This morning fought our way out of Ankara, and headed off to Cappadocia region featuring troglodytes and cave dwellers. We followed the nominated route down to the salt lake (Tus Golu) and then headed off main roads thru small villages where no GPS has gone before. Our intended road was quite some way off the main highway and eventually we found a sign in Turkish at an intersection which seemed to be making some point or another about the road ahead. Us being totally ( non ) fluent in Turkish, pressed on to find that since our map had been publishesd a Dam had been built and the road therefore was no more.
At this point a number of locals all turned up to give advice. This was in the middle of nowhere with acres & acres of mown hay. One of the locals looked under our car and indicated that the road ahead may be a problem. We eventually turned back and found various other roads which got us to where we wanted to go.
One good aspect of this was that we came across a mountain city of caves which was only discovered in 1975, and opened to the public in '91. We were the only people there apart from the "keeper". There was an 11th century church with exceedingly well preservedfrescoes and also an underground city complete with ancient toilets, with a couple of bends in the passage, allegedly to deal with odours!
Underground church and city at Tatlarin
Arrived at our Urgip hotel around 3.30pm by engaging a local hire car owner & his young daughter to lead us to it. Only been open a few months and up twisty lanes etc. The lap of luxury, could spend some time here indeed.
I can see the loo becoming PRM's next "big thing' in bathroom installations, in fact, by the look of the build quality you might have done this one!
ReplyDeleteKeep motoring, Noel
The Puce Goosers are a little out of touch but sent this the other day:
ReplyDeleteGreetings from the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Would appreciate you posting a comment for our loyal followers as we are filtered from accessing the site.
Arrived Tabriz 10.30 pm tonight, needed a good cold ale but of course.......................
Spent morning at Van Lake hotel carpark fixing a leaking radiator. Therefore late to leave and usual palavar at both border crossings. 3 hours wasted.
Roads so bad that we were stopped by those law keeping officials ( have to be careful what words are in this or else message gets the chop ) who noticed we had one headlight not working. That was because it had fallen out of the bodywork and was hanging by its cables on the front bumper.
Anyway all for now, dont know how much you can say in comments, maybe a couple of comments so people know why no posts at present
Thanks
P & L & PG
( Lm in headscarf at 70 mph is a sight to behold !!!! )
Also for those that don't know the Bentley driver is running a blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://thegreatgame2011.blogspot.com/
Noel