@ Pamukkale

@ the white travertine terraces near Hierapolis.

Colours of Kas

  
ALL you need to enjoy a lazy day in Kas is a chair and a balcony to put it on.

But make sure that balcony has a view of the water – that’s not hard, as most of the hotels in this tourist town are perched on the hills that rise from the Mediterranean to the rocky cliffy behind the busy harbour – and you will be ready for a day doing nothing more than watching the sun move across the sky.

I’m in Kas for two nights, with one lazy day in between to do nothing but look at the view, and I am really appreciating being back on the coast after spending days in the dry of central Turkey.

Everything in Cappadocia was the colour of dust but in this Mediterranean village where every building has white walls and a terracotta roof the sky and sea are two vibrant shades of blue while the flowers growing on the bushes that cover almost every facade are a thrilling shade of hot pink.

Just to keep myself entertained I snapped photos from my vantage point in a hotel high above the rocky coastline to capture the colours of the Mediterranean as the sun climbed into the sky and then began the slow descent back to the horizon.

And I didn't stop taking pics when the sun dissapeared from view with the fiery hues of sunset lingering in the western sky and a big moon rising over the Mediterranean.

There’s not much going on in Kas during the day as most people come here to catch boats to private bays along the rugged coastline where they can swim on the Med and dive on ancient ruins submerged by long-ago earthquakes.

But that’s a whole lot more than just a few years ago when visitors needed to catch boats to the Greek Island sitting a stone’s throw off shore to buy something to eat.

Now the residents of that Greek island have visas stamped in their passports so they can travel to this town on the Turkish mainland to shop at the bustling Friday market.

@ Kas

@ a perfect afternoon in Kas.

Silk Road stopover

HAVE you ever thought about the evolution of the modern-day hotel?

Probably not, and I don’t blame you, as tourist digs tend to look the same after you spend a few days on the road and are hardly worthy of grand anthropological study.

But I visited a compound today, Sultanhani Caravanserai on the road south of Konya, which made me think about how far humble tourist accommodations have come since the early days when travellers were looking for little more than a solid wall to hide behind at night.

Our morning-tea stop was at the site of the ancient caravanserai, which formed part of a chain of fortresses along the Silk Road, and placed to protect travellers and their valuable freight during the extended journey from Asia to Europe.

These sturdy compounds were built about 20km apart, as that was the distance the average caravan of Silk Road trampers could cover in a day, and came about because those ancient merchants were too vulnerable to bandit attacks if they simply camped in a field at night.

The traders using the Silk Road were carrying precious cargos, anything from silk worms bound for Turkish carpet factories to precious stones on route to European royals, and bands of thugs were ready to pounce on anyone not safely inside a caravanserai at night.

Travellers would plan each day’s trip to reach the secure wall of the next rustic inn late in the afternoon, park their animals and freight inside the stone walls before eating a hot meal, and then drift off to sleep knowing those roaming bandits would need to employ some serious acrobatic skills to get inside the stronghold.

 

The merchants and their servants would then rise early the next morning to prepare for another day on the trail and be back on the road before the sun had climbed far from the horizon with the aim of reaching the next fortress before darkness crept across the landscape that night.

Sultanhani Caravanserai was built in 1229, on the Konya-Aksaray Highway, and was extended in 1278 after a fire swept through with the renovation making it the largest Silk Road accommodations in Turkey.

It hasn't changed much since those 13th-century travellers slept in the dark rooms and cooked their meals under the arches on the veranda, and the carved stone still decorates the front walls around the heavy "portal" door that was only opened during daylight hours. 

  

The complex had closed rooms as well as open-air spaces, with the undercover spots used during winter and the exposed areas favoured when the warmer weather arrived, and watchtowers on each corner presented guards with a “monumental view” across the plains.

A mosque was also put in the middle of the centre courtyard with enclosures dedicated to cooking, eating, sleeping and bathing set around the sanctuary.

Whirling perfection

IT'S official, I'm perfect.

I had long suspected as much, but it was confirmed today when I visited the Mevlana Museum in the Turkish city of Konya.

There's a sign above the front door explaining "those who enter here incomplete will come out perfect" and after walking through the grand Ottoman doors, and exiting the historic building some time later, I felt elevated to a new level of perfection.

The Mevlana Museum is an old mosque and the symbolic home of the Turkish icon that is the Whirling Dervish, with the man who founded the religious sect eight centuries ago buried in one corner of the beautiful sanctuary.

A fellow called Rumi - or Mevlana to his mates - was one of the 13th century's most respected philosophers and when he died in the 1200s his ancestors developed the technique of falling into a trance and spinning for hours to pay their respect.

There were hundreds of Whirling Dervishes lodges around Turkey in the decades after Rumi's death, with the order considered to be just another religious sect, but all were abolished by Ataturk when he reorganised Turkish society in the early days of independence.

The Konya lodge survived and was reestablished in 1957, because it was "a cultural association intended to preserve a historic tradition", and while tourists are treated to Whirling Dervish displays in different parts of the country they can visit the Mevlana Museum to see where it all began and gaze across rows of graves that sit below the buildings lofty domes.

The old mosque is topped by a turquoise tower that's considered to be one of the most distinctive sites in Turkey, and I spoke to a museum guide who told me that when the ornate crown was put in place the tiles were a dark blue but had faded to the softer shade over the centuries.

- posted from my iPad

Location:Koza Sk,Kaş,Turkey