Turkey:ThePerfectTraveler'sDelight

We were looking at a beautiful regurgitated mess that nature had carved out. It looked like the mountains had suffered a serious case of digestion issues and the volcanoes spewed their wrath and fury onto Mother Earth who desperately tried to calm them down. And In the process, the volcanoes lay submerged under water and have remained quiet ever since, their anger well spent. As the sun beat down each day, Mother Nature had her way and a beautiful city came to life Cappadocia

We soaked it all in, basked in the beauty, and rejuvenated our senses. Everything appeals to senses deprived and therefore I feel the highlight for me was not just the ethereal ambience that the landscape provided, but the beautiful Turkish nightlife that we got to sample! The graceful men and women dancing to traditional Turkish lore, the hapless beautiful belly dancer seducing the crowd as the wine and the food flowed, was genuinely chicken soup for our hungry souls!!

We were deprived of a hot air balloon experience since the weather didn’t permit it, but we made the best use of the time allotted and toured possibly every nook and cranny of that quaint little town, sampled my skills at pottery and purified our souls with the traditional hamam bath, which apparently is a must do, despite it being an embarrassing experience!

The mountains, tempered by the sun had turned into magnificent dwellings that the locals put to good use, and soon, it turned into fortresses where families survived, hidden and protected. Fast forward to the 21st century and we had the pleasure of sampling some of their dwellings at the Cappadocia cave suites. The cave interiors were beautifully furnished and every possible conceivable need could be met inside the suites that were as quiet as a tomb.

I’m going a little lavish on the praise here because it’s no mean feat compressing 9 days of a Turkish experience into a travel blog that’s trying to justify an experience that felt like a wonderful lucid dream. Our next stop was at Pammukale, a tiny little village where the people look and behave exactly like the unconquerable Gauls in Asterix.