Getting Outside Of Goreme

The air breathed of men's cologne mixed with the intoxicating benzene as our little motorcycle made its precarious nature down the cobbled pathway across Ortahisar - Ibrahimpasa down towards Goreme.

Our day took us out on a path that charted none of any maps but we would soon find ourselves immersing our fascination with 6th Century-old worth of a ghost town in Cavusin, abandoned in ruins since the great 1960 earthquake. Today, we met a local guide that must had been sent by St. John the baptist himself to help us up the dangerous slopes, musky chambers of former kitchens, mangers and prayer rooms. Mehmet occupied an almost unnoticeable corner of the street carving his talent on the local soft volcanic stones and Cappadocian Obsidian rocks. We were taken on many sites to view the undiscovered sunset, the dusty lanes and an old chimney protruding from the base of an underground home that had seen many previous Christians living here before the great migration began in the return to the Orthodox land or the move to Islam when the Ottoman took over.

Everything seemed rarer and wilder out here in the biting sun. We cut across the dry air like two lovers eloping into the uncharted future as the road took us to villages that still somehow kept their old ways. The yellow of sunflowers mixed in a bewildering collage with the red of tomato fields and fluffy cotton plants while the hydraulic anemone wisps of flowering water pipes showered like swaying ballerinas onto the sandy patches of land that blond-haired kids ran playing in between their wheel barrows, watched over by an intense, quiet grandmother.

Headscarves blew in the warm wind as village women sat in a union exchanging daily gossip while hands kept a vigil at their sewing as a rusty donkey carriage creaked its tired joints up the road towards the basalt mosque. Away from the comfort of the usual suspects, getting past the towns of Mustafapasa, Urgup, Kaymakli and back towards Nevsehir into the valleys of Uchisar was like visiting a group of ancient men, promising you a good story that had been told over the ages.

Just that nobody bothered stopping long enough to listen. If only we took just a minute longer to ponder over that cup of coffee while the senior stones of a Justinian church of the most august kind hovered over your wondering of a question too many, began many years ago.

Hot Air Balloon Love

I think that I might fly away, in my hot air balloon

And hide from worldly worries on the dark side of the moon

There's but one thing I need before I float into the blue

I need a sky companion and I want it to be you

We'll fly beyond the storm clouds and we'll watch from up above

I'll cover you in rainbows as we feel each others' love

You'll shower in the stars at midnight in our special place

I'll dry you with a comet's tail and kiss your beaming face

Dreamy drifting panorama, changing every day

Every night your loving smile will be my Milky Way

The moon will wane before us, sailing there in heaven's height

For nothing else can challenge our love's everlasting light

Venus shining on us, glowing soft at our devotion

Our daily drifting dalliance in love's celestial ocean

I'll write you lovers' poetry and you will be my muse

Orion and Andromeda will oversee our cruise

We'll sleep with clouds as pillows, maybe steal an angel's wings

Then fly as magic lovebirds, or slide round Saturn's rings

And should we tire of drifting and the stars all floating by

We'll hook onto a meteor and soar across the sky 

Will you consent to be my mate on our celestial ship?

I'm ready, heart all packed with love, to last us for the trip

Take my hand and step aboard, we're heading for the sun

We're flying till we find the place where our two souls are one.

- Graeme King

Goreme, A Hiker's Dream

Of course there are other more hard core (no pun intended) landscapes, more serious paths for the daredevils. There will be many more beautiful sunrises and sunsets. But this is as with many others, a place touched by something far beyond the comprehension of science. The lava may had cooled off millenniums ago. Ancient churches and monasteries will go on proclaiming the sanctity of religion's fervent pursuit for the hermetic lifestyle, and for others, salvation from persecution.

Whether odd faces or animal shapes tickle your fancy as you wander amongst walls of pink, eggshell and green, Goreme rocks through, at times, its bizarre representation of our wildest imaginations. For us, it was something like going back to something old and familiar in our travels and it's all about getting a bit lost to rediscover something new.

Kas

I have a little dream of my own where the day begins with the bread dough baking in our oven while my hubby oscillates in the little cobbled stoned backyard, trying to gather the right wood for our fireplace and have the dogs in civilised chaos. Fluttering above the domestic excitement on the balcony above our humble white-washed home, I stand bright and active fluffing last week's dust off our blanket while it basks in the remaining warmth of a passing summer as the dark obsidian wooden exterior of our house fittings reflect the virgin coolness of a gentle autumn breezing across our lives.

As reliable as seconds growing into the minutes of another day, so will we welcome another sunset. And with that, another day lived. I look into a future that we will look back at the many sunsets that we have seen in a lifetime. Some vaguely hazy, some fiery clear. Each consisting the same message of a place going to sleep while another awakes. And this particular sunset tonight was no different.

