Ihlara Valley is like a pint-sized Grand Canyon, only instead of a rocky, desolate brown, at the pit of the gorge we found a lush green forest with a creek trickling it's way through. That so much beautiful and beautifully diverse scenery could be packed into a single small Turkish region- Cappadoccia- is something I was left continuously in awe of.
Like so many of the great things in Cappadoccia, however, the Valley is polluted with tourists and the fiends that make their living praying on said tourists, and so once again, rather than pay the entry fee of 5 liras, Roman and I took action; or rather Roman took action and I followed his lead. When no one was looking we leaped the fence, crouched in wait of a quiet moment, and then disappeared into the crowd anonymously, identifiable from paying visitors only for the smug grins on our faces.
Unfortunately, as with Goreme Open Air Museum, the best part about the whole thing was getting in; the Valley was essentially a big, handsome picnic area for tourists who wanted to take pictures of the old monasteries dotted around the bottom of the Valley- more of the defaced and lifeless Cappadoccian monasteries that I'd seen enough of the previous day to last a lifetime. It was unfortunate too that the most incredible views were those we saw for free as we approached the place, looking down from our God-like perch; everything we witnessed below paled in comparison.
Finally, after a pleasant enough walk around the area, a few dead monasteries, a quick snack of wild grapes, and a spill into the creek that I only pretended was an accident (okay, so it was), we decided it was time to wave goodbye to Cappadoccia, a place that, unlike Istanbul, had no unescapable hold over me. It was time to embark on our true mission, which would require us to first hitchhike from Ihlara to Nigde, still in Cappadoccia, to Adana, a bustling Southern industry and university city, to Osmaniye, near Adana, and to Gaziantepe, near the Syrian border.
Well, though we'd made it about a third of our route by last night, thigns didn't go exactly as planned. That's because our drivers, two college-aged Turks who stopped almost immediately and by coincidence happened to be driving directly to our second planned stop, Adana- meaning we could bypass the chore of hailing another car in Nigde- proved to be too friendly and interesting to simply use and then leave behind forever.
Like something straight out of a nightmare; no way that black sheep could be anything but the physical manifestation of pure evil
And they spoke English! Nobody in this area seems to speak English except for university students and soul sucking tourism exploiters. Luckily, these were the former and not at all the latter. One, Ahmet, had actually lived all of his life in Switzerland, though he had Turkish ethnic roots, citizenship, and friends and family. The other, Enes, by some bizarre coincidence, lived in the same out-of-the-way Istanbul neighborhood as my CS hosts Onur and Ugur- Bachelevler. They were headed to Adana to visit Enes' girlfriend, who lived there.
Another thing they had in common Onur and Ugur, and almost everyone in Turkey in fact, was their exceptional generosity. I'd chalk it up to them being good Muslims- which they were seeing as how they fasted during Ramazan and never drank- but Onur was emphatically not Muslim, so Turkish generosity must be more complex than a simple religious mandate. Regardless, as if it weren't enough that they had driven us the four hours from Cappadoccia to Adana for free, they insisted that we come out with them and their friends so that they could buy us an Adana Kebab, famed throughout Turkey (or so they said).
My Adana Kebab guru
And so we did, and they proceeded to give us a whirlwind tour of the city, punctuated by Adana Kebab (actually an entirely seperate menu item from it's- in my mind- superior Donor counterpart), an amazing traditional Turkish desert that was like a combination between a giant cheesecurd and a pancake (yeah, I know, it sounds horrific, but trust me on this one- it wasn't) and a neighborhood football ("soccer") match that we attended, that ended in one of the most boisterous victory chants I'd ever seen, despite the fact that our hosts told us that the game in actuality had no importance beyond a casual scrimmage between friends.
The city of Adana, meanwhile, though it didn't have the style or substance of it's big brother Istanbul, is a lot nicer than I expected. It's basically a pretty typical modern city, with all upside and downside that such a tag carries. For a clear juxtoposition between Adana and Istanbul, all I had to do was compare each city's most famous mosque. Istanbul has the thousand year old Ottoman-era Blue; Adana has the equally grand Sabanci Mosque, built only 10 years ago, and the biggest in Turkey.
(Interestingly, the financer of this new mosque, Mr. Sabanci himself, had the gaul to both name the mosque after himself and to build it with 6 minarettes, a feature that I think only the Blue Mosque and the one in Mecca can match. Ballsy dude.)
It wasn't easy convincing Roman to take the Turks up on their offer and spend the evening in Adana. At first, Roman- characteristically seeing the value of common sense where I could not- was hesitant, afraid of getting stuck within the city limtis for the night, where our options would be limited and it would become very difficult to use his tent for a free night's stay. I, on the other hand, was not about to turn down a free meal and a good time just to do the practical thing. Finally, recklessness and naivete won out over my Russian friend's common sense and good judgement, and we joined the Turks for a night on the town.
Four or five hours later, after a night to remember, our hosts for the day stopped their car at the foot of a highway ramp only a few kilometers from the center of the city, where we realized we were expected to get out.
"Please, a little further out the city?", Roman pleaded in broken English. "This place not so good for make camp."
Ahmet explained that if they got onto the highway at all they would be forced to drive for a very long time. And we knew we were screwed.
Even so, I couldn't say that I really regretted taking our drivers up on their offer, my belly and mind both gloriously sated. Roman certainly did however, and as he spewed venom all over the side of the busy highway, I decided to keep my mouth shut.
Night was well upon us by then, and we had no idea how to find a hotel or the desire to pay for one. So we did the only sensible thing- march a few 100 meters down the highway, climb the small fence, wade through an onslaught of sharp, cruel shrubs and branches that we hoped would protect us from invaders in the night, and set up camp with the highway in clear view.
For a proper US analogy, imagine camping along highway 94 within the Minneapolis city limits, as trucks and sedans blaze past literally every second, about 50 feet away. And then take into account that Adana is a city with a population of about 2.75 million people.
Well we survived. It wasn't even really that bad. Unlike the night before, I didn't nearly freeze to death. Meanwhile, no one chose to fight their way through our army of evil shrubs just to disturb our sleep. In the morning, even Roman admitted that all had turned out okay, over another exceptionally good Russian breakfast of rice, bread, and selcuk (sausage).
And so we turned our attention to the coming days, in which we'll be heading through the land of Turkey's least favorite sons and daughters- the Kurdish people. Though they had never been to Kurdistan, Ahmet and Enes- like all good Turks- felt it their national duty to mention repeatedly that the Kurds were "bad people" and that we would need to keep our guard up at all times if we didn't want to be gutted or mugged at gun point.
Though they certainly meant well, their warnings only make me that much more anxious to get to Kurdistan and witness the Turk-Kurd soap opera from the other side of the table. I have a feeling that the reality of the situation will prove to be a little bit more gray and a little bit less black and white than our new Turkish friends would prefer to believe.
A lil' more Selime
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