Istanbul
5th May 1999

We are waiting for the grand exhibition opening at the Old Synagogue - now converted into an art gallery. The taxi could take us only so far. We walked up steep narrow roads into an old street where the Synagogue is wedged among other stone facades. Inside a simple conversion had been achieved with marble floors and cream paintwork. There are mezzanine galleries on each side that direct the eye to the Star of David in the round window at the end. Partitions at ground level provide hanging space for the pictures. Three cameramen are at this very moment filming our host's opening speech. This is Izel Rozental, the organiser of this Festival. He is committed to the cartoon as they all are here. He had been in Bulgaria too and we had met him there briefly at the Gabrovo Festival. There is a worldwide cartoon network.

Izel and Korin, volunteer interpreter, met us at the airport yesterday. It was an irritating flight with sullen hostesses to serve us. In the seats in front of us a group of 'middle-England' golfers had loud fatuous conversations. I was sitting next to a guy in a baseball cap who alternately clipped his nails and read from a book with the title: Conversations with God.

Istanbul is as vibrant and humming as we remembered, alternately splendid and shabby, picturesque and depressed. The Bosphorus sparkled as we sped by in Izel's car. The ancient walls were broken up by tenement blocks, unexpected roof gardens revealing exuberant flowers hanging from balconies and the focal points of the city, the Blue Mosque and St. Sophia. We had a fine view of them from the hotel roof garden over dinner. The floodlights that illuminated the Mosque picked out hundreds of wheeling seagulls like swarms of giant fireflies. The dinner was a gathering of friends, including American media lecturer John Lent and Semih, the Turkish cartoonist with whom we toured Turkey on our first trips here in the eighties.

Back to the synagogue! One of the first people we met was a man with black brylcreamed hair, a shiny old fashioned suit and highly polished black leather shoes. He was, I think, president of the Jewish Foundation. He spoke good French and became our guide, directing us down the street to another synagogue that was still used for worship. We approached it down steep steps and so had a bird's eye view of a dome or two, a tower and a pink façade. It had been renovated in the thirties and had a lovely dome painted blue with gold stars.

We were shepherded into taxis to have lunch in one of the oldest of Istanbul's restaurants opposite the so-called New Mosque. It is, in fact, 5000 years old, but it's all relative!

We were presented with a chaotic and vivacious scene. By the river bank people streamed on and off the ferries and swarmed across the bridge where fishermen leant over the parapets, immobile with their rods in their hands. The square in front of the Mosque was heaving with the movement of people in a random crisscross motion that resonated with the masses of pigeons that every so often took flight from the massive façades. The sun shone through the mist over the water and turned the scene into a dazzling picture of strange juxtapositions when you take account of the stalls of roasting chestnuts, of loaves of sweet bread, of newspaper sellers and hawkers of everything from cheap baubles to tourist brochures and cigarettes.

To the side of the square was an arcaded indoor market that we entered in order to climb up steep circular steps to the restaurant. The walls were lined with deep ultramarine and turquoise tiles. The restaurant consisted of several rooms with plaster domes embedded with tiles patterned with arabesques in the same colours. Bright red and orange couches lined the walls. Here we resisted the hors d'oevres of aubergines, fish roe, prawns and beans soaked in olive oil as our stomachs had begun to protest. Instead we had sea bass simply steamed in packets of greaseproof paper.

Our next assignment was to visit the Association of Cartoonists that was in an unexpected location just at the exit from the Cisterns, an ancient town reservoir dating from the 6th century. Stairs led us to a modest room with a few round café tables, small windows overlooking the street and a modest collection of cartoons on the walls. The head of the Association was a self-effacing man with a down cast air and wearing a short sleeved shirt. He motioned us to sit down and provided us with tea. A directionless conversation ensued with many nuances of misunderstanding. John Lent upped the anti by asking if cartoonists in Turkey had problems with the authorities. By this time a hawk nosed young man with a nervous disposition had begun a convoluted declaration in broken English regarding one cartoonist who was actually in prison for drawing a cartoon about the Kurds in a way that had upset the government. From the reaction of the others I was left with the uneasy feeling that even these 'liberal Turks' chose to evade the Kurdish issue by describing it as an unimportant war waged against them by 'murderers'.

We paid a quick visit to the cisterns, a labyrinthine underground reservoir. Its vaulted structure kept it permanently cool and damp. Dripping pillars rose out of the water under arched brick roofs. Imagine the crypt at Canterbury Cathedral flooded with water and its columns dripping with condensation and you may get an idea of it.

We managed to rest and shower back at the hotel before our next appointment at the Museum of Caricature.