Just like how we piece together every jigsaw of a day to form the picture that we desire, there is always one last bit that is just out of our human reach. I call it the touch of godliness. That drop of divinity so essential in imparting a sense of beginning, even at the end of another day spent. Like how life itself has taken the first breath in the primordial world as the shell of the sacred waters broke to put forth the flow of the cycle of rebirth and death, we take on the secret ancient message of living and just being alive... even for that very moment in time.

Check Point

I think it's a fair point at our 15th month of travel that I sit back and look at myself. Not so much about how far I had come but more of the acceptance of the fact that you need to get out there to appreciate in a "the grass is always greener on the other side" (in this case across oceans and deserts) way that home is that tad special because of what it is.

Occasionally I think about the crash landing I would experience when I return home. For our case, it's going to be a whirlwind celebration with family and friends in Malaysia before we move on to Australia to begin our new life settling down to some much desired day-to-day schedule. That will take place after spending Christmas with my family before the reality of looking for a job and a place to stay takes form.

I've mentioned previously that one takes huge pride in what people in countries far and wide from your own postcode remarked about your country. It's a big thing and I only come to appreciate since getting out of the box that I had become so comfortable in taking for granted. You also begin to take a new look at your existing social network. You see for the first time, clearly, who real friends are too.

Besides the values that you take up, discard or hone, you also start to realise that part of the territory of partner travelling entails jolly high times as well as working out your differences. Prevailing through the tougher times seriously do some good to your own personal development as well as your partnership. Together you work out what the future will be, how it will look like, how you both take on the unexpected and shape it to be the best one for the world of the two of you.

Most of all, you cherish what you are coming home to. I miss my dogs, and I am so glad that I have the luxury of daydreaming about our move to Australia, how I will long for the chaos these two boys will cause as we drive and camp along our way from the West towards the East of this great big country called the biggest island continent. How we will work through finding lodging, managing feeding times (for both humans and dogs), laughing at our own silliness and enjoying just that particular moment in time.

This is what sustains me. And for that, I am all the more grateful.

And there is always the thought of getting another dog to join our little pack!

Selcuk

Or spelled Seljuk if pronunciation is a small stuff to sweat over. We did sweat over hot soaring reading from the Mercury and made friends with local dogs and plenty of cats... and of course the local friendlys as well.

As I mused previously to friends, it didn't matter what the ongoing debate (academically or otherwise) regarding St. John, it did feel pretty surreal to watch the sunset next to it over the Isa Bey Camii as the latter prepared for the nightly Terawih prayers. A trio of drummers walked past each street singing good wishes of traditional folk songs to usher into the first week of Ramazan.

Between gentle carpet sellers' persuasions, a complimentary Turkish tea from our next door Mehmet who did a wicked chicken shish kebab (he's still confused why we didn't succumb to his free offer for apple flavoured water pipes... hot weather permitting), we exchanged banters on the Australian news back home with a Turkish who had married and lived for over 14 years in Sydney (spoke with a thick accent too). For some unfathomable reason, there are plenty of Australian-Kiwi type of pansiyon offering pretty good valued dorms and rooms yet the biggest throng of visitors are Americans and French.

Anyhow, you can trek the religious route to pay your pilgrim respect to the House of St. Mary but we were torn between the charming wine-producing town of Sirince and Ephesus. The ancient collection of open air Roman relics won the toss of the coin. And if you are reading about it, the house after the great library is not the brothel. It's a rich dude's house that just got mistaken by previous archaeologists for that infamous tag although it made interesting stories about men in toga telling their wives of their newly found interest in reading in the library... only to trek through secret underground passages to visit their mistresses in the "house". Even more surprising are the existing (in very supreme condition I must admit) latrine "thrones" cut out in shape from chunks (no pun) of marble and rocks - with a view of the mountain to ease the passage. Who cares if they had one of the bigger amphitheaters here?

Who knows? But I do know that this make for good imaginative stories and one darn smouldering sunset. 

And Then There Was Ayvalik

Scooter rides along olive groves, feeling the endearing days of young love. Calm waters, paddling kids, lots of sunblock, getting invited onto local fishing boats, booming cannons announcing the iftar hour. Windy days on the terrace and a really charming family-roomed dorm. This town gets pretty addictive quickly with the luxurious gentle soaps, delicious vegetarian meze and a maze of old 1800s Greek house lanes for you to take a peek into the lives of Turkish coastal hospitality.

If it all gets too much, you can always head out to the ancient Hellenistic ruins of Bergama.  Walk through the old library bequeathed by Mark Anthony for his beloved Cleopatra. Climb over the look-out tower ruins. Marvel at the acoustics of one of the steepest amphitheater built to entertain both the songs of politics and drama. Look upon the temples of Zeus and his Hera.

Then again, don't exert too much. This town has relaxation written all over it...