rumi's help.

 

Although Sufism and all religious practices were banned under Ataturk's new constitution separating religion from politics, he quickly realized that tolerance was so central to the Mevlana's teachings and his contribution to Islam in Turkey that Sufis were among the first orders of Islam subsequently recognized by the government of the new Republic.

 

Come, whomever you may be,

Even if you may be

An infidel, a pagan, or a fire-worshipper, come.

Ours is not a brother hood of dispair.

Even if you have brokn

Your vows of repentance a hundred time, come.

Rumi

 

But our 'Wild style' of understanding Islam and Sufism is as much experiential as it is intellectual, beyond just visiting the Mevlana Museum and Mausoleum.  For example, we visit an intimate Whirling Dervish sema (ceremony) in a very atmospheric refurbished caravanseri just outside of Urgup near our hotel. When we went to the early sema (5:30 PM, instead of the other one at 9 PM) our guide arranged a private sitting with one of the dervishes. We all had questions and enjoyed an open and revealing conversation about his life, personal practice and questions many of us had of the symbolism, orchestration, chanting and music of the ceremony we had just seen. Catherine is a practicing minister for whom we have already arranged a private  luncheon with a historian when they return to Istanbul, and this was just one of the unique insights we don't write into our itineraries but that our guides here arrange for Wildland travelers whenever possible.

 

One other personal experience of Islam that we don't mention in itineraries because we prefer to make it a surprise, and it cannot be guaranteed, is a personal "concert" of sorts with the Imam at a beautiful mosque on our road trip through Anatolia. Alper has a personal relationship with him and calls ahead to let him know when our travelers will be passing by so he tries to be available for a private sitting with us. He's amazing and brings tears to some of us as he demonstrates inside his beautiful wooden structure mosque with blue tiles his sing-song call the prayer for which he won the equivalent of the national "Imam Idol" competition in Turkey! Like the private session with the sufi mystic, our Imam answered questions about Islam, shared his path to becoming an Imam, and for those who wish, including Catherine our traveling minister, he will demonstrate and pray together as Muslims do.

 

It's moments like these that make us so proud and appreciative after 25 years of the deep understanding and sometimes even a personal spiritual consciousness we gain on a Wildland Adventure as a result of the exceptional guides who truly enjoy sharing more meaningful and personal dimensions of their country and culture with our type of travelers who are truly seekers.

Road Trip Across Anatolia

There is an unwritten rule among travel companies to limit long drives, but we like to include at least one "road trip" that takes us overland traveling among local people through small towns, diverse landscapes and rural environs. Although we are moving 30 times faster than ancient camel caravans in Anatolia, we are traveling precisely along the same routes used by traders and travelers of ancient times. Along this route we take from Cappadocia across the Anatolian plateau where Christians dug underground cities for refuge from marauding thieves and infidels through Konya, over the pine-forested Taurus Mountains and on to Antalya on the Mediterranean, we pass by and stop to see numerous caravanserai, the road houses built by the Ottomans to protect travelers from marauding Arabs and foster trade in the empire. Konya was at the center of trade connecting east and west along the Silk Road, but also connecting travel and trade from Africa north across the Mediterranean to Asia and the west.

 

In the spring, people are plowing and planting their fields and this time of year we found them harvesting crops everywhere. One of the things I enjoy most, wherever in the world I'm traveling, is when our guides make impromptu stops along the roadside to engage local farmers which is exactly what we did this day: we stopped to lend a hand picking up potatoes that had been plowed up for harvest. It turns out the migrate field workers that move around Turkey this time of year had not arrived yet to these fields so we actually lent a hand to the local women whose families farmed these stark fields and had to do the harvest themselves to get their potatoes to market. Although we were all laughing and smiling, some members of our group took the work pretty seriously and tried to move as fast at the locals sorting among sizes, filling up buckets, and then depositing them into potato sacks. Of course, we took lots of pictures and were delighted when the local Turkish women pulled cell phone cameras out of their blouses to take pictures of the crazy westerners who surprised them this day innocently just trying to lend a hand and get a better sense of local life in Anatolia!

