Madaba, Dead Sea

After a few days in Amman it was nice to escape to the little town of Madaba, home to Jordan's most famous mosaic, which is saying something given the number of mosaics in this part of the world. The mosaic is known as the earliest map of Palestine. It was created in 560 AD and has 157 lables in Greek showing all of the major biblical sites of the Middle East from Egypt to Palestine. Though not that much of it remains, it used to be about 20m long and 6m wide.

We used Madaba as a base for a day trip to Mt Nebo where Moses supposedly saw the Promised Land. We caught a taxi right to the top and spent a few minutes looking at the surrounding area sandwiched between groups of religious pilgrims.

A real highlight of our trip through Jordan was our visit to the Dead Sea. Now, on paper I don't think it sounds like much: hyper-salinated water that makes you float. But there is something unnatural and very fun about the whole experience. It feels a bit more like what I imagine zero-gravity would be like than swimming. We spent about an hour bobbing around super-buyonantly watching other tourists coat themselves with the local black tar-like mud. The only downside of the experience was accidentally getting a few drops of water in the mouth; it tasted like burning.

Jordan - Amman

Amman is the 'modern' capital of Jordan and where we met James for our two week Jordanian adventure. While Amman won't win any beauty prizes it was a nice enough place to spend a few days. Besides having two (two!) places that serve sweet, delicious beer, Amman is also home to a few cultural sites.

We hiked up the hot, endless steps to the citadel which not only had some excellent ruins but also gave great views of the city. As an extra bonus, we also got to listen to the awesome sounds of an Arabic bagpipe band and saw some of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

We also visited the local Roman theater that was built in the 2nd century AD.

The excellent ruins of Jerash are about an hour North of Amman. Jerash is a huge and beautifully preserved site of a Roman city. All the usual 'ruined Roman city' sites of interest where here, the theatre, the forum, the (impressive) main gate, the nymphaeum (I wish fountains where still referred to as nymphaeums) and the many columned temples. Alas, most of the columns had succomed to their sesmic nemisis: the earthquake. Another impressive addition in Jerash was the hippodrome, but just as you're always in a whale-watching area out of season, we were here on the only day of the week that the reinactment of the chariot races weren't racing. Neither was the 'Gladiator' show showing which would have been hilarious.

We finished off the day by taking a trip up to the awesome Ajloun castle.

Oh, Glorious Urfa

The pilgrimage town of Sanliurfa, aka Glorious Urfa, is where the prophets Job and Abraham trod in biblical times. It is culturally smack-dab in the middle of the Turkey we've seen everywhere else and the Middle East that we're expecting. Here we've seen more than our fair share of men sporting huge moustaches and extremely baggy pants. We've also seen an increasing number of women in their chadors and a few with beautiful purple head scarves and curiously tatooed faces, reminisent of the ones that were all the rage in Ethiopia. While the number of tractors has not decreased, the number of horse-drawn carriages has skyrocketed, and we even spotted a few camels today. It is a facinating and friendly place to visit.

The first order of business today was to visit the town of Harran, about 50km south of Urfa towards the Syrian border. Harran is one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns on Earth and home of some distinctive 'beehive' houses, the style of which dates back to the 3rd century BC (though the ones still standing in town are about 200 years old). They're excellent from the outside, but even better to take shelter in when a storm begins a-brewin', as we found out today.

Harran is also home to the first Crusader castle we've seen on this trip. While it's only partially intact, what remains is very cool and up to third world safety standards with enormous holes in the floor that could lead to a broken leg - or worse - if you weren't careful. Needless to say, while the castle and vistas were excellent we remained on high alert.

Back in Urfa we headed straight for the bazaar for a few hours of noodling around and scoping out photo opportunities. Happily, the Urfa bazaar was one of the happiest and friendliest bazaars we've encountered; vendors were more than happy to have us gawk and take pictures. At one point they swarmed us to take their photo. In the pigeon lane they were happy for us to enter the cages and even handle the merchandise! I really have no idea why they're so keen on selling live pigeson, though..

Nemrut Dagi: land of big stone heads

Now, really, who doesn't love a big, disembodied stone head? These really big heads, which have long since toppled off their bodies, were built by a pre-Roman king who believed that the gods presented were his relatives.

There are actually two sets of statues, one on the West side and the other on the East. In between is a 50 m artificial mountain of crushed rock believed to cover the king's tomb and perhaps that of up to three female relatives, but no one's dug in to check. Having on terrace on each side makes it handy for tours - you go up to 'ooh' and 'ahh' at the West side for sunset, then early the next morning you do the same thing on the East side. There are a few nice differences on the two sides, with the bodies still visible on the East side, and the heads retaining more detail on the West side.

Nemrut Dagi is one of Turkey's three most popular sights, after Istanbul and Cappadocia. After visiting, I can see why - there is something a little magical about the place, though the ruins are small and pretty 'what you see is what you get'. Or maybe that's the early dawn talking...

