To Mt. Nemrut and Back Again

It took us eleven and a half months but we finally made it to the one tourist attraction within the Malatya region.  After much finagling with Eser on Thursday night, we agreed on a time on Friday to head out.  He picked us up at 10:30am and we drove through the winding roads (with no safety guards) at speeds that Turkish drivers are comfortable with, but had me thinking many a time that all it would take was a skid on the badly paved roads and we would never see another day.  Fortunately that was not the case, and a couple of hours later we arrived at Nemrut National Park.  We hiked up to the top (luckily we could drive most of the way as were 2,134 m above sea level.) and were treated to a truly unique site from which we could view human ability and nature’s destruction.  

Eser, Joe and I

In 62 BC, King Antochus built a tomb-sanctuary with huge statues (8-9 m tall) of himself, two eagles, two lions and various Greek, Armenian and Iranian gods- although the heads fell off the bodies at some point in the future.  Although history prevailed and the site lost its stance as a place of worship it still remains semi intact, and  despite the turmoil of the past, it was excavated in 1881 and in 1987 was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and has been on our radius as a place to since our arrival.  

It was an amazing site and after looking around for a while we wandered down the steps on the west side (we had parked on the east) and had a lunch of menemen (which Eser negotiated down the ridiculously high price- 15TL for scrambled eggs essentially) and then figured out what we were going to do.  Eser wanted to stick around until sunset as apparently it is the highlight of Nemrut, and although neither Joe nor I wanted to stick around for the next seven hours, we did exactly that.

The man who ran the gift shop/café offered us a price to go down and see Arsemia (an ancient city where the tomb of Mithridates, king of Antioches was located and the Cendere Bridge- one of the best examples of ancient Roman architecture in the region.  Eser, again, was not happy with the price offered so bargained him down.  The conflict in Syria has severely depleted tourism in the area this summer as compared to last summer, so I was feeling  a little more sympathetic towards the man, but alas, Eser emerged victorious.  We drove 20km down into the valley, where the heat once more enveloped us, and we melted our way toward the tomb in an overheated state, before heading on to the bridge.  

The tomb of Mithridates

The bridge was apparently a hot spot amongst the locals who had gathered with families, livestock and vehicles to escape the heat in the cool of the river.

As we crossed the bridge, we ran into Kubra and Ali (Buglem’s parents) who were there with friends, which was enjoyable as I haven’t seen them for a month due to their holiday, and then we headed back up the mountain for tea and to kill a couple hours until sunset.  

We goofed around and found a good place to sit for the beauty of sunset and then headed back down before the crowds left- stopping for kavurma (a meat dish) which was a delicious end to the evening.  Somehow the roads were less scary when I couldn’t see the cliff edges, and we arrived back in Malatya quite late but to a wonderful day trip to a truly unique spot.

Kubra and I