I was even more thrilled as instead of checking into a pension, Turkish low budget hotels, I had booked into a cave hotel. But this was no ordinary cave hotel. For a change the backpacker in me, always looking for a cheap deal, took a back step and I decided to go all out and splurge. To be very honest this hotel, which I first saw in an email sent by a friend, was what pulled me to Turkey in the first place. As the car came to a stop in front of a rocky hill, I looked up at the dramatic and soaring structure, and I knew I had made the correct choice. The pictures on the mail could not do justice to this breathtaking view of the hotel- Yunak Evleri.

Carved into a mountain cliff in the ancient village of Urgup, the hotel includes eight cave houses all dating back to the 5th and the 6th century .A separate 19th century Greek mansion set on the base of the hill was bought by the owner, Yusuf Gorurgoz from a local Cappadocian family and now houses the reception, private dining hall,reading room and the lobby. An ex- Istanbul native, Gorurgoz realized that Cappadocia was fast changing from being a backpacker’s destination to becoming the ultimate city for troglodytes wishing to swim in the lap of luxury. Though the idea of buying crumbled hovels for a song and converting them to perfect idyllic retreat was not entirely new, Yunak Evleri, along with a couple of other hotels managed to set high standards for luxury living in this desolate terrain. The Greek mansion, renovated to keep the original style, was packed with antiques and some beautiful hand-crafted furnishings.

As the manager, Abdullah, a nattily dressed old gentleman, showed us around the place, I took in the smell and sights of the hotel -all reminiscent of a bygone era. Old plump peasant ladies doing laundry the old fashioned way, the smell of freshly baked bread, the quaint hand pump, the sepia tinted family photographs. I felt as if any moment someone would turn on the gramophone and the air would be filled with the lilting voice of Dooney Wilson crooning the famous Casablanca number “As time goes by”. The rotary dial phone seemed less like a show piece and fit in perfectly next to the transistor which I expected to crackle with news of the World War II.

In a stone house across, was the breakfast hall with an adjoining kitchen and a larder well stocked with local fare all produced within the village – succulent tomatoes, fresh orange juice, feta cheese and marmalades.

Yunak Evleri definitely prides itself as a private exclusive romantic retreat. To reach to your cave you had to navigate through a labyrinth of narrow passageways and curved stone stairways. This was because all the rooms were spread across the gigantic cliff and had their own private patios overlooking the Turkish mesa.

Until I stepped into my room here, the only way I could describe caves were dark, spooky and damp holes filled with bats. My cave, on the other hand, had dark hardwood floors, creamy whitewashed walls, old kilim carpets and handcrafts, writing desk, and a rocking chair all decorated in warm ottoman style. And not just a functional bathroom but a spacious marble one, fitted with a Jacuzzi. The carefully chosen lightning lent a romantic air to the cave.

The planter’s chair on my terrace gave me an uninterrupted stunning view and I resolved to stay here for the rest of my stay in Turkey. But then there was the so much more to explore.

Time seemed to have stood still in the sleepy small town of Urgup, where three left turns take you back to square one. As I walked down the streets I noticed that all shops, restaurants and houses were built of the same material and hence the town had the monochromatic yellowish tinge. Urgup managed to strike a balance between preserving its Anatolian traditions and cultivating an unobtrusive yet irresistible tourist infrastructure.

