Istanbul

Having spent two days in the south of Turkey, we headed for the historic city that was once the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire, and then the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul. We landed really late in the night and took a taxi to the Arden City Hotel, which was in the middle of the Sultanahmet area. Given that the hotel was about a hundred metres from Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace, and about a kilometre from the bazaar district, Ramya's choice of hotel was nothing short of a stroke of genius.

Given that Hagia Sophia was closed on Mondays, we went in to the Topkapi Palace. The palace was commissioned by Mehmet II after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks. The Byzantine palace was entirely in ruins, so an entirely new one was built in its place. The palace continued to be the residence of the Sultan till the mid 1800s.

A minaret on one of the structures in the palace.

Ramya at the outer entrance to the Palace.

The beautiful, long walkway to the inner entrance.

As we've seen with other Muslim cultures, the taboo on graven images means that artists have to look to other means of expression, such as  calligraphy. The Sultan's name is the prominent symbol on this plaque.

A large Byzantine cistern was discovered on the palace walkway in the course of some renovation work. It holds tens of thousands of liters in a huge underground chamber.

Another structure from the outside of the Topkapi Palace.

If you're a Hindi/Urdu speaker, the "Top" in "Topkapi" is what you think it means - a cannon! The palace itself is a huge complex of several different buildings, among which were libraries, administration buildings, harems, circumcision halls (!), Persian-style Diwan-e-khaas and Diwan-e-aam halls, the Sultan's bedchamber, the Queen Mother's complex, the royal kitchen, and the royal prayer halls.

The entrance gate where coronations would take place in the presence of an audience. The
little bronze container at the top would contain some water that would drip down. I haven't really understood the exact procedure, but it looked a bit like the arrangement above a Shivalingam in a Hindu temple.

A pattern of beautiful ceramics, broken only by a beautiful lady in the foreground.

The Sultan's bedchamber. I read somewhere that the concept of a canopy bed was a European invention to get around leaky castle ceilings. I wonder if the Turks had the same problem, or this is one of the European imports (like the baroque facades you'll see a bit further down).

This was a running theme throughout the palace complex - a small structure housing taps with running water. We were outside some sort of a training hall for statesmen,  which looked much like a modern day library with more comfortable seating. 

A lovely fountain in one of the palace gardens.

Couldn't resist cracking a "Not Found" joke on this one.

Built in the 1800s, and as baroque as can be.

Not sure I remember perfectly, but I think this lovely pattern of windows (with perfect Tetris gameplay shutters) are on the outside of the circumcision hall. I can imagine the princes developing a subliminal aversion to this place.

At least in terms of how the audio guide described it, this seemed to be analogous to the Persian Diwan-e-Aam , where the Sultan meets with the commoners.

After walking through the palace for a while, we found ourselves at the entrance to the harem. The word itself means "forbidden". Visually, the place was nowhere near as fascinating as the concept itself. The Sultan had a harem complex, where the Sultan's concubines, the Queen Mother, and the eunuchs that managed the complex lived. The concubines were specially trained to be . . . concubines, and they had different ranks, ranging from those who shared a bed with the Sultan, those that he called his favourites, those that he called a wife, and ultimately, the one person who would be the mother of the next in line to the throne. The eunuchs were custodians of the harem, and were really powerful; they had free access to the palace and the harem, and the "Lala" (custodian) could have an audience with the Sultan. I'm reading a detective novel called "The Janissary Tree" set in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire featuring a eunuch as the main protagonist. Exciting stuff so far.

This was right near the entrance to the harem. To the left were the rooms which the concubines shared.

To the left here were the rooms of the "black eunuchs", usually men from Ethiopia who were castrated by slavers and shipped over.

Courtyards in the harem.

Recursion in the Queen Mother's quarters. 

You could tell we were approaching the Queen Mother's quarters in the harem. The paintings got prettier, and the rooms got bigger.

After spending the morning in and around the Topkapi palace, we went down to the bazaars around the centre of the city, which are every bit as fascinating as the palace and the mosque. Several of these markets have been around from back in the day when Istanbul (or possibly Constantinople) was the junction for trade between the west and the east when cargo ships arrived from South Asia loaded with spices, gems, and other treasures which would eventually find their way to the markets of Europe.

