Where rivers meet - The 6 Star Hotel

What he was mucking about, I had no idea.
Not that I was too concerned, anyway.
A 6 star hotel? Whatever...

Still, he was a pleasant and unusually
cheerful fellow and he had this unique
way of harnessing his own version of the language,
which still lingers in my memory to this day.

Where people would normally have said, "I've got to
find a place to stay", or something of
that sort he would pronounce every
single member of the sentence.

That is, he would say "I have got to find
a place to stay" He would say that with alacrity
and with every single sentence which contained
"'ve got to".

I got used to it soon, though. I naturally
wondered where he had picked up his
language skills.

He was a local tour guide, clean shaven
each morning with a radiant smile
all over his face, probably in his late twenties,
or early thirties.

I still have his namecard, somewhere.

No, I had not been in the habit of
going out with tour groups. I had been
drawn into it by a chance remark made

by an elderly Japanese gentleman,
who was staying in the same cave hotel
and had apparently crossed the border into
Anatolia from Iran by bus.

Yes, he had come up the Silk Road from
Parthia!

He apperared to be a seasoned traveller.
Probably, in his late sixtees, but
still going strong.

I, on my part, was there upon an impulse
and a sudden urge I had felt while
chomping up my mackarel sandwiches

down at the end of the Bridge, linking
the two land masses.

It was, after all, just a short flight to Kayseri.
No well considered prior plannnig,
nothing, just go!

I actually had had somewhere else,
down south, in mind.

We went to a few places on that day. One of them,
still relatively unknown then, now fairly commonly
heard about was a non-starter.

Who the hell cares about dwelling right underneath
potato fields! Of course we went down
there, all stuffy and dimly lit small world

of its own. I gather that since then a few
more have been uncovered. I could not care less.
I did, however, make a small contribution
while down there.

I discovered another of the markings
left by the underground dwellers, the existence
of which this or for that matter no other
guides would have noticed before.

It had been hidden from the normal viewing angles.
You know that physicists would love to look out
for oddities and odd angles forever!

The Grand Canyon, he said, a local version of it.
We went there, too. Oh well, interesting. There
were lots and lots of trees and clear streams and donkeys.

Oh, come on! Trees and steams and donkeys?
What were so interesting about them?

Only interesting, because out up there,
beyond the Canyon edges into the vast opennes,
vegetation was almost non-exsistent,

too barren for anything. No trees to speak of,
but coarse grasses were seen just about everywhere.

As far as I was concerend where there were grasses
they were not deserts. My deserts would only have consisted
of undulating sand dunes and camels.

There were none of them in sight. Somebody must have
bolted the pack.

"We are now arriving at our 6 star hotel",
proudly announced our guide. It was only then that I
realised what he had been mucking about.

What it was one of the stations on
the Silk Road!

It was a structutre to be amazed at.
For a start it was very large and tall
with stables for the camels and

sleeping quarters, canteens etc,
all in that solid rock building.
I would say that it was easily
50m x 50m across, two storeys
at that!


However, there were grasses all
around! It was not even
sitting on a sand dune, either!

It sat squarely on a very gentle and solid
slope, almost flat, with isolated trees
seen here and there, and over there, too.

Looking back on it now, it probably was the
right decision to have joined the tour.
I did not have my car to drive around.

Distances were quite formidable. You could see that
easily, looking down far below even
the mushroom place appeared a couple of miles away.

It was a vast country. It really was.　And I was practically
in the middle of nowhere.

Around us in the far distance were
hills, very barren, and mountains, high.
I could even see Mt. Erciyas out there.

My thoughts were going back to the early history
of this region, the pre Romans, the Romans
and the Turks, and the Persians, and all those
main players in the history of the region.

I was right in the middle of the homeland of
Hittites!　Local geography
was simple and obvious　and it would have
been the same to all　those participants.

If you want to go east, say, to China,
you must go up that way, passing the foot
of the volcano, Mt. Erciyas (3917m),

which sits right in the middle of Anatolia
and eventually, higher up and up around
Mt. Ararat, which is located at the eastern border.

Now, Mt. Erciyas is the fourth highest volcano
halfway down Anatolia between Mt. Ararat
and Istanbul.

Together, they must have completed
the process of making Anatolia as high
and flat as it is today.

It is a sedimentation of 2 km deep, of white
and soft volcanic ashes and to anybody's eyes
it is a striking feature of the region.

However, the plateau does not continue as far
out as Istanbul. It, in fact, tails off quite
dramatically in the mushroom valley, just west of Kayseri.

Only a few days earlier I was standing
at a vantage point in the pumpkin field
near my hotel, half way down
from the edge of where it all started.

In the far distance was a vast plain
which was completely flat and horizontal
due to gravitational compression,

with Mt. Ercias in the background ,
shinning white.

Its western edges abruptly clipped off
to make way for the valleys
which contained the famous mush room kingdom.

Yes, this was where the eternal process of
errosion had been taking place, creating the
mushrooms and creating those mini
Canyons with small rivers running in them.

You start out from the airport, driving
on a completely flat region for one hour or so.
You see nothing unusual on your way.

Shops are there, filling stations and
towns and villages are also all there
on the vast and flat expanse of the land.

You are driving on the flattest part of
the plateau. Then, a sudden precipitation
is waiting for you at the edge of it all,

with the firm ground cascading into
the mushroom kingom and the valleys far below
your eyes.

It was quite a sensation to be at the edge of it.

And, that was where I was.

I was watching the whole area with exitement
standing in a small pumpkin field.

Ah!, there they go, in a single file.
Are they chariots? Look at those
horrible looking lances and swords!

The snow began initially with only a few flakes
spinning down from nowhere and then
became a steady fall, quickly
obscurring the line of my thoughts...