Not everyone in Cappadocia was lucky enough to get a cave with a view. I discovered that on my next day’s tour to Kaymakli. While the idea of pre historic people seeking shelter in caves is not entirely unique, what struck me was the sheer magnitude involved here. Within the entire region of Cappadocia over two hundred underground cities have been discovered and forty of these had atleast four levels or more. As a largely barren and desolate area, central Cappadocia was bypassed by many armies making it the ideal refuge for early Christians who built these underground cities to take shelter from the oppression of the Roman soldiers. These hideouts were again used after 6th century to escape from the Arab armies. The entry to every secret underground passageway was camouflaged by a circular keystone, which once closed could only be opened from inside.
As I crouched down the passageways, which now are well lit, I could not help but wonder at the tenacity of those people who have had to stay in these dark environs for months at stretch. The air shafts which allowed for ventilation were a sheer engineering feat. The underground city of Kaymakli could at one time accommodate upto 15000 people and was complete with kitchens, stables and even a grape press to make wine.
On the way to the Goreme, we stopped at Guray Comlekcilik, a family owned pottery in Avanos .Avanos has a history of pottery making that dates back to the Hittite times. I tried my hand at the Potters wheel, and if you happen to visit that place and spot a ceramic plate, shaped more like the map of Australia, you know who the artist is.
Goreme Open Air Museum is a monastic complex composed of churches, rectories and dwellings. This is where the early Christians preachers spread the message of Christ far away from religious persecutors. The frescoes in the church depict narrations from the Bible including the Last Supper, Adoration of the Magi and the Nativity Scene. As the frescoes continue to chip off the cave walls, it reveals a layer of earlier paintings underneath. While the later day paintings were colorful, the earlier ones used only red dye and were more simplistic. During the Iconoclastic period many of the frescoes and paintings were damaged while the eyes of the images were scratched out by the local Turkish population scared of the evil eye.

All over the panoramic view of Cappadocia, one can see, on closer inspection, niches carved into the soft tufa. Expecting another tale of blood and gore behind these mysterious carvings, I was a bit let down when I learnt that they were pigeon lofts, painted white to attract the birds, and built to collect pigeon droppings, an excellent source of fertilizer. On the way back we stopped at Uchisar, which must have had one of the greatest collections of pigeon lofts in the world and hence given the name Pigeon Valley. They were carved wherever space allowed including abandoned caves and the walls of collapsed churches.
In Cappadocia it is difficult to get a bad hike when you are surrounded by such spectacular scenery. I picked the Red Valley hike. It was like walking through an open air structure chiseled by Mother Nature. We saw the fairy’s chimneys at close quarters, walked over pink and yellow earth which changed colors as the day progressed. As the sun set down over the horizon and painted the sky hues of blue and orange, the colors getting reflected in the valley below, I knew I will be back to my Eden again.

A couple of hours later, as we rode over the bleak and barren landscape, flat as a pancake, the sun beating down on us, the salt laden winds cutting across ,DevjiBhai ‘s words kept ringing in my ears. After countless trips to the salubrious mountains, here I am on a battered jeep, driving through, what for me, was one of the most inhospitable and unwelcoming of all terrains- Little Rann of Kutch.

I couldn’t have asked for a better guide for my stay in Rann. DevjiBhai Dhamecha, a local from Dhanghadra, one of the few villages dotting the border of the sanctuary, started out as an amateur photographer, chronicling life in the sanctuary. Over the years he became the voice of Little Rann, and protecting the sanctuary has since been his sole ambition in life. We stayed at DevjiBhai‘s Kooba huts, circular mud huts with conical roofs, built on the style of Banjania tribes of Northern Gujarat.

The Rann of Kutch is a vast saline wasteland of around 30,000 sq kms, between the Gulf of Kutch and the Indus in Pakistan and is the largest declared biosphere in India. This inhospitable terrain is an effective deterrent for illegal immigrants – a wrong turn in this endless desert could indeed prove fatal. This vast expanse was once an extension of the Arabian Sea, but centuries of silting have turned it into an extensive mudflat, inundated during the monsoons, salty and cracked in the other seasons. The Rann (salt marshes in Hindi), was a navigable lake during the time of Alexander.

Surprisingly enough, the Rann has five distinct wetlands which are a rich habitat for a wide range of water and terrestrial birds including the famed flamingoes. We took the highway which ran alongside the sanctuary to a marshy area where DevjiBhai assured me I would still be able to see a few of those remaining migratory birds – given that it is almost summer now and they have flown back to cooler climes.

I expected to spot a few desultory birds, and was pleasantly surprised to see rows and rows of birds, carpeting the entire marsh – a colorful tapestry of the white Demoiselle Cranes, the Pink flamingoes and red-wattled Lapwing, interspersed with the Little Cormorant, Pelicans, Lesser Flamingoes, Herons and Egrets. In the winters, I can only imagine this place turning into a bird lover’s paradise.

