Citadel in Erbil
Rug seller next to citadel
View from the top of the citadel, completely abandoned so UNESCO can fix it up. Only a bunch of soccer-playing Kurdish police up there, wearing "US ARMY" shirts.
A burnt out house on the citadel.
National dress.
Erbil bazaar.
Lolita in Arabic -- for Tony Madrid.
Delicious fish, they took me in the kitchen. It's cooked in those round ovens in the back. The guy in the very back is busy gutting the fish, just pulled out of a pool in the restaurant where they swim around until the last second.
The memorial to Kurds killed by Saddam in Sulaymania. Every light on the ceiling stands for one villiage wiped out. Every mirror represents some other horriffic act -- I can't remember what.
Sulaymania bazaar. Awesome.
Blacksmith in the bazaar.
No explanation necessary.
Man opening bean pods.
three generatıons of power lınes. the electrıcıty ın Kurdıstan stıll cuts out a faır portıon of the tıme. they,re workıng on thıs I understand, although ıt,s takıng some tıme. part of the problem ıs the lack of a good ınfrastructure.
my driver, 630am, off for lalish, amedi, dohuk
getting ice for the trip to put in our cooler, in big hunks that had to be broken apart with a pick
part of the Yedizi temple in Lalish, inside the cone is a chamber where a olive-oil lamp burns continuously
no shoes or socks allowed in the entire town.
At one point we were lost, looking for Lalish -- which is a tiny town surrounding these temples, wedged in the corner of a mountain chain. When we pulled over to ask this guy -- named Havint Youssif -- where Lalish was, he hopped in our car and showed us the way, then gave us a personal tour of the place. Very nice man, and generous -- wanted to make sure I understood how everything is done there. He also insisted I take a photo of him, in front of this gate.
Inside the temple, there were colorful fabrics hanging from the walls, which people touched, kissed, and rubbed on their foreheads.
a tomb of some kind, draped in the fabrics.
The tomb of Shaykh ‘Adī ibn Musāfir al-Umawī (Arabic: عدي بن مسافر الاموي, Kurdish Şêx Adî (died 1162), the founder of the religion. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidi
Inside the Yezidi temple, there was a tall ledge that people took turns throwing a cloth up onto. If it caught the ledge, your prayer would come true -- or so I understood. The boy was there to hand it back to you. The flash caught the cloth in mid-flight. Notice that almost everybody is wearing red (except, curiously, for the girl in blue jeans.) Since I had heard that blue was forbidden, I carefully did not wear any when I went to Lalish.
My driver, Havint Youssif, a man named Fajid Shamu (one of the prominent men in Lalish, I was given to understand), and me
Lalish courtyard, the door on the left goes into the temple. A beautiful setting, with some very old looking trees to the right.
carvings on the doorway to the lalish temple.
black snake on the right of the doorway. not sure exactly what this symbolizes, but he seems to be emerging from the hole in the stone just under his tail. the guy in the picture is a beggar who stands at the doorway of the temple. people place money on the threshold, and I assume he collects it. he also seems to give a blessing if you give him money. it is forbidden to step on the threshold, you have to step over it.
Mountains of northern Kurdistan, stronghold of the Peshmerga
Carved archway in Amedi, with some dude who was chilling there.
in Amedi
near amedi, there is a little resort centered around a mountain stream. people sit with their feet in the stream and picnic, have sheesha, etc. looks heavenly.
Asa Fitch's Paradise
at the top of the walkway, about 1 km long of picnickers along the stream, is this big pool and bridge, which people jump off of. no ladies in the pool.
guys jumping from the bridge
this is what remains of one of Saddam's palaces, up in the mountains near Amedi. Apparently it's where he liked to go when it got too hot in Baghdad. You can't see it here, but all of the other sides are surrounded by tall concrete walls.
Landmine warning, in Kurdistan.
Icewater for our ride.
rest stop at the Iraq-Turkey border
Mardin, Turkey
The town is perched on top of a mountain peak, so you can see over the entire eastern anatolian plain, into syria. amazing views, esp at sunset.
Soap seller in Mardin
Mardin. Apparently Ataturk slept here.
shoe shine
6:30am on the rooftop of my hotel in Mardin. I slept on the right there.
view from bed
an unusually vocal donkey
more soap -- made from local almond oil i think
guy on the street selling this strange drink from a chilled metal jug of it on his back. he walked down the street jangling the cups and singing a little chant about the drink -- called Serbet. Sort of an acquired taste, I couldn't finish the whole cup. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherbet_(Middle_Eastern_Drink)
another guy, he sells lemonade, poured out from his back-mounted jug through the spout poking out from under his right arm.
Kurdish breakfast. Delicious.
Fresh honeycomb at the kurdish breakfast place.
Bus from Malatya to Capadoccia
Getting greener...
