Back to main page and index of daily reports


Tuesday, September 13 - Touring Mt. Nemrut, Benny the Superman

We booked a tour to Mt. Nemrut with Kadir at a cost of 40 lira per person. It is too complicated to try to get there on your own. Lonely Planet warned us not to expect anything from the guide. Indeed, he was just a driver who spoke no English. He would make occasional stops and with his fingers signaled: five minutes, twenty minutes. No more guided tours for me. The battery in our camera is dead. I am so angry, how could I remember all these magnificent sights? Luckily, a nice man from Victoria, Canada, Jon Deakin, took our pictures and promised to mail them to us in two weeks, and indeed, two weeks later we received his beautiful pictures, which are shown here through the Internet. Thank you Jon very much!!

We stopped at old Roman bridges, old castles, saw few interesting statues of Apollo, the sun god, we stopped at a carpet workshop where young women were learning the trade of carpet weaving, one thread at a time, one knot at a time. How long would it take them to finish one carpet?

We finally arrived at the summit of Mt Nemrut, 2150 meter high. We had to go up about 600 meters. A man offered me a donkey. No thanks. Benny runs up the mountain, occasionally stopped to wait for me, a young Turk who joined us is huffing and puffing, looking at Benny and saying “superman”.

You supposed to observe the top at sunrise or sunset. Very commercial concept. It can be viewed all day but they sell you sunrise or sunset tours. Up on top are gigantic heads of Apollo, Zeus, King Antiochus, Heracles. Were ordered by King Antiochus I Epiphanes 64-38 BC. Each head is about two meter high. The head used to be on top of a column but fell down after many earthquakes that hit the area.

We joined about 200 tourists and waited for the sunset. When the sun finally came down, everyone clapped. The Euphrate River forms a beautiful valley down bellow. Time to go back to Kahta. Our driver was dancing with other drivers. Looks like debka dances.

On the way down from Mt Nemrod, there is an accident. Tractor and private small car collided and blocked the road. All the men and boys from the village crowded around. We are waiting for the Jandarma.

Back to Kahta at 9:00pm. The driver will drive us tonight to Goreme. We leave after 10:00 PM. We try to sleep along the way. There are two drivers. Benny does not let them smoke in the car. We prefer to do long drives during the nights. We stopped every two hours. Many places are opened at night.

Back to main page and index of daily reports

Back to Top

Photos



This slide show below is just a sample...for more photos...please click here and go view a photo album with many more photos of this date.
Note: these photos were taken by Jon Deakin of Victoria, Canada.

Loading, please wait...
1