The museum is in the heart of the Islamic quarter. It looks, in fact, like an ancient mosque without the minarets but with stone domes and an enclosed courtyard with pillared walkways and a garden in the middle - and all in the shadow of an ancient Roman viaduct that dwarfed the enclave. We were ushered into the inner sanctum to meet the director of the museum and various of the established political cartoonists, including Simih and his wife who greeted us warmly. We reminisced about our last meeting thirteen years before. We had a long talk with one of the elder statesmen of politic cartoon in Turkey, a very intelligent, compassionate man from the way he was talking, though, like the others, he seemed to be in denial about the Kurdish question.

Eventually we were driven back to the hotel for a quiet dinner with John and then an early night. We have an early start tomorrow - a radio interview.

Thursday, 6th May

I am sitting in the radio station while Ralph and John do their thing. The weather has turned cold and damp so maybe we'll not see much of Istanbul today. I feel tired, so I don't mind. The radio station is in a small office block in a shabby street. The concierge took us up in a lift with clattering metal doors to the offices and a girl made tea for us while we waited. Izel looked a little more relaxed than yesterday. The day before he had received an anonymous phone call complaining about a cartoon in the exhibition. This cartoon consisted of the figures of Christ, Moses, Buddha and Mohammed, the point being that, unlike the others, the face of Mohammed was blank - since his face is not allowed to be represented. It seemed to be a veiled fundamentalist threat which had worried Izel.

The radio interviews seemed a little unstructured, not surprising perhaps, since the conversation had to be translated for the Turkish audience. But everyone seemed happy with it.

Then Izel drove us to the offices of the architect who had designed the new art centre renovations at the Synagogue. These offices were in an old palace that he had restored. He had kept the original features and mouldings, marrying them with a modern minimalist style. The rooms were spacious and lofty with polished wooden floors, chrome and leather sofas and futuristic lighting. He runs an advertising agency as well as being an architect. It seems that most people do more than one thing. The cartoonists we have met have other jobs, one works in a textile firm, another in insurance.

Now it was time for a little sight seeing. Korin took us to see the Kayseri Mosque with its intricate Byzantine mosaics and then we lunched at a nearby hotel in a restaurant that specialised in Ottoman food. The ingredients added to Turkish cuisine being lentils, almonds, apricots and quinces. We felt sleepy afterwards so we took a taxi back to the hotel before the grand opening tonight.

When we arrived at the Synagogue it was throbbing with the great and the good of Istanbul. The Jewish community looked particularly opulent and middle class. Even the balconies were crowded. We made polite conversation to those to whom we were introduced. We had been trying to arrange with Izel's help to have a slide show projected into the relic of the prayer box at the end. Perhaps it wasn't surprising that the Jewish Community Committee deemed the idea to be sacrilegious.

We stepped outside to get some air but were ordered back inside by a shaven-headed security guard for 'security reasons'. So paranoia stalks the streets! Inside we were delighted to see a face from the past, Suat, our guide from our previous trips to Turkey. She was delightful, the same precise, well-articulated English and emphatic air about her. She had brought along her treasure of sketches by Ralph from our other visits, which we had really forgotten about. She has a good collection there.

There were a few short speeches, including Ralph's that was interpreted by the indefatigable Korin. Then we spilled out on to the pavement and talked to a man who exuded urbanity. He was dapper and wore his overcoat on his shoulders like the Italians do. But he was very nice. He had listened to Ralph's radio interview and could quote it practically verbatim. It was a short trot round the corner to the top floor of a restaurant for dinner. We sat around a long table overlooking fine views of the Bosphorus. And we managed to set up the carousel for Ralph to show his drawings, including Cherrywood Cannon. It was a good ending to a jolly evening.

Friday, 7th May

We had an early start to the airport and our flight to Ankara. We were met by a small bus and driven into town. The airport road took us past huge empty windowless, seemingly abandoned, apartment blocks. Mosques crowned the tops of the hills above sprawling urban communities. I remarked that there always seems the money to build a mosque - to the highest quality, too, in traditional style with silvery domes and fluted minarets. Women walked the unmade streets wearing headscarves and long gaberdine coats.

Ankara had become more chaotic and traffic bound than we remembered. It seemed to be an unplanned mess of roads, shops and housing blocks with uneven and broken pavements. It took the driver an hour to negotiate the crowded streets. Finally he stopped at a large boulevard where traffic zoomed at racecourse speeds. He dragged our luggage out of the car and proceeded to race across the road with it. We followed, to the annoyance of a traffic policeman who gesticulated ineffectually at us. We were lucky not to be had up for jay walking. John, more sensibly, walked to the proper crossing. Together again we hurried up and down steps and around corners until we arrived at the Hotel Melodi and its dreary dark brown vestibule. In fact, the whole of its interior was dreary and dark brown. Our room was so pokey that I chose another one across the hall with at least enough room to walk round the bed.

