55. IT'S A HARD ROCK LIFE

Amazing how a change of scenery can banish the blues.  I was lost in translation in Istanbul, flattened in the crowds. Today I have three new friends, with whom I have just spent many hours exploring the ridiculous geography of northern Cappadocia.  And laughing ourselves silly.  We all spent the night on the bus from Istanbul, so we are bonded in indefatigable spirit and bodily torture.  

I've travelled so far and so wide, you'd think I'd be wise to the incantations of the tour operators who promise "modern, comfortable coaches".  But then they're sitting in their offices, wanting to bring in tourists, and we want to get to our next destination, so it's a toxic combination.  Suffice to say that I am already dreading the journey back to Istanbul, but fortunately between now and then there will be a hot air balloon ride over this troglodyte landscape, which is the reason I'm here.

Four breakaways let loose in the caves ... One Polish, One Brazilian, One Spanish, and one mongrel.

Cappadocia is a strange valley in Anatolia, inhabited by the Turks since the 8th 10 centuries. They burrowed into the limestone to make impenetrable fortresses where they could be protected by the invaders along this busy spice route.

The only good thing about the bus was that it got me and fifty others here, (and my three new friends - above)  and that it had wifi. We were promised only two stops - but the clanking monster stopped every hour right through the night at brightly lit service stations where the driver had lengthy noisy chats with his compatriots in adjoining buses.

Moi in Cappadocia cave

Ours had an hour and a half's worth of engine trouble which necessitated much clanking and bashing with a spanner on the sides of the bus between 2 am and 4 am.  Every time we stopped all the lights inside went on. When we started up again, the seat back tv's went on.  I slept with my jumper pulled right over my head.  When I finally escaped the confines of having the head of the man in front of me practically in my lap when he reclined, I didn't recognise my feet. Or my ankles. Or my calves.  They were enormous, swollen balls and I couldn't bend my ankles. My feet looked at if they were going to burst at the seams.  I've never seen anything like it, and I would have been quite fascinated if only they weren't so sore.  Everyone complained about their swollen bits, as they hobbled off the bus, two hours late for all our tours, sore and buggered beyond belief.

I'm staying in the Nomad Cave Hotel.  My room has been excavated from the rock, about a thousand years ago.  There are no pictures on the walls, but when I open my tiny wooden door, I look out onto hundreds of other openings in the rock. The travel agent asked if I wanted a more up market room. I replied that if I wanted the Sheraton, I'd stay in the Sheraton! As I arrived late, crumpled and buggered from the bus ride, the tour guide who was to take me exploring North Cappadocia and it's amazing limestone creations was waiting to take me into this fascinating landscape. I grabbed a roll, cheese, cucumber and tomato from the breakfast table and rushed out into it.

Sore feet notwithstanding - we spent hours and hours exploring various parts of it, from the decorated churches to the mushroom towers and the green valleys.  The scale and complexity and other worldly quality is difficult to comprehend, so here are some photos instead.

The Nomad Cave Hotel is off the main "square" of this strange little village, up a few rocky stairs, under a low hanging rock.  It really is a cave. My first thought was that I should have opted for something more upmarket. But then I wouldn't have the chance of sleeping where people slept a thousand years ago.  What did they wear?  How did they keep warm?  How did they keep clean? Cook? Did they sleep on the floor or on straw matting? How many to a room?  Because it snows here in winter, and it's approaching summer now and I'm under two doonas with a heater large enough to warm a restaurant, all to myself. What an experience - alone like this I like, I enjoy. I think if I was here with anyone else they'd complain about something.  So being alone here in this room tonight suits me.  

My cave was chiselled out of rock two thousand years ago. You can still see the chisel marks. I think they used obsidian. I'm not alone, really, for there's a powerful wifi from the low bench with carpet cushions, just outside my door, where I had a small glass of apple tea as the sun cast a red glow over what looks like giant toadstools or something out of The Wind in the Willows, or Middle Earth.  Some rain splattered down, then a rainbow arc stretched right the way across the rocks.  Once inside my cave, the outside world ceases to exist.  Nothing can penetrate these "walls", certainly not wifi.  So I write what I want, rush outside into the cold for a few seconds while it saves, then scurry back in again to the warmth.  It smells like a cave, sort of damp and cold, and the walls are grey mottled stones. They look as if they are made of raw concrete and the shape is so odd.  Imagine if you had a shoebox, and you sort of mangled it and pushed and pulled the equal sides until nothing was equal in size or shape.  The back wall is fifty percent longer than the front wall, where there's a tiny window.  The door locks with difficulty because in those days, there weren't doors, never mind locks. What was there to steal?  Hemp? Sackcloth? Ashes? A sheep?  All cables of course run  along the outside of the walls - remember they're made of solid rock! There isn't a bedside lamp or table, and I'll just pretend I'm in a monastery for the night! Other cave hotels are called Flintstones, Stone Cave House, Hard Rock ....  but I'm sleeping in a cave. I'm very warm, I have very hot water, the outside world doesn't exist.

Borak, our guide for the day, told us that men have to be able to throw a decent pot here, and women must know how to make carpets before they can marry as both are essential for economic resources in this part of the world..  I know plenty of women who are very good at throwing pots, and many men who wish they had a flying carpet to escape them. How our cultures differ! We went to see demonstrations of both being made, but escaped the carpet seller's schpiel that involved  tea, entreaties of poverty stricken girls who have to sell a carpet in order to finish their schooling, to go to our respective hotels and soak our feet in a hot apple tea. The last rays of the sun lit the ancient limestone houses as if there was a fire inside. 

I limped into the square to get something to eat for dinner. A few cold tourists straggled around, putting their noses to the windows of the pide restaurant, seeing if the fires were still on.  Bales of hay were bunched up against an ancient wall.  A stuffed scarecrow was tied to a tree, hat tipsy,  "drinking" a beer. Three tractors, painted with wild scenes of Turkish country life,  were hitched to a fallen log. Some sunburned carpets hung from eaves and over chairs and on rock walls. A man led his donkey away from the square, I heard braying, and saw the man kicking his donkey in its stomach.  I wanted to kick him. Then I had the strangest deja vu - and remembered walking down this road, and seeing the donkey, and eating with a group of friends I was travelling with, carrying on even then about some awful man that I was running away from!   

I ate alone, and tucked into a boiling brew of lamb, tomato and onion, mopped it up with Turkish bread, listened to the muezzin echoing across this pre-historic town, and went next door to buy a chocolate, hidden amongst the turnips, brooms and eggs.  A very large, ruddy woman, as creased as the earth, dressed in a smudged, faded floral apron, a tight scarf pulled over her chin and forehead, a voluminous floral woollen skirt, thick home knitted socks and sandals, clutched a long gnarled forked stick as she scratched around in the biscuit bowl making her selection.  I smiled at her. She looked at me as if I'd fallen from Mars, picked up her lollies, swept outside and wheezed and sputtered away in her big green coughing tractor.   Who needs tourists? she muttered in Anatolian as she chugged away.  I went back to my cave, and slept until the muezzin woke me for my balloon ride.   I prayed for sun.  I'll do anything for sun tomorrow morning.