Markets in Istanbul are quite different from European markets, and tend to resemble Indian bazaars a lot more. There usually are entire streets that cater to one kind of product. For example, we came across a stretch of a street that just sold towels and bath robes. A really long stretch that just sold spices. And a small stretch, just a few hundred meters long, that sold jewelry boxes, mannequins (just the hands and necks), and precision instruments like Vernier calipers and high-precision weighing scales. Upon asking, we were told that these were shops that catered to jewelers. 

A sheltered part of the bazaar.

More shops spring up nonchalantly against centuries-old walls.

A store that sold equipment for jewellery stores. Talk about a niche market.

While walking through the markets and shopping around, we came across this man selling Sahlep (a sweet milky drink with a couple of spices, served hot) to all the shopkeepers. We bought a glassful, and enjoyed it in the somewhat cool evening air. "This is what the Ottoman troops drank for energy back in the days of the empire", he said.

Another beautifully lit-up mosque.

Having spent the rest of the evening in bazaars, we slowly made our way back to our hotel in the Sultanahmet area and decided to call it a day. Early morning the next day, we decided to cross the Golden Horn and go over to Galata. In the middle ages, the area was home to some traders from the Italian city-states of Genoa and Venice. Today, it's one of the several districts comprising Istanbul. We took a tram over to the other side, and started walking up the slope to get to Taksim square. If you find the slope too much, you can also take a funicular.

Ramya in front of one of the mosques on the "Galata side".

Istanbul's seemingly omnipresent, very well-fed stray dogs enjoying
a bit of sun on a somewhat nippy morning. 

The "Monument of the Republic" (1928) at Taksim Square.

 Taksim Square seemed like a very upmarket area with a lot of trendy office buildings, lots of coffee shops, and smartly dressed people walking about in a hurry. Leading off from Taksim square is Istiklal Avenue, a really long street lined with shops, restaurants, and all sorts of interesting buildings.

"A History of Cyprus" is an interesting title to find in a bookshop
in a country that doesn't entirely recognize Cyprus as a nation.

The Church St. Anthony of Padua, built by the Italian residents of Istanbul in the 18th century.

A shop full of guitars on a street full of shops full of guitars near the Galata tower.

The Galata tower, built by the Genoese inhabitants of Galata in the 14th century.

 Having made our way from Taksim square through Istiklal Avenue all the way back to the waterfront, we were feeling a bit peckish. And we treated ourselves to a fish grill right next to the fish market right next to the water near Galata Bridge. I'm pretty sure that the grilled fish that ended up in our sandwiches were swimming in the sea no more than an hour ago. We settled down on the bridge to eat our snack, watching people have a go with their fishing rods towards noon. Incidentally, the underside of Galata Bridge has a huge assortment of shops stocking walkie-talkies, phones, exotic watches and clocks, and handguns(!?). Folks from Mumbai will find it very similar to some parts of CST and Lamington Road.

Fish grilled sandwich, while-you-wait (for about 30 seconds).

Ta-dah! A freshly grilled fish with onions and veggies in a
freshly baked piece of bread, 5 Turkish Lira. YUM!

One of the biggest attractions in Istanbul, at least for me, was the Theodosian walls. These walls, first built in the 6th century, kept invaders out of Byzantine Constantinople for about a thousand years. The first time that the city walls fell was when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. One could say that these walls were the state-of-the-art in the keep-invaders-out business for about ten centuries, which makes them a heck of an engineering marvel. So after devouring our snack, we took a tram over to the western part of the city, where the old city ended.

Getting off at the "Topkapi" tram stop (do not confuse this with the "Topkapi Palace" stop at the other side of the city!), we came to the surface and saw the same sight that must have crushed the hearts of many an invading army - the double-layered walls of Constantinople. The two-meter thick outer walls in front of the 12-meter high inner walls, or what's left of them, are still an imposing sight. I can imagine that before the use of gunpowder warfare in this part of the world, they must have been virtually impenetrable. For more insight into how the Ottomans attacked the wall in the battle of 1453,read Roger Crowley's gripping book, "Constantinople: The Last Great Siege".

The Theodosian walls from about 200m away.

Alternate layers of brick helped hold together
the mortar better, offering better earthquake-proofing.

Ramya on the inner wall.

Having spent an hour near the walls and just trying to imagine what we would have done if were were heading an attack on Constantinople, we started making our way back to Sultanahmet, to visit Hagia Sophia, the iconic mosque/church.

It's hard to tell if Hagia Sophia is more fascinating from the inside or the outside.

