Anatolian Fortnight: Ilhara Valley Tour, Part 2
Andy Carvin
cross-country trip in Turkey, from Istanbul to Mount Ararat. The
complete travelogue, including photos, recipes, and a Turkish
dictionary, can be found online at
Andy Carvin
an...@gsn.org
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Anatolian Fortnight
Wednesday, September 1
Cappadokia:
Ilhara Valley Tour, Part 2
By 3pm or so we drove to our next stop, the 13th century Agzi Karahan
caravansarai. Though not many others seemed excited about the visit, I
was absolutely thrilled. For years I had wanted to travel the great Silk
Road caravan route from Turkey to China, and over the last year Susanne
and I had even put together a plan for a Silk Road virtual fieldtrip.
Though we hadn't been able to get the project funded, we still longed to
travel the Silk Road. Until we could work it out, though, we could at
least take advantage of being in Turkey to have some preliminary
exposure to the great caravan routes of old. The Agzi Karahan
caravansarai was our first real taste of the Silk Road, a 700-year-old
inn once used by spice traders and gem merchants.
We entered the main gate of the caravansarai, which appeared from the
outside to be a stout Central Asian fortress. Through the gate we
reached a great courtyard, the ruins of a small mosque in its center.
"By the 13th century, the Silk Road was coming to an end," Kadir
explained. "But there were still caravans making the trip from Persia
and Central Asia to Europe. The Seljuk Turks, who ruled Cappadokia at
the time, wanted to guarantee the merchants' safety since they were
getting rich taxing the caravans. Every 50 miles, the caravan would
reach a caravansarai, a place where they could rest, buy food and even
find doctors. Travelers could stay three days at these inns for free as
long as they were bringing along trade goods. Keeping the traders happy
was good business for the Seljuks."
We wandered around the courtyard, visiting the many rooms scattered
around the perimeter. Though the sleeping quarters seemed a little
claustrophobic, the animal stables were spectacular -- an imposing
vaulted hallway that was more akin to the interior of a cathedral than a
livery. On the Silk Road, people were expendable; camels and horses
weren't.
As the rest of the group finished exploring the caravanserai, Susanne
and I sat across the street at a worn-down cafe -- its chairs rusting
away, its table umbrellas fraying at the edges. We drank tea while
chatting with Franz about the history of the Silk Road. Undoubtedly he
had no idea what he was getting into when he brought up the subject with
us, since both Susanne and I had read extensively on the subject.
"So when did the Silk Road start?" Franz asked.
"It goes all the way back to before Roman times. Alexander the Great
brought his army along much of this route all the way from Macedonia to
Tajikistan and northwestern India. It gave the Mediterranean a real
taste for the exotic goods that were found along the way. Later on,
there was this Chinese explorer named -- Susanne, what was his name?"
"Chang Ch'ien."
"Right... Chang Ch'ien was sent into the heart of Central Asia by the
Chinese emperor Wu-Ti in 138 BCE, but he was captured by Turkic tribes
and held captive for over a decade. Eventually he was released and
allowed to return to China. Upon his return he told emperor Wu-Ti about
the great war horses the Turks used for battle -- the Fergana horses.
The emperor was so determined to get some of these horses for himself he
sent a series of expeditionary forces into Central Asia. After sieging
the city of Fergana, the emperor got his precious horses, but the
expedition also introduced the Chinese to the trading opportunities that
could be established through Central Asia. So as Greeks and Romans went
east to find new trade goods, the Chinese went west, and Central Asia
became the conduit for a commercial network that reached from Venice to
the Great Wall."
"But the Silk Road wasn't just about selling goods," I continued. "As
the caravans plied the trade routes, travelers also passed along ideas
-- religion, politics, culture. The Silk Road allowed information to
travel thousands of miles between empires that previously weren't in
regular contact with each other. In a real sense, the Silk Road was the
world's first information superhighway."
"So what caused it to shut down?" Franz asked.
"Times changed," Susanne said. "For hundreds of years, the only way you
could get from Europe to China was to follow the caravan routes, which
left you at the mercy of bandits, mountains and deserts. It was a
dangerous trip. As shipbuilding and navigation improved, it became a lot
safer to travel the ocean routes instead of the land routes. The Silk
Road eventually dried up, isolating many of the cultures that once
thrived because of the caravans."
We continued our conversation on the minibus as we drove to Avanos, a
small Cappadokian town known for its superb pottery and porcelain. Even
though we were about to have a private tour of a pottery making shop,
Susanne and I knew that our stop in Avanos was really about sales: a
chance for the tour operator to drop a bunch of travelers into a
shopping gallery and hope for some cut of the profits. It didn't really
bother me as long as the shop wasn't playing the hard sell. Sometimes
these mandatory shop visits are nothing more than a chance to browse the
local handicrafts. Other times it's a sweaty merchant breathing down
your neck, driving you crazy with his constant demands for your
business. Hopefully this visit would not be the latter experience.
