Spent a few days in Capadocia, but now in Ankara waiting for visas...

We ended up spending 3 nights in Capadocia even though we'd originally planned 1. The guesthouse we stayed in was lovely (Walnut House in Göreme - highly recommended) and there was so much to see and do that leaving earlier would have been stupid. While there we met a Canadian family who were travelling for a year - David, Grace and their 2 children (whose names I can't for the life of me remember or even spell! Anyway, they were about 8-10 years old and were missing a year of school (David and Grace are both teachers). Wish that had happened to me!

Sunday night we ate in a restaurant which when they brought us the menus proudly proclaimed that it was one of Lonely Planet's "top 5 eats in Turkey". Actually we got there soon enough that it probably still is and had some superb original Ottoman food.

On monday we did some walking in the Valleys surrounding Göreme. The scenery is truly amazing - a geological fantasy world of spires of rock, canyons and caves (some man made, some not). Most of the rock is ancient compressed volcanic ash which is incredibly soft (you can scratch it away with your fingers) but it is mixed in with harder stuff - this is what has made the scenery so amazing through erosion and led to almost everyone in the region living underground for millenia - some still do. In the morning we were advised by the hotel owner (Ali) to visit a couple of local churches carved into the rock. When we found the ticket office (in a cave) there were a couple of old blokes who insisted on making us tea before showing us in. The first church was housed in one of the so called "fairy chimneys" and contained almost unblemished 6th (if I remember correct) christian frescoes - all very lovely. We went back to the ticket office after being shown round and they must have been bored or decided they liked us as they took us to the other church for free. This one was carved into the top of a cliff face which we had to enter via the top down a precarious staircase. The old boy had a gammy leg but still seemed pretty sure footed. Inside it was much the same as the first - original frescoes in good condition apart from the eyes of the subjects having been scratched out by subsequent muslim conquerers. We were taken back to the ticket office for more tea and they got us to fill in their lottery numbers!

In the afternoon we headed to the "Göreme Open Air Museum", which is more of the same really. A variety of rock cut churches with frescoes if different eras in differing states of repair. In fact the erosion which created the landscape is still very much a problem and much has been washed away if not destroyed by earthquakes. It was all very lovely but I suppose that once you've seen one early Christian fresco you've seen em all... By the time we finished that lot the light was fading so we headed back for home.

Tuesday we headed further out of Göreme to Çavusin, another village once cut entirely out of a rock face. This had been habited until the 50s when an earthquake forced everyone out into conventional buildings. You can still wander the ruins, and fortunately we were approached by a guide who offered to take us round. Normally we're very wary of these guys but he didn't ask for money and seemed harmless enough. Happily he took us on an amazing tour along precarious ledges, leaps over nothing and through lightless tunnels - routes we'd never have found on our own (thanks Dad for the torch!). In places steps have been carved in the rock face you can still use and Grapes scaled most of it without problem. It was such a good tour that I was more than willing to part with some cash after (he didn't ask though he clearly expected!) and although I didn't have any small Turkish Lira he gratefully accepted my 10 Bulgarian thingys.

Next stop was the Paşabag valley where many of the postcard pictures are taken. The formations here are all slender chimneys of stone with little caps - they look much like mushrooms. One outcrop had the usual church carved in it, and slightly more unusually a hermit hole in the top reached via a vertical tunnel in the middle of the ceiling below. I admit I didn't manage to get up that one (hand holds are carved in the tunnel like two ladders facing each other but it's difficult to get your feet up into the tunnel as well as being a bit narrow for someone as tall as me - thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it!).

Next stop was the ancient monastic complex at Zelve. This is a similar affair to the Göreme museum except that no effort has been expended to make it easy for the visitors or even to maintain it. The upshot of this is that it's incredibly good fun! There are no tour groups there and you have pretty much free reign to visit it how you want. There's lots of chambers, many exposed by erosion and most now unreachable, but there are still many tunnels linking it all together and even some more of the vertical ones and this time I did manage to get up them even if Grapes didn't (sensible girl). By the time we'd finished I was covered in dust and if she ever wants children she got an insight into looking after a 10 year old boy....