The church/mosque has a fascinating history. Initially it started out as a Byzantine church, but was then converted to a mosque by Sultan Mehmet II, the conqueror. When the Turkish Republic was formed, a decision was made to make it a place of worship for both faiths. What we found particularly interesting was how they reconciled the Muslim taboo against graven images and the Christian practice of lavishing their churches with beautiful imagery, mostly of characters from the Bible.

Pop-quiz: What are the photographers here taking pictures of in
a 1500-year-old, twice-rebuilt mosque+church? A cat.

Big enough to park and turn a 747 in.

A view from the first floor balcony.

Gilded paintings of Jesus, St. John the Baptist, and one other person
on the walls at Hagia Sophia.

Having sufficiently recovered from the dazzling experience of visiting Hagia Sophia, we walked around town a bit and found tucked away in an inconspicuous, decidedly un-touristy street, a small shop that called itself an "Art Cafe". True to its name, the owner stocked lots of paintings, rugs, and painted fabrics in the shop in addition to selling  coffee and shisha. The place had amazing local charm. Ramya and I spent a good deal of time there, enjoying the warm tea, watching the locals come in and play chess, and just looking around. It was a terrific place to relax and unwind, and a very memorable part of an amazing 5 days in Turkey.

The Art Cafe towards the southern part of Sultanahmet and its
very friendly and courteous proprietor.

The Hippodrome, an Byzantine arena for racing horses.
Home to two very fine Egyptian obelisks.

Our room at the Arden City Hotel, just before we left it.

Kaş

 Turkey is amazing in many ways, as we found out on a short four-day trip to the country. We took the evening Turkish Air flight out of Zurich, ended up in Istanbul at night, and took another plane a couple of hours later to Antalya in the south of Turkey. We checked in to a hotel and fell asleep. In the morning, a fantastic view of the Mediterranean greeted us.

The amazingly clean and sparkly-shiny Antalya airport.

The view from our hotel room in Antalya.

Just as we were wondering how wise it was to leave this spectacular room with a view and go somewhere else, our pick-up vehicle arrived as arranged. It costed about 50 CHF for a plane ticket from Istanbul to Antalya, and this car ride from Antalya to Kas would cost us about 100 CHF. Yay. It was a nice but mostly uneventful ride along the Mediterranean coast.



One thing we did notice was the number of greenhouses. Practically every village we passed, no matter how small, had half its area covered by greenhouses growing tomatoes. Orange trees grew everywhere; even the trees on the paved sidewalks were orange trees.

After about 2 hours, we finally arrived in Kaş.

The little "cedilla" on the "s" in "Kaş" turns the "s" into a "sh" sound (as in "sheep"). The same cedilla on a "c" turns it into a "ch" sound (as in "chocolate"). The Turkish language is a very interesting one for many reasons, not the least of which is their use of the Latin alphabet to form a purely phonetic script. In the late 1920s, a language reform replaced the old Ottoman Script, which looks a lot like Arabic to the untrained reader, with an extended Latin alphabet. We could read and pronounce most Turkish words (street signs, names of places, etc.) that we needed within a day of arriving, at least to the extent that the locals would know what we were talking about.

The words themselves are quite interesting. There are several words that one can easily recognize as being from Persian or Arabic. For example, we found some Arabic and Persian words in Turkish that  made their way into Hindi as well such as, "Hava" = air, "diwan" = sofa, "Gül" = a rose, "Zamani" = an era or a period, "şehir" (pronounced exactly as in Urdu/Hindi, as "sheher") = a city, "Duniya" = the world, "Dikkat" = trouble/danger. At the same time, they have a lot of words from French. For example, "coiffeur" for a hairdresser's saloon, "guichet" for a counter, "jeton" for a token, and they say "pardon" for "excuse me". However, instead of spelling them like in French, they use the Turkish script to create the same effective pronunciations, thus ensuring that no matter what the origin of the loan word, you always pronounce a word the way it's spelled.

Having finally arrived at Kaş, we found ourselves in a deserted hotel in a deserted part of town, with a spectacular view and an empty beach all to ourselves. Turns out that Europeans don't much like water that is less than 25 degrees, so nobody comes to Kaş after October. This had us a bit worried - what if the water was too cold for diving?

The omnipresent "Nazar" symbol. In this
case, this was embedded in the concrete
at the entrance to our hotel.