I had expected the tour to be of a traditional pottery business --
locals have been working the ruddy clay from the local Red River since
Hittite times, so I pictured some elderly gent in baggy Turkish trousers
spinning a stone pottery wheel by hand. The shop we visited was actually
a modern pottery factory, a well-oiled machine in a warehouse tooled for
producing tens of thousands of pieces. As we discovered, though, the
molding was still done by hand. Kadir introduced us to a young man as he
crafted a vase on an electric pottery wheel. A lump of damp red clay
spun around at varying speeds as the man used his hands and metal
carving tools to shape the damp earth into a piece of art. We also
watched another man create a large bowl composed of white clay -- he
pressed a handful of clay onto a spinning semi-circle and squeezed it
between another semi-circle, not unlike a press or a waffle iron. After
opening the contraption and allowing the wheel to spin down to a
standstill, he popped out a perfectly formed plate, ready to sit dry
before being cooked for three days in an industrial-sized kiln.
Our last stop along the pottery-making parade route was the design room,
where skilled artisans painted intricate, yet delicate patterns onto
freshly kilned plates and bowls. I watched one woman paint a complex
flower design on a plate that was probably two feet in diameter. For
centuries the Turks have been masters of decoration techniques. Islam's
prohibition of depicting human forms in art led to a renaissance in
abstract Ottoman art, which specialized in symmetrical patterns on
pottery ranging from the red and white clay plates of Avanos to the
legendary blue Iznik tiles from Western Anatolia.
Not wanting to interrupt her, I asked one of the tour guides how long
it would take to paint the entire pattern.
"It depends on the design and the size of the plate, of course," he
said. "As for this plate, she will probably spend three months on it."
Our guide brought us to a table displaying a series of plates at
different stages of development. "After the plate has come out of the
kiln for the first time, an artist will trace a pattern on it. She will
then spend many weeks painting it, following the stencil marks. The
plate is allowed to dry completely, then it is coated with a white
powder which turns into a clear glaze when cooked in the kiln."
"When it is all done," he concluded, "you end up with a beautiful plate
that can sell for many hundreds of dollars." He picked up a fragile
white plate that was decorated with a fine design of flowers and grape
vines. Handing it to an American woman who was part of the group, the
plate suddenly slipped out of his hand and started to plunge to the
floor. The woman let out an audible gasp, fearing that she had just
caused the destruction of a pricy showpiece. Instead the plate recoiled
and then swung in the air on a clear plastic cord secretly wrapped
around the tourguide's hand.
"I got you!" the guide exclaimed with glee.
At the conclusion of the tour the guide brought us to a large room lined
with traditionally Ottoman seat pillows along the perimeter. We were
invited to rest and drink apple tea while a master craftsman
demonstrated a traditional pottery wheel, spun with one foot as his
hands molded a lump of clay.
"This type of pottery making is very ancient," the tour guide explained.
"Pottery wheels like this have been found in Mesopotamia, from thousands
of years ago."
The pottery maker spun the clay for five minutes until he produced a
small container with a removable lid. "Do any of you know what this is?"
the guide asked, pointing to the container. "If you can guess you will
get a prize." Our group began to call out a range of items, none of
which seemed to hit the mark. I eventually offered my own guess: a sugar
bowl.
"Correct!" the guide said. "Please come up and collect your prize."
I walked up to the front of the room and was handed what appeared to be
a red clay ashtray with holes in it. "A Cappadokian soap dish," the
guide said as he handed it to me.
Our tea still hadn't arrived yet, and the shop guide was running out of
ways to keep us occupied. As I started to go and sit down, the guide
said, "Why don't we all sing a song? Do you know any good songs?"
The entire group looked at him and me, perplexed. "I don't think that
will work," I said, trying to find a way out for all of us. "We're from
so many different places we probably don't all know the same song."
(Let's face it -- none of us really wanted to be stuck in this room
waiting for tea. Kadir had probably gone off for a smoke break and had
left us in the shop guide's care.)
"Okay, so how about if we have a volunteer to make some pottery?" he
responded, not sure what to do next. The Turkish-German woman offered to
give the pottery wheel a whirl, but ended up making what appeared to be
a melted plastic mug that had been nuked for too long in a microwave.
