Black Wednesday

As usual, people woke within an hour or two of sunrise, stretched their sleepy muscles around camp, and socialised a little over a breakfast table of boiled eggs, olives, fresh tomatoes and cucumber, bread and cheeses, and çay, Turkish tea, before packing up and setting out on the horses.

We rode up through the hillside cobblestones of Bayramhaci and into a spectacular narrow valley flanked by tall straw-coloured stone outcrops atop steep hills of scrub-grass.  It was straight out of a John Ford western.
One of the horses, Megan, was irritated by a saddle sore and had been acting up.  Riding into the last camp she kicked Alexander’s horse as a car was passing him on the road.  Fortunately he’s a well-experienced rider and it was quickly under control.

But on the morning of Black Wednesday it was a different story.  Megan was being ridden behind the lead rider and wrangler, Ercihan, and next to Barbara, one of three inexperienced riders on this trip.  The ride was only an hour old and the horses were fresh, well-spaced and uncrowded, but halfway along the narrow valley Megan suddenly reeled and leapt without any provocation.  Barb, in striking distance, tried to veer away but the cranky mare, out of control of her rider, kicked and landed a shod hoof on Barb’s shin.  With an “oof” we knew she was struck.

Unable to bear weight on her leg to balance herself, she slipped out of the saddle onto the rocky trail and rolled over in pain.  Ercihan and Alexander, the ride organisers, were to her in an instant.  It was a sombre and worried mood in the team as she was assessed for a fractured leg.  Her toes were pointing in the right direction but it looked like there was an eggplant under the skin.

Ercihan squatted atop one of the hills and rang an ambulance with his mobile phone.  The rest of us dismounted and pulled our horses into the shade.  When the ambulance came into his sight, he raced down the hill, swung onto his horse, and galloped back up and over the crest to intercept it and lead it to the group.  Within the hour, Barb was stretchered into the ambulance and, with Alexander along, trundled down the track and whisked away.

Bathe, shave, dine and swim

Everyone on the ride had their favourite campsites, and the Bayramhaci camp at the lake was popular.  Ercihan, the outfitter and head horseman, told us we had no permission to swim in the dam but after a five-hour ride in the 30°C+ sun he couldn’t keep a number of us out.  The water was so cool and refreshing I felt reborn.

That evening Ercihan surprised us when his friend Tenzil, a barber in Avanos, arrived at the camp with his straight razor and strong hands.  Turkish barbers are also masseurs, and a Turkish barber experience is essential to know Turkey.  Everyone had a shoulder, neck and head rub and the blokes had a straight razor shave, all with fragrant oils and aftershave like mango and lemon.  Marc, the French Relief Riders photographer, was talked into shaving his head.

We had another beautiful dinner of fresh salads and barbecued lamb with beer and bottles of wine on a terrace with a view of the sunset over the valley lake.  Though it’s only a short walk up the hill from the camp, we were driven up in one of the support vehicles, a minivan.  The terrace sits above hot spring swimming pools, and after dinner we all went for a swim.

After towelling off and returning to the van we learned it wouldn’t start.  We strolled back to the camp in the dark.

It was the eve of Black Wednesday.

Bayramhaci camp

We broke camp and set out at 8.30am in the hot sun.  Along the Red River we had shade, riding through farmland of wheat, squash and melons, of olives and grapes, and the rain from the days before we arrived in Cappadocia settled the dust.  To get to Bayramhaci we had to ride into the hills and over the high ground outside Saridir, a steep climb into grassland and wildflowers: red poppies, white morning glory, yellow euphorbia and blue cornflowers.  I sat tall in the saddle up the slopes and leaned forward, holding Kelebek’s mane.

Descending the mountain was equally steep, and I felt like Tom Burlinson in a tame version of that climactic scene in The Man From Snowy River, leaning back with one hand up for balance as my horse nosed her way down.

We arrived at camp on the shores of a dam-flooded valley lake after five hours.  The hard-working outfitter’s crew had already set up the tents and lunch was under way in the kitchen of the custom-made caravan. 

Relief Riders: dental camps

Relief Riders is bringing dental expertise to rural Cappadocian towns and villages.  Medical care in Turkey is quite good, but dental is not.  Announcements in the towns are played for two weeks on the radio, and word is spread through the haj, or imam, and the muhtar, the elected mayor. 

We have with us one dentist from Avanos in Cappadocia who conducts screening, and at a later date the patients will travel to Avanos to receive the treatment.  Our role as Relief Riders is to register the patients as they arrive, then usher them to a waiting room and call them as their turn comes. 

In between we socialise with them in our broken phrase-book Turkish and hand signals.  Often the children speak a bit of English.  We also have an invaluable translator with us, Cihat, a young man of 25 from the Turkish-Georgian border who studied English in İzmir and spent a year in Kansas City, USA.

We set up the dental centres in clinics or municipal offices, or whatever space the muhtar finds for us.  On this maiden Turkish tour our “fearless leader” Alexander, the founder, chairman and CEO of Relief Riders, wants to start out small and scale up in subsequent years.  In India, where Relief Riders has been operating since 2003 and treatment such as gynaecological and opthalmic care is provided in camp, staff see 200-300 people in a day.  In one record session they treated 869 people.  At our first dental camp in Saridir we saw 38 patients.

