A Long Turkish Jaunt

After four weeks of traveling in Turkey, I returned to Cairo last night. While we were ostensibly "on vacation" in Turkey, I hesitate to use that term because this trip was anything but a relaxing, beach resort experience. We traveled nearly 2,500 miles by bus (including several overnight trips), and we spent many hours under the hot August sun visiting historical sites, hiking, and, of course, gorging ourselves on delicious Turkish food.

Our itinerary included pretty much every region of Turkey: we spent a week on the Aegean coast, a few days in the middle of the country, another few days near the Black Sea in the northeast, a week in eastern Turkey ("Kurdistan," as many easterners prefer to call it), and then a week in Ankara and Istanbul.

Aside from our ambitious schedule, the biggest challenge of the trip was certainly the language barrier. While Turkish contains some words imported from Arabic (colloquial Arabic also has borrowed a number of Turkish words), the grammatical structures of the two languages are completely different. Because so few Turks spoke English, we were compelled to communicate using the most basic of basic vocabularies (we managed to learn simple questions and numbers) and hand motions. That caveman-esque communication system enabled us to scrape by, but we had very few opportunities to connect with Turks in the way that we are able to connect with Egyptians.

Thus, while we learned a great deal about Turkey throughout our four weeks there, I cannot write with any authority on the subject of Turkey's politics or culture. For now, I will sum up my experience in Turkey with a few photographs. Because of my aversion to taking photos, the credit for these pictures goes to my travel partner Chris Opila.


An ancient volcanic eruption at Nemrut Dagi, Turkey's second tallest mountain, left a huge crater with a beautiful lake perfect for swimming.


Ataturk, the founder of modern-day Turkey, made his name at the battle at Gallipoli in WWI, holding off a joint Australian, British, and French assault aimed at taking the Bosphorus.


Ani, once an old silk road city in northeast Turkey, has been reduced to ruins on a grassy plain.


The Sumela Monastery, carved into the mountains near the Black Sea coast, was one of the most breathtaking sights that we saw during our four weeks in Turkey.


With its several thousand years of history, Turkey often combines the very old with the very new. The hilltop ruins of Pergamon, an old Roman city, overlook the new town of Pergamon.


The hot springs at Pamukkale, Turkey's version of Yellowstone.


Finally, despite Ataturk's militant secularism, Turkey is still very much a Muslim country and has a rich Islamic history as well. The Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul was built in the 16th century during the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent, one of the most famous Ottoman sultans. The inside of the mosque is just as beautiful as the outside.