Friends With Cave Hotels

Having traveled to Cappadocia for over two decades, we have long-standing relationships with Turkish colleagues and friends who started adventure travel here like Haydar Haykir, the now 55-year old proprietor of Elkep Evi, our go-to boutique cave hotel. Haydar resides here, overseeing his small, personal hotel operation and reading philosophy from his cliff top, two-story cave dwelling. One night when the group went into town Anne and I stayed behind to have a quiet meal and catch up with him since the last time we visited. Twenty-three years ago Haydar’s was one of only three boutique cave hotels in Cappadocia—today there are over 300.

“Everyone keeps trying to dig bigger and build better cave hotels with indoor pools, flat screen TVs and all the electronic gadgetry. I’m not going there…this is a cave after all,” Haydar insists. And that’s what we really like about him and using Elkep Evi for our itineraries. He’s created an elegant boutique cave hotel of only 33 rooms high up on a cliff overlooking the quaint town of Urgup designed with just the right balance of spacious comforts, colorful authentic décor, nooks and crannies for lounging, private terraces, stocked with cold drinks, and an al fresco dining area with a view.  As owners of Wildland Adventures, proprietors of accommodations we use like to offer us the best room in the house, so when we were offered the suite with a built-in private hamam we offered it to Debbie and David who are celebrating their 30^th anniversary. The fact is, you can’t go wrong at Elkep Evi in any of their cave dwellings.

Hot Air Balloon Over Cappadocia

We have all concluded that Cappadocia is the best place on earth that any one of us has flown in a hot air balloon. And among this well traveled group we've flown over the Serengeti, Kings Valley of Egypt, and other beautiful locations. It's not just my opinion, but everyone in the group highly recommends to any other future Wildland travelers not to miss this incredible flight! We offer it as an optional activity, and it leaves early enough in the morning that it typically doesn't interfere with other programmed events during our stay in Cappadocia. Most of us booked the flight in advance as part of our Wildland Adventure and by the time we arrived the rest of the space on that flight  was fully booked when Don and Eve decided they wanted to go. But, as it turned out, we had enough people in our group that the balloon outfitter offered us a later flight as a private group of 13 together in one basket.

 Our pilot, Ismail, was amazing. We took off from a ridge top promontory with deep canyons dropping off from each side. It was spectacular looking out across the landscape of Love Valley and the Rose Valley where we had hiked the day before among the rock spires, deep lush valleys of grape vines and pumpkin patches, and hues of red and yellow horizons in the soil aglow in the morning light. All across the landscape dozens upon dozens of colorful balloons were floating deep in the canyons and high above in the blue sky.

    

The wind was blowing gently so Ismail deftly dropped our balloon down below the canyon rim of Rose Valley allowing us to drift slowly a few feet above the tree tops quietly between the canyon allowing us to peer straight into pigeon holes, cave homes and rock monasteries carved into the cliffsides that we could only see at a distance from below on the trail the previous day. As we floated up the valley and the canyon walls narrowed we thought for sure the basket would scrape against the side but Ismail actually cleared it with precision by just a few feet. Out of the valley we ascended several thousand feet and then Ismail realized we had a chance to drop back down into the Goreme Open Air Museum, a major tourist hub of rock carved monasteries  elaborately painted with Christian frescoes. The balloon descended close the rooftops of buses as we glided above the road. Tourists got great photos of our massive balloon against the beautiful landscape backdrop,  and we got a free entrance with a birds-eye view into the Goreme Open Air Museum.

Turkey Bizarre

Tina brought a magazine article all about Cappadocia entitled “Turkey Bizarre” she had cut out of a magazine some 15 years ago because it sparked her imagination and inspired her to travel here one day. On our our first night in this high Anatolian plateau as the sun was setting and our group gathered at Doug’s terrace overlooking this bizarre landscape with Cappadocian wine in hand, Tina happily announced, “It’s every bit as beguiling and romantic as I envisioned it would be when I filed the article away and declared I would come here some day.”

Deep layers of volcanic tuft eroded over 30 million years have been shaped and molded into fantastic spires known as Peri Bacalari, or “fairy chimneys” in travel literature, but once you’re here you understand why they call one canyon we hiked through “Love Valley”: towering phallic formations of pointed basalt caps that resisted erosion are perched high atop cylindrical spires jetting straight into the sky. It’s as if you are walking into the middle of Earth making love to Heaven. 