A special entry for all my Relief Rider friends

Farewell my friends!  I’ve just been dropped at the bus station and am on my own for the first time since meeting you all two weeks ago.  I’m so sad to have said goodbye to everyone, but so pleased to have made such good friends.  I am suddenly missing you, but the end of one adventure marks the beginning of another.

You’ll see, of course, that I’m quite behind on my ride updates (come on Ercihan – hot showers in camp are all well and good, but where’s the Wi-Fi?!)  All subsequent RRI posts are dedicated to you all.

Whirling

After the balloon flight we got under way on the ride proper, I on my dappled grey mare Kelebek, all of we dozen or so riding in a line behind the head horseman Ercihan.

After several hours, a large square fort made of stone and flying the Turkish flag came into view as we rode up a grassy hill.  We were approaching a 13th-century stone Karavansaray – a caravan outpost – on the Silk Road, just as traders would have done hundreds of years ago.  We tied the horses up outside the eight-metre-high walls, walked through the tall gate into a large open courtyard with a central fountain, and then into the dark belly of the Karavansaray.  It is like a cathedral inside with a cruciform plan and a domed apex.  It was built in the style of the Siena school of architecture, which seems unlikely in Turkey, but this is the route along which all travelled between Italy and Asia for centuries.

In the centre of the dim church we were quietly seated around a square floor.  One by one, five musicians and five dancers, each in a black cloak and a tall beige fez, entered the square, bowed to the audience, and seated themselves on the floor.  These are the sufis.  An eleventh wore a white fez and sat at the head of the group. 

One of the musicians stood and sang Arabic chants in beguiling oriental scales, and then another played a breathy and moving melody on the ney, a Turkish flute.  Another ney played and the other musicians then joined on drums, a zither-like stringed instrument called a kanun, and an oud which is similar to a lute. 

The five dancers rose and walked slowly around the square, bowing to one another repeatedly before removing their black cloaks to reveal white robes beneath.  Slowly they began to spin.  They moved around the square floor to find their positions – four at the corners and one in the centre.  As they spun faster their floor-length robes bloomed and they raised their arms with open hands, one above their heads in receiving and the other outstretched in giving.  The whirling dervishes spin in the same spot to induce a trance.  White Fez would walk onto the floor to rotate them and, still spinning, they would change positions, one moving to the centre and the others rotating corners.  This spinning to the music and rotating positions would go on for ten minutes before they would pause and stand stock-still, not wobbling or dizzy, and then they would begin again.  Some of the sufis had their eyes half open but fixed, never flickering, while others had theirs closed, intuiting their positions on the floor.  For forty-five minutes this went on with precision, and never did they stumble.

At last they finish dancing and seat themselves on the floor again, and White Fez sings a sermon.  Though it is in Arabic, it is surprisingly moving. 

Sufism is not a religion.  It is a way of living.  It is a culture or a sprituality, but there is no institution, no tenets, and no hierarchy.  Sufis are free, liberated intellectuals, philosophers, and they search for a way to find yourself.  The whirling dervishes are the most formulated example of this, but Sufism is about finding your own way.

Flying

On the morning of our second ride, we went for a hot air balloon flight.  This was meant to be scheduled later in the itinerary, but there was a backlog of balloon passengers due to terrible rains just before we arrived, and it was the only time the balloon company could guarantee us a slot.  We were all up for it, but it made for a very long day.  Our wake-up call was at 4.20am, not that a wake-up call was necessary – our first night in Cappadocia was spent in a cave hotel in Avanos situated next to a mosque which, at 4am, trumpets prayers loud enough to reach the whole town.

Early morning is the only time you can go ballooning because of the rising air as the sun hits the cold ground.  It takes about an hour to get the balloons inflated, and then 20 people pile into the basket and we’re off.

The flight took us over serrated towers of stone and into valleys where we were surrounded by caves dug into the tufa rock.  We went up into the high mist dissolving in the sun and floated with perhaps 40 other balloons.

The Ride

This is how it works.

We set out in the morning on horseback and ride four to six hours along trails through grasslands and hills, along rivers and over mountains.  The Cappadocian landscape is dry, dusty and scrubby grassland (I believe it is classed as desert), and is not dissimilar to country New South Wales except that it is more rocky and hilly.

When we arrive at our designated campsite for the day, our support truck is already there with the outfitter’s crew setting up camp.  They pitch a dozen tents with foam mattresses and sleeping bags, and hang oil lanterns outside each.  These guys work hard to make camping easy for us.  The truck is a mobile kitchen and shower, complete with hot water and decent pressure.  Unbelievable!  It’s bespoke-built by the Turkish outfitter, Ercihan.  There’s power on board for recharging camera batteries and laptops, and a table seating ten folds down from the side of the truck under an awning.  I’ve done a lot of camping, and this is really luxurious compared to boiling a billy on the fire and jumping in a river to wash.

The food is fantastic.  We are eating so well.  Last night was tender and juicy chicken barbecued over the coals next to the campfire, the night before that was barbecued lamb, and before that was trout with garlic, lemon and rosemary.  There’s cucumber and tomato salad, yogourt, olives, and always plenty of bread, and it’s all cooked and cleaned up for us by the crew.  Then we typically finish the night around the campfire drinking beer and wine and raki, known as “lion’s milk,” an aniseed-tasting clear liqueur that turns opaque white when cut with water.