Our teas finally arrived, and most of us drank them quickly just so we
could get out of this awkward situation. The guide told us that we had
about 20 minutes to wander the galleries and look at their pottery --
and if we bought now, we'd receive a ten percent discount.
The group wandered the showrooms aimlessly, killing time until Kadir
could get us out of there. There were beautiful museum-quality pieces
that were available for purchase, but the salespeople didn't seem to
grasp that they were dealing mostly with a cash-strapped backpacker
crowd. Eventually, Kadir appeared from his cigarette break and said we
could return to the bus. Most of us headed outside quickly, eager to
move on to our last stop. While we waited for a few stragglers to join
us, Susanne and I played with a litter of four hyperactive puppies that
resided next to a small guard post.
"I just don't get it," Susanne said as the small dogs climbed all over
us. "There are more puppies per square mile in Turkey than any other
country we've visited."
The sun was going to set in just over an hour so we drove onward to our
final stop, the Valley of the Fairy Chimneys near the village of Zelve.
The minibus deposited us inside an asphalt parking lot lined with a row
of souvenir stalls. Kadir said we would have 45 minutes to explore the
valley before regrouping atop a hill in order to watch the sunset. Our
group scattered in several directions, wandering off to marvel at
Zelve's famous fairy chimneys, one of the most photographed collections
of classical tufa formations in Cappadokia. While other fairy chimneys
often varied in shape and size, Zelve's chimneys were all equally
enormous, equally beautiful, and -- well, let's be honest -- equally
phallic. Embarrassingly phallic, in fact. It was hard not to giggle when
looking upwards at these rosy-hued pillars, but after a few minutes the
bawdy novelty wore off and the fairy chimneys returned to being just
impressive natural rock formations.
Susanne headed off down a path towards a boy who was offering camel
rides while I took a detour through several acres of grape vines.
Hundreds of bushels of grapes had been picked that week and were now
drying into raisins on dozens of plastic tarps. The grapes were
shriveling yet still juicy, giving off a distinct fermentation smell
that reminded me of past visits to Sonoma Valley vineyards. One or two
acres of grapes had yet to be picked. I discreetly reached down and
pulled of a few for myself, plopping the plump red fruit into my mouth
one at a time.
I met Susanne over by the camel and followed her up a stony embankment
that led to several ancient tufa churches tucked neatly in the back of
the valley. The churches were only reachable by a pair of rickety wooden
ladders. We both climbed up carefully and visited the interior of the
main church. There was little to see up there except the view, since the
interior of the cave had faded away long ago.
I was eager to climb down the ladder to get both feet back on the
ground, but halfway down my descent Susanne observed, "The light is
really good at the top. Go back so I can take a picture." Holding on for
dear life I climbed back up, then allowed the Turkish-German couple to
head back down the ladder. Susanne snapped the picture and then
encouraged a Japanese man to go up so she could take a picture of him
with his camera.
Again passing the boy with the camel, Susanne and I crossed the valley
and climbed the hill for sunset. The hill was a hemispherical mound of
tufa about 100 feet high. Though it wasn't very steep, the fact that the
hill was constantly crumbling fine bits of tufa made every step slippery
and potentially dangerous. I settled myself atop the hill while Susanne
continued onward, walking up and down a thin pass that connected several
other hills. While I fiddled with my zoom lens and some of Susanne's
optical filters I shared a bottle of Cappadokian wine with an American
couple who had brought along a small picnic for sunset.
Susanne returned to my spot on the hill just after sunset, giving us
enough time to pack up our cameras before returning to the minibus.
Kadir appeared and told us it was time to go, leaving me and the two
other Americans with a full glass of wine to bring back to the bus. We
offered a glass to Kadir. "No thank you," he said. "I am not very
religious but I still do not drink."
The bus dropped us off back in Göreme in front of the otogar. Several
members of our group were going to eat at the Orient for dinner. Having
dined there just the night before, Susanne and I declined and opted for
the Sultan Restaurant across the street. We both ordered Turkish pizzas
while I had a cool glass of Efes Pilsner. A trio of chainsmoking
Japanese women sat next to us, along with a suave young Turkish man. I
had assumed they all knew each other but just as their food arrived I
heard one of the women ask him, "So what is your name?" Neither Susanne
nor I could figure out why they were dining with him. Later we struck up
a conversation with them and discovered that one of the women had
learned her English in New York, giving her a humorously thick Long
Island accent.
Back at the Ufuk hotel I had hoped to get some journal writing done.
Susanne and I were both pretty beat from the long day, and we both fell
asleep soon after settling in for the night.
Next: Easy Riders
Andy Carvin
aca...@gsn.org
http://edweb.gsn.org/andy.html
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Before you buy.