Trying to get a better shot of the birds, I waded through the black mud as quietly as I could. My foot slipped and I was unsteady for a moment. Enough to alert the birds and I witnessed the magnificent sight where the entire lot took to the air en masse, and the only sound I heard was the distinct flapping of a thousand pairs of wings.

On the way back to the Kooba huts, we were lucky enough to cross a group of Maldharis, as they were packing up for the next leg of their journey. The Maldharis are nomadic herdsmen who migrate annually after the winters from Kutch and Saurashtra to Madhya Pradesh. From their long black headscarves and magical symbols tattooed on the arms, we were told that they were the Rabaris, believed to be descendants of the Huns who invaded India in the 5th century. The women were tall and well built and clearly very business savvy as they demanded 300 rupees before I could even take off the lens cover from my camera!

The next day’s safari, far inside the sanctuary, transported me to a different panorama altogether. In a landscape where nothingness defined everything, it was DevjiBhai’s experience that guided us around the flat land and a bare horizon broken only by the occasional salt pan or sometimes a bet (plateau or elevated island).

The only other tire tracks we saw were that of salt trucks. Gujarat is the largest salt producer in India and a third of it comes from the salt pans of Rann. And due credit must be given to the hardy Agarias, the traditional salt workers, who battle hard conditions ,camping in the midst of the desert to eke out a living from the salt pans.

It is important for the water to keep flowing through the salt pan without interruption so that salt crystals are formed properly-which makes it imperative for the Agarias to pitch tents with family, in the summer heat. As the summer heat intensifies, the salt in the blistered earth is transformed into a radiant dazzling whiteness “Even after an Agaria is cremated, the soles of his feet remain intact “, rues DevjiBhai who himself hails from a family of salt workers. “Years of toiling bare feet in the salt pans harden their skin to the extent that even fire cannot burn it.”

I was prepared to see mirages in the desert, of course, but that still did not bar me from making the classic blooper, the first time I spotted a ‘lake’ far off in the horizon. In my defense, I actually thought it was an artificial water body constructed by the salt workers. A few moments later I saw a couple of trucks hovering above the shimmering reflection and I was finally convinced that it was a mirage after all.

As we moved away from the salt pans, the hard cracked earth gave way to the softer sand of the deserts, where we drove across herds of the chestnut brown Wild Asses (Equus Hemionus Khur).Locally known as the Ghud Khur, it is one of the sturdiest animals able to withstand the desert heat and survive on scrubby grass and food of prosopsis- the few saline resistant plants that can grow here. The Rann is the home of the last surviving Asiatic Wild Asses and along with the Blue Bulls (Nilgais) they are most easily spotted fauna in the desert.

In the monsoons, tidal waters flood the land and the land becomes totally submerged as the Rann fills up with seasonal brackish water ideal for shrimps. The desert metamorphosises to a huge fishing pond and the Agarias give way to the local Maachlimars who then use boats for shrimp cultivation. That explained the rather surreal scene of boats lying abandoned in the midst of the barren deserts!

Evening set in and as the jeep took one last turn, I saw smoke coming up far away from an Agaria camp. A family of salt workers preparing for dinner maybe? For me it was a step into a difficult hostile terrain – I could enjoy the novelty of this unique terrain, unparalleled in the world, comforted by the fact that I was just hours away from the comforts of city life. But for that family of Agarias, the summer has just started. And with it the beginning of hard toil under the relentless sun, with not even a tree for shade.

This is one of the winning entries of the “My Trip of a Lifetime” contest by Kongkona Sarma

We are at the Sirkeçi train station, the destination of the once famed Orient Express. We are not waiting for the train though. We have come to experience the spiritual journey of the followers of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, the exalted Sufi saint.

