Day 2: Nevsehir to Konya (by tour bus)
Before we head to Konya, we made a stop at Zelve Valley, this is another location with some houses carved out of the cliff face. Unfortunately, many sections were corded off and we could not go inside the houses as they might collapse or parts fall in. We just walked around and found a building that was a mosque, but was originally a church. This is an interesting thing about Turkey, it was once a place filled with Christians, and now it's a Muslim country, with 99% Muslims making up its population.
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| Holes that served as windows |
Then we started to make our way to Konya, and on the way we stopped at a rest stop. If you remember, I also mentioned on my Vietnam trip that they had a really nice rest stop, well in Turkey they also have really nice and clean rest stops. A lot of the rest stops have clean washrooms (which you need to pay to use) and also restaurants and gift shops. This is very unlike the image and memories that I have of rest stops in the US and Canada... where we stop only if there were no other options.
above: looks so clean and orderly, doesn't it?
below left: a variety of nuts and snacks
below right: chai - tea, Turkish people love to drink tea, and they have this small glass cup with steaming hot tea, and usually add two cubes of sugar! I like my tea sweetened a little with one cube of sugar... hehe...
And after another two hours or so, we were getting close to Konya, but we made a stop at a 13th Century Caravan stop for lunch. The building was used by merchants traveling on the silk road as a guest house - they would stop there for a meal and water for their horses.
below right: our server, Selim (I think, if I remember correctly)... he was so friendly and nice
above left: a dish with beef and beans, Turkish food has a lot of beans - this dish was a little salty for my liking...
above right: at each meal there's always bread, and the bread in Turkey tastes really good! These are not even the best, there are better ones later on during the trip... :D
below: mmmm, hot soup! I think this was tomato based with some beans as well..... it was so good everyone was having seconds! and then wiping their plates clean with BREAD!
You may be wondering how we can drink soup at every meal when the weather looks so hot in all the photos (seriously, I had a bowl of soup - at least, at every lunch and dinner), well the weather in Turkey is actually really nice! We had sunny skies for most of our trip, and there was usually a breeze as well, so it's no wonder that we see so many Turkish people sitting outdoors with a cup of tea. Also indoors in a lot of the places we visited (all those cliffs and rocks) and also this 13th Century Caravan building, it's very cool - like there's air con or a natural ventilation/cooling system.
After lunch, we made the rest of the journey to Konya and went to the Mevlana Museum. On the way through the city, I saw how modern Turkey is really. It's not what a lot of people think Turkey is like. The streets are clean and there are many different modes of transportation. Also the streets are always full of people.
above left: the street sign had Alaadin Bul... hehe... thought that was funny, and didn't noticed that it also had Mevlana (that's where we were going) highlighted as well... :P
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| A garbage can, with the city's emblem cut out |
Mevlana is a part of the Sufi Muslims, a mystic sect of Islam, and some interesting things about it is that they have a brotherhood of followers, and they have to go through training to become accepted into the brotherhood. Training includes sitting in the kitchen and observing what happens each day and no one will speak to you except give you food and water - this is to give you time to think about whether you really want to do this or not. If you stayed after three days, then you would undergo a training for 1001 days.
Another interesting activity that they do is called the Whirling Prayer Ceremony - where the Mevlana followers will dress in a white robe and hat and then they just twirl on the spot non-stop for hours.... all the while chanting their prayer. This has turned into something of an attraction for tourists to watch, as it's crazy imagining someone can twirl on the spot for that long. However, to the Mevlana brothers, this is the way that they can get closer to their god.
Although I think this mystic sect is a little weird, I have to admit that like many muslim scriptures and literature, their books of prayer and books in general are really beautiful. The words are like art work and then they also decorate each page with a lot of detail and colour. (below, right)
Projected image of a Whirler....
Before making our way to our hotel, we stopped by a catholic church, because it is believed that St. Paul came to present day Konya during his travels, and this church is in his remembrance. It is so rare to find a Catholic or Christian in Turkey, let alone a church!
Unfortunately the church is not opened to the public and it is only opened to the public once a week for one hour on Thursdays.
From this point onwards, during the trip I will be taking some photos of the food that we eat at each meal as I was asked by another tour mate to do this for him. The reason being that there were some complaints from our fellow church members that they had a really bad experience in Turkey with food, hotels, the bus journeys and the overall trip. So we were hoping to document all of it this time and show that it's really not bad, but they may just have come at the wrong time during the year (they came in December....), the peak tourist seasons/months are April-May and Sept-Oct.
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| Lentil soup, cucumber and tomato salad (we had this a lot as well, or I did) |
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| This is probably not a typical Turkish meal, we had chicken, mashed potatoes, veal meatloaf, veggies and rice |
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| There are many of these Sufi Swirling Performances, but we did not go to them because it's too expensive to pay USD 50 to watch people twirling for an hour and a half..... so we just made do with a photo with a twirling model... |
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