A cave dwelling in Goreme, which collapsed a few years ago.
a pottery tree and wishing (?) tree outside of Goreme. I understand that every piece of cloth tied around the branch of the tree on the right represents a wish. When the piece comes untied, the wish will come true.
paintings inside an old church carved from solid rock. some of these churches as old as 4th or 5th c.
refectory. as many as 50 people could sit around the central table, along the ledge to the right. the whole rooom carved out of solid stone.
apricots, picked from a tree along the path into the valleys
pigeon houses. most of the hollowed out rooms in the caves are actually for pigeons. the people of the valley would collect the droppings and use them for fertilizer. must have been some good fertilizer, judging from how much work they put into making those houses...
pigeon house opening
cave dwelling. the back side of it, behind where I was standing, had fallen away.
man who sat in a cave deep in the valley, next to a special church. he was lonely -- yammered on with me for nearly an hour in turkish. i didn't understand a thing, but it was entertaining.
In the town next to Goreme. pretty amazing wall up behind the buildings. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be open like that, or if a large portion of it has fallen away with time, revealing the rooms.
awesome little tractor. for sale.
Goreme
Goreme, the town nestled among these strange conical rock formations, called in English, "fairy chimneys". Makes for some awesome scenery, and really surreal living situations.
sunset over the town
The massive hordes of packaged tourists!
some nice tiles
The Hagia Sophia. Beautiful, but surprisingly shabby.
inside the hagia sophia
from the second level of the hagia sophia
lunch: fish sandwich and fried sardines.
In Istanbul. I swear, this graffiti artist must be the most prolific I've ever seen. His tag was *everywhere*.
Eating breakfast at a table set up on the street in Sultanahmet in istanbul. This cat just let me scoot him over, an didn't wake up for at least another hour or so.
On the ferry from Istanbul to Izmir
Night in Bergama, a hedgehog.
awesome truck. i'm tempted to make an entire gallery of cool trucks I see on this trip.
beautiful old Greek houses in Bergama, high ceilings, wood construction, big glass windows.
From the acropolis in Bergama
some pretty cool floor mosaics
Pergamum acropolis
On the Pergamum acropolis
amphitheater
Interesting to see the different layers of defensive walls, built on top of eachother. At the bottom, you can see the Roman and Greek walls, which were better put together with larger stones. Slowly, as the empire deteriorated, so did their masonry skils. At the top, built by the Byzantines or early Ottomans I think, you can see how they started inserting terracotta bricks in between the larger stones to make them fit.
if I were a worse person, I prob would have pocketed this. little marble pieces of the acropolis like this were just lying around in heaps along the path,
more pottery fragements. a jar top, and a piece of a handle on the right.
beautiful old houses in Bergama
the view of the Red Basilica from the terrace roof of my hotel
On a day-long boat cruise in Bodrum.
Half of the people in the hostel.
The view from the bus, en route from Bodrum to Olimpos.
My hostel in Olimpos valley. One of several "treehouse" hostels, with big lounge areas. Occupancy apparently 200. Surprisingly, my "bungalow dorm" had air conditioning -- a first for me so far in Turkey. Hearty breakfast and lunch included, 25YTL (roughly $16) a night.
In the Olimpos valley, the ruins just seem to appear out of nowhere. If you veer off the trail, you inevitably stumble upon some pretty cool ruins, totally overgrown with grape vines, cyprus, and fig trees. Personally, I enjoyed this way of relating to the ruins far more than horrors like Ephesus -- it was quiet, vy few people, and stumbling upon an unrestored roman necropolis (above) on accident gives you a better sense of the passage of time.
Roman baths, somewhere in the thickey along the creek running down Olimpos valley.
piece of a mosaic, completely unprotected!
This gives a sense of the Hippy Paradise feel that this valley has. Just one dirt road runs down the valley, all the way to the beach.
The Chimera. This is perhaps the strangest natural phenomenon I've ever witnessed. From the side of a mountain near Olimpos, fire spontaneously erupts from holes in the rock face, the result of some kind of emmission of flammable gas. Apparently the scientists still don't fully understand what's going on here... It's been going on for millenia though. The Greeks thought that the fire-breathing chimera had been buried under the rock. Ancient sailors used to navigate by the light of the fires along the coast at night. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Chimaera
The chimera fires, along the side of the mountain face.
Anamur bananas, at the bus stop in Anamur. Delicious indeed, but so small and fragile.
A view from the bus window en route from Olimpos to Adana.
6am am, sitting in the plaza in Antakya after having just arrived via bus. These old men start showing up, in awesome military uniforms toting old guns, preparing for some kind of parade later in the day. I'm still not completely sure what they were commemorating.