Istanbuls Blue Mosque - Source Oberazzi

The Melveli order of the Dervish sect has a unique ritual which takes the form of the sema, a “whirling” dance where the positioning of the body, outstretched arms with one hand facing the heavens and the other facing the earth, symbolizes man as a bridge between the two spheres. A performance is held every night at Platform 1 of the station.

Whirling Dervishes - Source Flickr, earthmagnified

The Whirling Dervishes, in their white robes reminiscent of shrouds, left me completely mesmerized .It was as if within the last one hour I was transported to another place, another time in the distant past. Not unlike the rest of Istanbul, where the grandeur of the Blue Mosque and Ayasofya, opulence of Dolmabahçe Palace, echo of intrigue behind the walls of Topkapi and soulful wail of the muezzins call from the many graceful minarets towering over the city, all have the power to transfer you to another era and another way of living.

Turkey is rightly called the Cradle of Civilization. Here one is equally likely to find remnants of early Greek and Roman civilization, and the Persian, Selcuk, Byzantine and Ottoman Empire. This is the place where you can truly say the West met the East. Maybe that’s why the traveler from the West leaves with a feeling of having seen an eastern exotic city while for me it was the closest I had got to Europe- cobbled streets lined with coffee shops, the bright Mediterranean sun and the blue waters.

If Turkey was the crown of the ancient Islamic world ,Istanbul is the original jewel in the crown The city has one foot in Europe and one in Asia- the only place where a ferry can transport you to another continent every fifteen minutes. It is split down the middle by the Bosphorus Strait and to the east of the waterway is the Asian side, a predominantly residential retreat while the historic peninsula of the Old city occupy the European side separated by the picturesque Golden Horn estuary.

The 2500 year old history of Istanbul is most evident in the Old City known as Old Stamboul or Sultanahmet and this is where I made my base. Over the next six days as I strolled through this historic peninsula, one ancient structure after the other laid out like a museum, I had to remind myself often that this was after all a thriving modern city.

The Old city is dominated by the Ayasofya and the Blue Mosque two massive edifices challenging each other from the opposite ends of the Sultanahmet Park.

Ayasofya was originally a church, (infact the largest Christian church until the 16^th century), built by Emperor Justinian, and later on converted to a mosque by Mehmut II when he conquered the city. In accordance with the Islamic rule prohibiting representation of figures many of the frescoes and mosaics were defaced or destroyed.. Later restorations reveal some of the most striking mosaics of early Christianity.

The Blue Mosque or the Sultan Ahmet Camii was built not just as a desire by the Sultan to leave behind an imperial namesake but also to build a monument to rival the Ayasofya. The abundant use of the famed Iznik tile decorated with various hues of blues prompted the mosque to be named the Blue Mosque. The blue of the mosque changes to yellow, orange and red depending on the time of the day and the entrance you choose to use.

And around the corner lies the Topkapi Palace. Guidebooks had warned, quite rightly so, to keep aside one whole day just to marvel at the six hundred years of Ottoman history all behind the imperial gates. This was the administrative seat of the Ottoman Empire for almost 400 years. Among the display of the Sultans’ wealth, some gifted and some looted, was the Peacock Throne which was gifted to Mahmut I by Nadir Shah who picked it up in India during of his many raids. I had a good mind to pick it up and walk away it, my patriotic fervor only weighed down by the extreme security measure around.

However, amidst the splendor, what caught my interest was a room which housed the holy relics of the three major Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It has the staff of Moses, personal belongings of the Prophet Mohammed, including relics of his hair tooth and footprints and the first ever copy of the Koran documented on deerskin. The room also has the Mohammed Chamber in which an imam has been reciting passages from the Koran continually for the past 500 years.

The Harem, which is Arabic for “forbidden”, was the most luxurious part of the palace and also the most private as this was where the Sultan stayed with his concubines, slaves and wives. The Harem had three quarters, the outer one for the Black eunuchs, the inner courtyard for the concubines and the sea facing area reserved for the Sultan and his family. Though lapped in luxury the Harem was more of a gilded cages as the women were rarely allowed out.