A student who was working for the Cartoon Foundation hurried us out of the hotel to have lunch with the other invited cartoonists - some very tall Dutchmen, an avuncular Spaniard, a smiling Argentinian with a close-cropped head as shiny as the copper domes of the mosques. They were all very involved in their cartooning, exchanging portraits of one another, showing off their publications and autograph books.

After lunch we returned to the hotel for a rest and decided we couldn't cope with the communal bus departing at 5.30 for the Museum where the first solo exhibition opening was to take place. We had a quiet drink in the hotel bar and then took a taxi to the Museum. Here was a much more salubrious part of town, the approach road lined with embassy limousines with flags on the bonnets. Inside the grand marble interior we were confronted by a crowd of men in diplomatic suits and women in crisp two piece outfits. It was very hot. We had missed the speeches and so chatted to the Dutch contingent and to Izel and his friends before driving to a restaurant for dinner. Here again we sat at a long table though both of us felt a little jaded, yet again!

I woke in the night with a searing headache and feeling nauseous and lay in a state of distressed wakefulness for several hours. In the morning I just couldn't get out of bed. Ralph decided it would be best to leave me to sleep and he took a taxi in search of an art shop. He ended up by getting stuck in the frenetic traffic only to find on his return that there was an art shop just round the corner.

Finally I got up and we met Izel to go over our travel arrangements to Cappadochia. Then we ventured outside into the busy streets. They were thronged with young people, probably students, and shoppers. It was sunny at last and we ate a very basic lunch in what turned out to be a student café, then walked around the block and Ralph bought me a pretty evening watch as a late birthday present.

Our first official engagement of the day was to the gallery showing the work of the cartoonist from Argentina. We chatted merrily to the Dutchmen and then we piled into a waiting coach that took us to 'Ankara Palace', a grand cultural centre with high ceilinged reception rooms and handsome ottoman style red and gold mouldings. We had a very jolly time. Ralph drew on the linen napkins which went down a treat. Got to bed rather late. We were off to Cappadochia the next morning.

Sunday, 9th May

We were ready to start our journey at the appointed time. One of the porters had been assigned to take us to the local bus which would take us to the main station. He loaded our cases on to a rickety trolley with a wonky wheel and pushed it almost at a run along the quiet Sunday streets. He stopped at a tree lined side road and we followed him into a bar with a ticket office inside where we bought our tickets - the equivalent of £6 each for a four hour journey. The bus jolted and bumped its way across Ankara to the enormous main bus station. We were immediately commandeered by two aggressive porters who set us down by our bus lane. We were surrounded by a throng of people, women with the inevitable head scarves and men guarding huge boxes of goods - from TVs to boxes of shoes.

This second bus was more comfortable than the first one. We plonked ourselves in the front seats so we could get a good view of the landscape but were peremptorily told to move by an old beak-nosed lady with a crisp white shawl and long gown. Since there were only about ten passengers, we had plenty of space further back. Ralph videoed the passing landscape and very dramatic it was, too. We drove south from Ankara across a bleak plain of scrub and wheat fields, past two great lakes, the margins glittering white like an outline drawn in chalk and a with purple tinge on the water. Suddenly we had a view of Mount Ararat rearing out of the horizon, its veins filled with snow.

As we approached the valleys of Cappadochia the landscape became greener with rickety farmhouses and outbuildings built of cracked mud bricks with grazing sheep, cattle and donkeys. People were working in the sun baked fields, raking the earth painstakingly or sitting under the trees eating and talking. Some had pitched tents by the roadside, presumably a nomadic existence. And then into the characteristic weather-eroded landscape, white rocks in all sorts of shapes and configurations. We stopped to change buses once more for the last leg to Ortahisar and the Burcu Hotel, our destination. We had lovely memories of this bus ride. The conductor gave us drops of cologne to rub on our hands, cups of water and sweet sponge cake.

Of the hotel and the village, more later.

Monday, 10th May

We designated our first day here as a reconnaissance to give us guide lines for the days ahead.

The Burcu Hotel is built in the Ottoman style from the local cream coloured stone with arched windows and crenellated eaves in an open rectangular shape. We are the only guests so far and the waiters pay particular attention to us - especially one called Seyhan who made us sandwiches as we had arrived too late for lunch. He quickly got chatting to us, told us about his strictly Moslem mother and two brothers. He had offered to take us out to see the sights. He also helped us arrange to hire a car. He was a good companion, waiting patiently while Ralph videoed the corroded landscape. He fitted in to our leisurely pace and smoothed over the language problems.

Ralph has struck up a relationship with the onyx carver of the village and has commissioned him to make us wine glasses to Ralph's design. Today he has made the first one. It is elegant with an unpolished base. So now Ralph is working on the next two designs for tomorrow.