Frank Wynne, the author of Tina’s article describes Cappadocia “….dreamlike as a Dali canvas—mysterious, melting, magical.”

Istanbul: At the Epicenter of Civilizations

Since I was here with my family for the first time 50 years ago riding around in 1956 Chevy taxis, one I remember that used a built in 45 disc record player for a sound system, Istanbul has become  an international hub more like New York City. Distinctive neighborhoods each with their own unique character and appeal worth exploring remain, each full of music venues with late night diners and neon lights, but with relics of ancient civilizations, mosques and minarets beautifully lit up against the night skyline, and the echoes of call to prayer that remind us this city once was Byzantium, then Constantinople and now Istanbul, has remained at the center of civilization. Indeed, Istanbul's cosmopolitan landscape is the business epicenter and playground of the greatest concentration of the world's billionaires after New York, London and Moscow.

 

As a matter of fact, Istanbul is breaking records for tourists of all kinds, with cruise ships, conventions, international music festivals, religious tourists, Arabs seeking vacation in an open society, European fun-in-the-sun beach tourists as well as Turks seeking refuge at the coast from Istanbul, all of whom are filling up hotels and restaurants creating such a demand that prices continue rising steadily from year to year.

 

Those of us who arrived a day early had the definite advantage of an extra 24 hours to adjust to the new time zone which really helped us absorb our first full day just strolling through the Sultanahmet historic district to see the main sites of the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia, Topkapi Palace, and the Hippodrome. We concluded our first night together at the famous Hamdi restaurant overlooking the lights of the Golden Horn, Galata Tower, and looking up the Bosphorus at the bridge connecting Europe and Asia Minor lit up with a glow. On our first extra day Alper took us to his favorite café where they prepare the best Turkish coffee with a hint of cardamom, then led us walking through the Istanbul University campus, back streets of Sultanahmet, and the chance to walk through the beautiful Sulimanye Mosque.

 

In his memoir, "Istanbul: Memories and the City", Turkey's native son and famous author, Orhan Pamuck identifies his native birthplace not where east meets west, but rather according to the division between the old (ala local and Islamic) and the new (considered Western and secular). As foreign visitors we come to experience Istanbul for this complexity of old and new. Turks on the other hand, and many Arabs from throughout the Middle East, come here to enjoy all that is new, modern and high tech; Alper pointed out to us a group of young women walking along the Istiklal Cadessi pedestrian promenade who came to Turkey where they could shed their jalaba and head cover to wear jeans, designer tops and walk in public holding hands in a place that allows them the freedom to be themselves, something not allowed home.

 

Turkey: Where East Meets West, Past Meets Future

It was 22 years ago here in Turkey when my local guide, Alper Ertubey, and I declared we would establish a partnership to bring Wildland travelers closer to the people and the places of Turkey. I wanted our travelers to experience Turkiye like I remember it when I came here in the late 60's to stay with my aunts and uncles who lived on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Dad was born in Istanbul in 1922 into the generation of "Young Turks" when Attaturk established the new parliamentary democracy after the Ottoman Empire. Although I was raised in Los Angeles, we came here several times when I was in high school to stay with relatives in their apartment at a time with Turkey was still closed to much of the world to protect its fledgling economy. Oh how it has changed today!

 

Today, Alper is not only our in-country trip manager and a lead Wildland guide, he's also a brother ("…from another mother…"); he's as much a member of our own family. You know you'll be treated like family when you go on a Wildland Adventure to Turkey too!

 

So, it's fitting one of our last Wildland Anniversary Adventures celebrating the 25th anniversary of Wildland Adventures is currently under way in Turkey, and Alper and I are back at it: taking our guests through the narrow alleyways of Istanbul, exploring underground churches and hiking the canyon lands of Cappadocia, and voyaging along the blue Mediterranean in a gulet on our Turquoise Coast Odyssey leading hikes to ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine ruins only accessible on foot from the sea. I invite you to follow along our journey by subscribing to my blog A Life In Travel, or you cna "Like" our Wildland Facebook page and you'll receive my posts from the beautiful places we explore and stories about the local Turkish  people we meet along the way.