The truck drivers keep being the greatest hospitality in the Turkish roads, but we reached Afyon with a car full of people, it didn’t matter for them, they put us inside. They were so happy to see foreigners, we have gone out from touristic areas and they are not used. Afyon is in general a conservative city where most of the women cover the hair with scarf; the family that hosted us was extremely religious too. As we arrived quite late, we had to go fast to a restaurant to have dinner because it was almost the time to be able to eat, during the second week of Ramadan.
We decided again to adapt us and to have breakfast with them before the sunrise; besides, we did it in the traditional table of Ramadan, on the floor.
Here there is not much to see a part of a big castle at the top of a rock, but it was very interesting to walk around the quarters far from the center, where a traditional and hard life is seen.
In Afyon we took the great route where our commercial ancestors used to bring silk and other things from the Far East to the West.
We covered the 230 km up to Konya without hitchhike, something incredible... The first, a truck driver, asked us if we were going to Konya, and he advanced us 20 km; when he was giving us the backpacks from the towage he raised the arm and the truck that was passing skidding in the road, stopped to take us. This left us only 50 km far from the city, and when we were looking for a place to hitchhike, another car stopped to help us, and take us up to Konya.
Konya is the largest city in extension of Turkey, is enormous... We were at the house of Ihsan of CS, who casually hosted two Australian girls from Sydney at the same time. The members of the club are always very open people, with those that is a pleasure to talk, generally they are also travelers, so all together we gave advises of here, and there...
In this city is very typical the dance of the Dervishes, people who “dance” rotating very fast for hours, entering in trance; they think that they transport energy from the Heaven to the Earth. We were firstly fortunate of having the opportunity of being able to see a big spectacle, and free, but it was too much... after two hours in the queue, the stadium was full with over 20.000 people, we had to be for the around 30.000 of the many people that approached this night. There was no show for us...
In Konya we keep seeing mosques and important holy places of the Islam, always so different and interesting.
Sometimes we have so much luck that we don’t even believe it... our following place is Nevşehir, the heart of the Cappadocia. The person who took us, was a computer programmer that had to go through different towns of the Cappadocia, we were very lucky, the first stop was Sultanhanı, one of the few towns that we found on the way through the main road; the ground turned arid dominated by a big volcano in front of us.
After passing Aksaray, we went into lands of Cappadocia with some stony formations very weird, it seems that we are in another planet. The first interesting village was Gülağaç, where we saw the first homes excavated in the rock, and the inhabitants live in the most traditional way, even they had used a lane of the road to dry the pumpkin seeds. His following visit was Güzelyurt, while he went to work, we went to see the underground city, old churches and houses into the rocks and with underground canals; something taken from a fantastic movie.
The 'touristic tour'' ' finished with his work, and he left us on road to reach Nevşehir. And here we met some of the most incredible people, Emrah, Mevlüt, Hasan and Rose; since the first moment we fit, and we passed great days with them. The hospitality with the foreigner is a Turkish tradition, something that is inculcated from fathers to children, and these guys have known to do it perfectly.
They brought us to see all the Cappadocia; the first day, we went four of us to catch a bus, and as we miss it... we hitchhike, the four of us!!, a madness in Europe; here, we didn’t wait more than 5 minutes...
The first stop was Avanos, in any place here there are houses in the rocks, but the most typical thing of Avanos are the ceramics. We went to a shop where they did a demonstration of how they make the vessels, even we had the opportunity of try it…
Göreme is the most important place of this area, here are found about 300 churches among the 11th, and the 15th century, many of them with frescoes really well preserved in its interior. The place itself, is like a fairies tale; they used the strange stony formations to do the churches and houses, even of several floors upward and underground.
Even the hollows of the tombs can be seen, which are beside the homes, by this way the deceased relatives were always with them.
That night we were invited to a birthday party; really, it is very similar to Spain, but when is Ramadan there are people that respects not drinking alcohol, even they have to be careful to not be seen with alcohol on the street because it is bad looking. In this party we tried the national drink, the Rakia.
On the following day we visited another place of the Cappadocia, in the first place, we saw the symbol of here, “The three beautiful”, and afterwards Ürgüp, a village similar to Göreme.
This other night we changed the birthday party, for a Sangria party for 15 people where they all decided to pass of Ramadan for a night...
Following The Silk Road, by car, truck and all kind of transport we reached Sivas. Here there is a very important building for the Turkish people; the great national hero Mustafa Kemal, ATATÜRK, pronounced here the first words after the Turkish release.
In Sivas we went with Selçuk to two performances of traditional music, one of them in a very special site with more than 100 years of antiquity.
The last stop of the mythic Road, is Erzurum, one of the coldest cities of the world, and we had checked it...
The vehicles that took us, started to be very different, while in Europe the people talked us that they travel to Norway, Sweden... now the commercial routes of the carrier, are Russia, Kazakhstan... or in the case of the man that took us, Iran. Here in Turkey, for a day it seemed that we were already in the neighbor country; the truck driver and the other 3 trucks that accompanied him, stopped at the half of the way to prepare a chicken barbecue, Iranian stile.
We told to the driver that we will go to Iran for the next year; but he didn’t understand it and he insisted us continuously on taking us to Iran with him now.
Erzurum is among high mountains, in an inhospitable landscape, dry, and very, very cold. It lodges great monuments in its interior, and such a best choice to see it… on the holiest day for the Muslims, when the prayers were listened for hours until very late. On our arrival casually we found the dining room where the people eat for free during the month of the Ramadan, we place ourselves in the queue with the backpacks and rapid some people came to us to put us in front of everybody. If you are woman or you go accompanied by a girl you have privilege!
From some days now, we are out of touristic places, and that is noticed a lot on the people, but in this city especially because on the streets ALL the people greet us, others stop us to talk or they have even invite us to sleep in their homes.
We continue route by hitchhiking towards the Black Sea, and as always the truck drivers want to take so much care of us that they don’t let us to hitchhike, saying that it is very dangerous, (but they pick us up…); we have to explain them that we come from Spain like this way for more than 6 months, then, they agree to leave us alone.
Trabzon is a very peculiar place for the Turkish, is the "joke town" of Turkey, the city is very long, there are only two main parallel streets that extend for kilometers and kilometers. Again this place remembers us to our place, everything is very green, mountainous and a lot of rain. Ali of CS, brought us to see the incredible monastery of Sumela placed in the vertical wall of a mountain.
Near here is Uzungöl, a nice place among mountains of local tourism. After these mountains it crashed some years ago the Spanish military airplane that created a lot of controversy.