Cappadocia

We have been looking forward to seeing Cappadocia ever since we saw it on a postcard in Bulungula, Wild Coast, South Africa, in March at the very start of our trip. And when we finally arrived we were not disappointed. From the bus we could see the cave houses near Uchisar and the the fairy chimneys in Goreme, a landscape that is totally otherworldly.

The rock formations of Cappadocia are varied in their apperance, from fat and squat little houses to tall and phalic pillars to the drapery-like white rock on the sides of the canyons. It's the kind of landscape that takes a long time to get tired of looking at.

And in order to see it better, we decided to see it from the sky via a hot air balloon ride. Or a balloon flight as they call it here, but we all know it's really more of a ride than flight. It was the first time for both of us to go up in a hot air balloon (we were intending to go up in Tanzania but we decided to pass since we'd missed the migration) and it was absolutely fantastic. You float magically up off the ground and sweep into the sky in absolute silence except for the occasional blast of hot air. The the wind gently swept us from one valley to the next, with our expert pilot (?) taking us down into most of the valleys, just meters away from the formations. When we landed, we landed exactly on the trailer and were treated to a glass of the finest - and by 'finest' I mean 'cheapest' - champagne. It was lovely.

Besides the hot air balloon, we also did a few walks through a couple of canyons to get a better look at the formations and we visited the underground city in Kaymakli which was interesting in a clausterphobic kind of way. We were sandwiched between two tour buses, but everyone was friendly enough.

Safranbolu

The escape from Istanbul was especially sweet because our next stop was the lovely and incredibly friendly town of Safranbolu, famous for its large number of restored Ottoman houses. One of the perks of the town is that a lot of these houses have been converted into good value pensions and we got to stay in a ripper complete with a decorated ceiling, traditional niches and some of the best hospitality we've had in Turkey.

On our first night, we were escorted to a little restaunt in town by one of the women working at the pension. We walked through amazing little alleyways, up and down a valley, past mosques and fountains, always amazed by what we were seeing and quite confident that between the two of us we'd be able to make it back. And perhaps in the daylight this would have been the case, but after our yummy dinner the sun had well and truly gone down and we were stuck ambing through unfamiliar streets with the constrant refrain 'does this look familiar?'. The town appeared to be deserted; we hadn't seen anyone in ages. Eventually we bumped into a young guy who was getting picked up by his friend. We sheepishly pulled out the hotel's card and asked, mostly through gesticulation, if he could point us in the right direction. After a few words to his friend, they said 'please get in. We will take you there' and they did! For free! It is one of those amazing little situations that would surely never happen back home and really demonstrates the goodness of the people out here. Needless to say, we thanked them profusely.

Istanbul

We were both very excited about what Istanbul had to offer and worried about hitting one of Turkey's major tourist hotspots during Bayrami, the festival that celebrates the end of Ramadan and includes a sweets holiday. And we were right to fear it; the town was chock-a-block with international and Turkish tourists.

The sights in Istanbul were good. We checked out the amazing old basilica cistern which fed water to the city in the mid-500 AD and is gorgeous and a little eerie inside, even when it's packed with whispering tourists.

We were not particularly enthralled with Tokapi Palace, but dutifully walked around, weaving in between tour group and entering most of the rooms (except for the ones we couldn't squeeze in to). We paid the extra to enter the harem which was well worth the money because the rooms are beautiful and because tour groups don't bother to pay the extra.

Aya Sofya, built in the mid-500 AD, reigned as the greatest church in Christendom until the Conquest is 1453 when it was converted into a mosque. In 1935 the Ataturk changed it into a museum.

The interior is amazing, with a stunning domed ceiling that soars upwards. The ambiance of Aya Sofya is one of awed silence, with only muffled whispers exchanged between tourists and some slightly louder hissing of information from guides. Besides the gorgeous architecture, the mosaics that remain are amazingly beautiful, and the upper gallery that houses them gives some sense of the height and scale of the building.

Our last tourist stop was to the Blue Mosque, one of Istanbul's most famous and most photographed sights. Unfortunately the day we visited it was raining cats and dogs outside, so we were hustled in just before the closure for midday prayers with officials yelling 'Don't stop! Take off your shoes before you enter! Do not stop!' - an acrobatic feat, especially when you're squashed in with hunderds of other wet tourists with potentially eye-gouging umbrellas. Inside the mosque was very serene and nicely decorated. It was wonderful to see a living mosque, not just a historical relic/museum.

Because of the holidays, the Grand Bazaar was closed as was the interior of the Spice Bazaar. We made the horrible mistake of trying to visit the Spice Bazaar one of the days we were there and got squashed 'love parade' style between hundreds of locals, none of whom appeared to be moving.

In an attempt to escape, we stumbled upon Yeni Camii, another lovely mosque, and the Galata Bridge which is an area famous for its fish sandwiches. Phil bravely lined up and tried a sandwich that came complete with every bone in the fish; after a bit of picking he gave it up as lost cause. Still, it was great to see the fillets being cooked on the decorated boats as they violentely bobbed around in the waves.

We were more than happy to escape the 'bul which has its fair share of lovely people but a higher-than-average number of wankers.