The World According To John Rae the Great

Continued…

10.  Nemrut Dagi

This was another must-see for the trip because this tomb complex on top of a 2150m mountain is also on my Top 100 list.  We got up at 3am, drove up as close to the summit as possible and then hiked up for only about 20 minutes to get to the top.  We watched the sunrise from the East Terraces together with maybe 30-40 other fellow tourists.

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9.  Turkish Night

One night in Goreme we went on this regularly held Turkish Night with lots of good food, unlimited drinks and Turkish music and dancing.  At one point by some weird stroke of (bad) luck I got chosen, together with 6 other guys, out of maybe 300 people that night, to participate in the belly dancing performance.  It wasn’t pretty.     

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8.  Meeting fellow travellers

We met a lot of people of different ages and nationalities along the way.  There’s Dougall and Hazel from New Zealand who we met in Pamukkale and then again in Olimpos.  We also had a great group on our mini-cruise:  Luke, Terry, Sue, Anne-Marie, Daniel and Sandra from Australia, Aynsly, Kimberly and Yan from Canada, Seth, Luciana, Mark and Shannon from New Zealand.  On our overnight trip to Nemrut we met Robert and Peter from the Netherlands, Duncan and Tina from England who had already been travelling around the world for seven months before getting married and moving to Australia, plus two cranky old women from Australia who made the trip much more interesting.  We also met a number of locals, like Faruk in Goreme and Calag in Nemrut.  Turks are generally very hospitable, although not everyone can speak English very well outside those working in the tourist industry.

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7.  Sultanahmet in Istanbul

Sultanahmet in Istanbul contains most of its historic and cultural heritage sites, and our hostel was also located conveniently in it.  There’s the Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque (the third on my top 100 list), the Underground Cistern and Topkapi Palace, among others.

 

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6.  Scootering around Cappadocia

Kit and I were in over our heads when we decided to rent a scooter (me driving while she rode behind me) for two days to travel around Cappadocia.  The sites were a lot farther to each other than they appeared on the map, so in one day we even ended up travelling about 200 km on one scooter!  The view and landscape were amazing, but your ass can take only so much torture. 

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Stay tuned for the final installment.  Meanwhile more photos are on my multiply site:

Or you can check out the complete photos on Kit’s Multiply site:

I have no idea if you can check out the photos if you’re not a member.