Kaş was one of several nearby towns that were considered part of the region of Lycia as far back as the Bronze Age (~1200 B.C.). There are several easily accessible tombs, sarcophagi, and ruins from back then. So in the town of Kaş itself, we found a few Lycian structures. In the neighbouring town of Xanthos, supposedly once the administrative capital of the region of Lycia, we found an impressive complex of ruins including a temple, a court, an amphitheatre, rock-cut tombs, and sarcophagi. The town itself is a lovely little town with a cozy center, a town square by the docks, and a couple of lovely mosques built in characteristic Turkish style.

This lovely view of the town of Kaş is from one of the Lycian
rock-cut tombs on the rocky hills next to the town,
Lycian  

Our hotel in the Çukurbağ peninsula.

Houses near the town center of  Kaş.

Ramya in the town square, a large pedestrian-only paved area. 

A Greek amphitheater built into the rock slope in Kaş.

A Lycian monument, cut from a single rock.
This one is a very high sarcophagus with a
stone lid,  and two lion heads on one side. 

A Lycian rock-cut tomb. Also in the town of Kas.

A lovely archway near the town of Xantos.
Xantos was apparently the administrative
and legal capital of the Lycians.

The entrance to the ruins of an amphitheatre. The two famous
Lycian tombs (the Harpy Tomb and the Pillar Tomb) are
visible in the distance.

Ramya walking into the amphitheatre.

The Harpy Tomb (background) and the Pillar
Tomb (foreground). They're huge, at about 6.5m
in height. The Harpy Tomb has bas-reliefs that
look a bit out of place because they're replicas
that were made in recent times to replace the originals
that the Brits took away in the mid 1800s. The Elgin
Marbles aren't the only ones, apparently.

This was another site in Xanthos, supposedly a temple dedicated
to Artemis. There was still-intact mosaic flooring on the ground, so
the floor was covered with thick sheets and smooth pebbles were spread
over the sheets.

If you lifted up the sheets under the pebbles, you could still see
~2000-year-old mosaic flooring.

This pillar contains the longest surviving inscription
in the Lycian language, at 200+ lines

We got around quite conveniently. Somehow, my Indian motorcycle license was good enough for a local vehicle rental shop to give us a Yamaha scooter. It was an ungeared scooter, but powerful enough to handle the tricky climbs in and around the area. We were in the Çukurbağ peninsula, and it was quite easy for us to use the scooter to the town. To go between towns, we used a "Dolmuş". These are small privately owned mini vans that ply between small towns in the region. They're very similar to the "tuktuks" in Egypt, and "tumtums" in Maharashtra in India, and are effectively shared taxis that will depart when somewhat full.

Ramya and I scooting about on the scooter.

We took the Dolmuş to get to Xanthos and then tried to get to the nearby town of Patara, known to be  a nesting site for turtles. The beach was too far and we were a bit tired, so we ended up abandoning the trip to the beach.

An awesome signboard on a shop in Patara.

Ramya waiting at a crossroads for a Dolmuş van to show up.

Kaş is best known outside of Turkey for being a fantastic diving destination offering very clear waters and varied marine life. The biggest attraction, at least for us, was the possibility of diving at one of several wrecks in the area. However, the diving season was all but over, and most dive schools had shut shop for the winter. We found one dive school that was willing to take us out on a huge 50-person boat which we had all to ourselves. Wasteful, I know. Our dive guide told us that that since the water was very cold (18 C), nobody wants to dive any more. Ramya and I stared blankly at her wondering if we even needed wetsuits at that temperature.

We ended up having a fascinating dive (and regretted not having an underwater camera) into the wreck of a C-47 plane. At 20m under the surface, in perfect visibility (~40m), we went into the plane, looked around, peeped into the cockpit, and swam around it a bit before surfacing. We went with Dragoman Adventures (http://www.dragoman-turkey.com/t/12/). Five stars, highly recommended!

About 20m down from here there's a huge plane with a 15m
wingspan. All you have to do is put on a dive mask or swim
goggles and you'll see it from the surface through the
cystal-clear water.

The Dragoman dive crew and us. The two cats in the picture are
part of the crew, and eagerly await the boat's return to the dock.

The Dragoman dive boat was a self-contained dive center

Having spent two days in the region, we got on a plane that took us to Istanbul in the middle of the night. I'm still not done writing about that part of the trip.