The pace of life is what touches you first in the south eastern part of Turkey. While it is not lazy by any means there is no rush.
It could be the heat which can be too much depending on the time of the year you are there or maybe the fact that a great deal of history has already happened there. Twice.
The amount of history and culture that has washed over this part of the world offers you a depth to your experiences wether you are conscious of them or not. I have had this pop up in more than a few unexpected ways.
Two of the most obvious are pictured above. The first is shown in the photo with all the ladies with whom I led a private trip in the area, which to be precise, was a group consisting of myself, my female co-leader, and twenty-seven ladies from lovely Canada.
At no point did the Turkish people along the way stop asking me if I was alright, surviving, or even enjoying being the only man in the group. The answer was yes, and it actually turned out to be a great time once we figured each other out. But, let’s get back to the story.
We did a hike which starts by hopping off our private gullet in the middle of nowhere and quickly presents a surprise of the ruins you see in the photo. Imagine you had never been there and stumbled across these unsigned, unprotected, and not even marked on the map ruins.
To a large extent you will have to make guesses just like an archaeologist arriving there for the first time. Except that if you are like me you do not have the knowledge base of years and years of training to lean back on.
So, the second best choice is just to let you imagination bring the place to life to figure out where they might have gotten their water, how many people really lived up there, and just how great the sunsets must have been all those years ago from their hilltop perch.
It is place forgotten and protected by its own location away from roads and the official draw placing it on a map may bring it.
The second example is by far a more well known ruin of the tombs chiselled in the cliff wall.
Even though the town built around these ruins on the other side of the river is precisely what can not be called an intimate experience, there are ways to experience this with a sense of awe and in a manner that is intimate. It is all about thinking outside of the box and using the river to your advantage.
No matter how you choose to experience what once powerful cultures have left us you are just beginning to scratch the surface of what is hidden in Turkey.