We took Istanbul’s efficient tram to visit the Dolmabahçe Palace, probably the only structure influenced not by Islamic designs and motifs but by the more contemporary western style, so much so that the palace, complete with crystal banisters and chandeliers would have been more at place in France than in Istanbul. Sultan Abdulmecid III, built this palace, consisting of 285 rooms, four grand salons and six hamams, to give an illusion of prosperity as Turkey was fast gaining the moniker of Sick Man of Europe. Reality was that the empire by that time had already lost much of its past glory.

Not satisfied with the history on the streets, we also visited the Istanbul Archaeology Museum which houses over one million objects, the most extraordinary of which are the sarcophagi dating back to the 4^th century B.C.

But then it is not always about the history. Taking the Bosphorus cruise gave me a wide angle view of the city famously divided between two continents by the Bosphorus Strait. Along the shores were the Rumeli Fortress built, in vain, to keep out the invading Ottoman army.

In Turkey you cannot escape the blue eye (nazar boncugu) – represented in various forms like wall hangings, ceramics, key chains and bookmarks. I picked up quite a few at the Grand Bazaar, one of the largest covered markets in the world. The main attraction for the western tourist here is bargaining. For us Indians, it is shopping as usual. Infact the trick is to enter a shop when it is not crowded with other tourists and gently throw in that you are from India. The salesman will know he is in the company of a seasoned bargainer and will start the game at reasonable rates. When he turns away from you in disgust you know you have reached the absolute bottom price for the item. And all this will be conducted over Turkish black tea, which as a true blue Assamese, I could not refuse.

It is the same with the Spice Bazaar, a must do for all from the West of Istanbul. Most shops there display common Indian spices as some kind of exotic ware from the Orient .I stopped at the Spice Bazaar on the way to the Galata Bridge. We crossed the Bridge on foot in the evening when the city takes on a spectacularly romantic glow – when fishermen line the railings of the bridge and sea gulls hover over us.

In our hunt for the source of the authentic Lokum, the traditional sticky sweet, we land at Ali Muhiddin Hac? Bekir Confectioners, the original suppliers of the sweet to the Palace. The shop is in the fashionable district of Beyoglu, the centre of modern Istanbul’s night life.

By this time we have had our fill of kebaps and doners, dolmas (rice wrapped in grape leaves, my absolute favorite), pides (pizzas) and Koftes along with endless glasses of Ayran, the Turkish equivalent of our good old lassi and, Efes the omnipresent Turkish beer. The meal is not over till you have the Baklava, the Turkish dessert and Dondurma, the Turkish handmade ice-cream. For street food, there were hand carts all over selling roasted chestnuts and simits, a circular bread with sesame seeds, much preferred by the locals.

In Beyoglu we had the most authentic Turkish dinner experience in one of the many Meyhanes. This is where the residents of the city, far away from the tourists ridden parts gather to eat, drink and sing along with live bands playing Turkish songs, right next to your table and like a good Turk you are expected to join them. After a few glasses of Raki, the aniseed flavored national spirit, the party gets going and some even break plates, as a show of appreciation. Much to my distress, no one broke a plate that night. I would have, just to set the mood for the evening, were it not for the fact that I would be charged for every broken plate – a minute detail not mentioned in any of the guidebooks.

And of course no trip to Turkey can be complete without experiencing the hamam. We went to the almost 500 year old Cemberlitas Hamam and this is as authentic as it can get. But it is better not to expect a lavish spa like experience. The hamam rose more out of the Islamic requirement of cleanliness, than as a luxury. In olden times the Hamam was a social get together where instead of having coffee together, the townsfolk just happened to, well, take a bath together. Frankly I found the whole Hamam brouhaha a bit overrated as I could barely breathe inside the steaming hot room and my overtly delicate skin could well have done without the heavy handed scrubbing. But then each one to himself and many do come back for a second time.

As I stepped out, for one last stroll through the streets of Sultanahmet, the evening sun lent a dazzling brilliance to domes of Ayasofya and Blue Mosque. And the city of thousand minarets resonated with the voices of the evening prayer.