That evening we went to a restaurant recommended by the hotel guy (Tardinelli I think?) and though it was empty we decided to give it a go. There was only one guy in there besides the owner and half the food was off the menu but fortunately what we got was excellent as was the company and we spent the rest of the evening with them. I got a kind of lamb stew cooked in an earthenware jar which was broken open in front of me and Grapes got some sort of sizzling chicken stew which arrived on a hot plate. We were introduced to raki, the local spirit (on the house naturally!), similar to Ouzo but a bit rougher and stronger. Actually make that a fair bit stronger as my head testified the next morning. After a while the restaurant closed so we went to a local bar and were given a lesson in dancing Turkish stylee to almost continuous strobe lighting. By the time I made it back it was about 2:30 (Grapes having succumbed shortly before at about 2) but a truly memorable night. Apart from the bits I can't remember...

Next day we finally left Göreme and headed round a route the guys the previous night had recommended. First stop was a picturesque Greek town which had all its inhabitants thrown out in the 20s (all part of the mutual Greek-Turkish antagonism). Second was an archeological site that was still being excavated and as such wasn't allowed to be photographed or really visited at all until the Ministry of Culture had approved it. One of the archeologists showed us round including an almost pristine Roman mural untouched in almost 2 millenia. Sadly the others were all under covers. Next was a proper traditional village (Soganli) nestled in a gorge. Here people were still living in caves in the cliff faces and following the same lifestyle and traditions that had been observed for centuries. Sadly it was very quiet when we arrived but if you arrive on bread making day apparently its a different story. Last we headed onto the Ilhara valley en route to Ankara. Ilhara is supposed to be beautiful but in winter it was just a little grey and dreary. The weather was very cold and they wanted to charge us just to walk into the gorge. We made do with a drive through the village half way along where you can see that in the summer sun with everything in full leaf it must be lovely indeed. For us it was just cold, bleak and empty.

The drive to Ankara was nice and easy except that I needed to go to the loo every 30 minutes having drunk about 4 litres of water to ease my hangover. Ankara itself posed the same problems as Istanbul but eventually we found the district we wanted and with a little haggling secured a half decent hotel for a good rate. The only unnerving thing is that parking is either tight or very insecure (we're not yet sure which and no one there speaks any english - in fact I had to order water the other day via the power of pictionary when charades failed) - they have one set of keys for the car and keep moving it around for us!?!

Thursday we started looking for visas. Unfortunately all the embassies we were looking for appear to have moved and eventually we had something like 3 different addresses for each of them. Eventually we followed a lead on the internet where bizarrely a website claimed that you can get an Azeri visa from the Canadian embassy. Of course this isn't true but the receptionist was incredibly helpful and got us a real address and information. We found out that we need a letter of support from the British embassy for the Azeri visa so we went there next. 50 bloody quid each and not ready for 24 hours! Sod that! Useless English bastards. We're going to try and get one without.

Friday we went to the Azeri embassy first - closed for a national holiday. Next the Kazakh embassy - put in our application and we have to ring up on Tuesday to find out how things are going. Then to the Kyrgyz embassy where the application process was fairly painless. The chappy asked for a letter of support but when we told him how much the British embassy wanted to charge he let us off if we wrote letters explaining why we wanted to visit. We were then told to deposit our dollars in a bank and return with the receipt to get our visas to be issued the same day. Next we went to the Indian embassy and got our applications in. India is a pain and if you apply outside your home country they refer the application back so it can take up to 4 working days. Again we have to ring up on tuesday.

After all this lot we were knackered so went to get some lunch. We found a lunch canteen type place and had a couple of good kebabs. It was very full so when a couple of people who came in were seated next to us - one a Turkish lady translating for the other, a Northwestern European man. We got chatting and they were over for the afternoon from Istanbul to sort out some business dealings of some sort in the capital. Eventually one of them (Deniz) let on that the other (Lars) was the Danish Consulate General to Istanbul - i.e. A Very Important Person! He kindly gave us his card and said that if anything went wrong in the east we were to give him a call! Lovely fellow! Deniz was lovely too - really enjoyed the discussion on EU-Turkish relations over lunch!

In the afternoon we headed back to the Kyrgyz embassy having paid the bank. Annoyingly the embassy was closed even though it was supposed to be open. The chap had a bad back so I guess that it being a quiet friday afternoon had decided to head home early...
Today we had a long lie in, and visited the local market in the afternoon. Ulus (where we're staying) is a bit of a dive and quite boring so it was refreshing to see it suddenly come to life. I ate grilled rolled up lambs intestine in a bun (much nicer than it sounds) and one stall holder gave us a carrot each!

Anyway, we're stuck here until at least wednesday and there's really not a lot to see so this may explain why I've rambled on so long. Off to buy a rotiserie chicken for dinner and sneak it into our room now. Also havıng announced wıth much fanfare that I have a card reader I forgot to brıng it this evening, and happy birthday Mum!