One of the guys, a particularly humorous one, got a kick out of loading this huge caliber pistol with some blanks and firing it off a few times without warning anyone. i was sitting right next to him, and my ears were ringing for at least 30 seconds. if you look closely, it seems like every part of this gun was hand-shaped with a grinder or a drill. click the photo to zoom in.
Streets of Antakya
St Peter's cave. Mosaics still cover the floor. The pool in the upper right was used for baptisms. Water still drips from the ceiling.
From Acts 11:25-30 (New International Version): Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.
Antakya buildings
carnival in the Antakya city park
This is the Syrian border office...
...where I sat for 5 hours waiting for my visa.
Aleppo, just around the corner from my hotel.
Aleppo streets, deserted on a Friday.
Aleppo streets.
Aleppo was filled with beautiful, old, decrepit buildings like this one, just waiting for someone to fix them up.
This gives a sense of the scale of the citadel in the center of Aleppo.
Bread, overflowing from the baker onto the street.
where I stayed, the storied Baron Hotel
decorated ceiling in a traditional Aleppo home
i stopped into a sweets shop and noticed several men sitting at tables eating this stuff. so i ordered some. much more tasty than it looks in this photo. the stuff on the bottom is some sort of sugary, spiced, warm, wheaty mixture, with stiff cream in the middle, topped with pistachios. the little plate is filled with vy salty white cheese. It's eaten by taking a piece of the bread, rolling some cheese in the middle, and then scooping up some of the main dish. quite delicious. apparently called "sahla biya"
Great Mosque of Aleppo
there were at least 20 of these blind men sitting in a row in the mosque. they say a prayer for you for a small fee.
aleppo souq
aleppo citadel entrance, viewed from the side
citadel entrance tower
some of the buildings on top of the citadel. the place was empty, just a big museum, but still beautiful
inside the Aleppo souq
furry chair
souq
more souq, I took a few too many of these photos...
one of the butchers set up a metal dish to reflect the sunlight into his shop. the electricity was out, so most of the shops were dark, except for those who set up small generators in the walkways
this is the butcher shop who used the reflector. you can see the light spot hitting his ceiling just below the red fan.
one of the large doors inside the souq, scarred from carts passing by
ARE WE STILL TO Gather?
Two equally photo-worthy modes of transport. Syria is peppered with some beautiful old American cars like this one, still very much in use.
In Palmyra, at about 5am. I took far too many of these pictures... note the number of still-standing columns on the left. each little ledge in the middle of the columns held a statue of a wealthy palmyran who helped finance the city's public works
citadel in palmyra, off in the distance
ancient theater, vy well preserved, still in use
temple of baal, enormous and quite well preserved
i thought this looked cool, seemed to be a place where a sign painter had practiced
damascus covered souq
damascus souq
Damascus, Christian quarter
the holes in the ceiling cast nice patterns on the floor
roof of the souq in damascus, the holes from when the French airplanes strafed the city in the 20s
ice cream with pistachios. i took this photo at 10am. the restaurant already full.
... for entry to the Umayyad Mosque
The grek cloaks are the "special clothes" for the ladies. men in shorts had to wear a kind of skirt.
The Umayyid Mosque in Damascus. Beautiful gold mosaics everywhere. The columns supporting this little structure in the middle of the courtyard are recycled Roman.
St. John the Baptist's head is supposed to be held in this green-windowed shrine in the middle of the prayer hall of the mosque.
Baller.
The Holiday Inn hotel, downtown Beirut. Still not fixed up or removed since the last war. A pretty striking sight.
Beirut: New street sign on the left. Slightly older one, with bullet holes, to the right.
My driver to Mar Musa
En route to Mar Musa, through the desert, from the front seat of the minivan.
Mar Musa monastery. A long, winding, hike up.
Some pretty creative architecture from these monks, once you get up there.
Mar Musa, from the hill behind it.
The only entrance to the main building, with the church inside. A tiny little doorway, which continues for a few more twists and turns. Maybe to make the place more difficult to assault?
The back of Father Paolo, the head of the monastery. He was just getting ready for Sunday mass, which was conducted in Arabic, with bits of Syriac mixed in apparently. He kindly translated certain bits into English and Italian for those of us in the audience who didn't understand what was going on. A beautiful and strange service, like nothing I've ever seen before. I've got some video footage which, like the rest of it, I'm going to have to upload once I get out of Syria.
A portion of the 12th c frescoes on the wall of the church. This section depicts hell, with sinners bathing in a river of fire, with snakes coming out of their eyes and mouths. The figure on the upper right is the devil, pulling down the sinful end of the scale.
The bible stand in the Mar Musa church. During the services, everyone sat on the floor, including the priest. Shoes were left outside, rather like a mosque.
An awesome little zipline contraption the monks rigged up to get goods up and down from the monastery. This basket was pulled up from the road below using a small motor.
One of the monks. From Switzerland.
Mar Musa at dusk.
