Day 16 - Nemrut Dagi

This morning we caught a bus from Malatya to Nemrut Dagi, so we left a voicemail on the driver's cell phone telling him that we're staying at the Fatih Pension/Hotel, and we wander the market. Apparently Malatya is the place for apricots, fresh or dried so we got some dried ones and they are delicious.

We end up hiking to a major hotel because the driver can't find the little pension we're at, and he seems a cheerful fellow. He politely asks if it is okay if he picks up two other people, and we politely agree to this, although it is clear this means the vehicle will be quite full. When we get to the house to pick up these people, the drive invites us in for chai, this is a pretty regular Turkish custom and since we have nothing better to do we agree.

We go inside the house and are greeted by a big family of women, one old man and one young man. Tea turns into lunch, a huge mountain of pide (as big as Uncle Buck's pile of pancakes), then tea and some not so tasty yoghurt drink, more tea, cakes and then rice pudding. Unfortunately for us, we're a bit stuck for conversation as we forgot the phrasebook in the car and the driver isn't so chatty (in English) now that there are a bunch of Turkish people around. Leah calls this the 'sitting and staring lunch', and it takes about an hour. Finally the driver takes us on a scenic route up the mountain; Leah promptly falls asleep leaving me to chat with the old man and his grandson for 4 hours.

After a quick bit of relaxation at the Nemrut pension we got back in the car to be dropped off at the top of Nemrut. From the road up we can see it, a huge pile of loose stone made into a massive man-made mountain (mountain top actually, the mountain was already there). Apparently human activity and natural erosion has already reduced the height of the pile significantly, but it is still pretty impressive. We follow some rough stone stairs laid into the side, and we approach the East terrace where there are some huge stone statues and their equally huge stone heads that have long since fallen off.

After playing around here for a while we follow the trail to the Western terrace where we are surprised to find yet more huge stone statues with heads lolling about on the ground. I think the thing to take away from this is that these statues were many thousands of years ago at the top of very rugged, very remote mountain.


We saw a pretty sunset and walked down to our bus. The pension put on a delicious chicken dinner.