All this made us realise that the people (maybe through being 'disempowered' or through ignorance or a combination of both) don't seem to identify with their own heritage. The onyx maker is resistant to the idea of making something that isn't part of the tourist assembly line. This phenomenon was brought home to me when I climbed up to the church in the rock at Zelde where the frescoes and pillars had been hacked to pieces by vandals. Seyhan said to me that people had done damage because 'they didn't know that tourists would be interested in coming to see it.'

I have already referred to the state of denial over the Kurdish problem that our Turkish friends in Istanbul and Ankara had expressed. Talking to Seyhan was interesting. He didn't brush it away as a tiny war in the far corner of the country but he declared that Ocalan had murdered 3,000 people, mainly women and children. It sounded to me like blatant propaganda and I can't believe that the problem isn't more complex.

There are several journalists and at least one cartoonist in prison for speaking their minds. I remember last spring we watched a sad and dignified demonstration of Kurdish families in Paris near the Bastille. Following Ocalan's arrest there has been a terrible distortion of the truth, I am convinced.

We had our dinner in the deserted dining room - tomato soup and bland roast chicken. The over-solicitous waiter and his young apprentice stood self consciously a few yards away, hands behind backs. We decided to have our coffee in the lounge where the atmosphere was more relaxed.

Having written up my diary in bed, I read my book, a spy thriller set in East Germany and mainly to do with the nasty deeds of the Stasi before the fall of the Berlin wall. Somehow my mind had absorbed the nastiness of all that, mingled with news of the Nato bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the whole Kosovo situation and the Kurdish question. I had a horrible nightmare which woke me up with a start. It took me several hours to get back to sleep, so didn't wake up till nearly nine o'clock.

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I had made notes on the day's trip with Seyhan, so here it is. No obligation to read it if you don't want to:

Orahesir - towards Urgup - into a valley - the Erciyes Mountains, olive trees, wild flowers on the verges, rocks stick out of the ground in haphazard and sculptural forms. Stopped by roadside to see the view - a vista into the valley, huge rocks at eye level like prophetic figures and beyond, the rocks like jagged teeth. Some lie prone like sleeping Buddhas. Mt. Ararat peeps from behind a sloping escarpment with dwellings gouged out of the rocks.

Urgup - Ralph bought six bottles of wine at a small winery. Up a steep cobbled street to a hillside village. Stopped at another vantage point. Behind me, at eye level, is the primary school where we can hear children reciting religious texts. To my right is a Roman villa, ahead is a hillside with houses carved into its fissured surface and to the left is the mosque dating from Ottoman times. The call to prayer has just gone out. Women in headscarves and long skirts pass by. A shepherd sits under an umbrella guarding his sheep that graze around him.

Drinking tea on a terrace at the top of the village near a 13th century domed castle. Inside an exhibition of photographs dating back to the 1920s. How things have changed.

Below the sprawling houses of Urgup, the new and the ancient cheek by jowl. High rise blocks, a broad central tree lined boulevard, the bus station, a newer mosque with glittering silver dome, classical music drifting from the café.

Back down into Urgup to the Karakus entertainment centre with its huge dance hall carved out of the rocks for folk dancing and whirling dervish displays.

Back to Urgup for lunch. Cappadochia means: beautiful horse country, so Seyhan told us. We lunched at the Somine Restaurant on a terrace overlooking the street below - lamb chops and salad with apple tea.

Tuesday, 11th May

We breakfasted a little late but have trained the waiters to cook us sizzling fried eggs and tomatoes instead of cheese and ham covered in cling film.

Our first call was to the onyx man in his workshop down the street to discuss the next two designs for the wine glasses. Then we drove into the village to buy our picnic. It's a typically ramshackle town with small shops lining the main square - from food shops to travels agents, a barber and a cobbler's shop. As we stopped to look into a shop selling cheeses, olives and sausages, a stocky man in a leather jacket and jeans accosted us in English and told us to go round the corner for our vegetables because they were fresh there. He invited us for a drink afterwards. At the entrance to a small courtyard we found two deserted vegetable stalls. Out of nowhere appeared two vendors and we bought tomatoes and cucumber from one and oranges and lemons from the other. We were amused that each charged exactly the same amount.

On our way back into the square we went into a grocers shop and started to talk to a young man there. He told us he reads the bible, although he is a Moslem. He has a friend in the U.S. who is a priest. He asked us if we could say a prayer, so Ralph recited the Lords Prayer - a surreal experience!

Suddenly, our friend in the leather jacket roared up to us on a motor bike and ushered us into a simple café with bright table cloths for a Turkish coffee. He is a taxi driver but like many of the men here who depend on the tourist trade, he has time on his hands. He gave us some amusing insights into Turkish life. His grandfather died at the age of 89 and used to smoke three packets of cigarettes a day and encouraged Ahmed (our friend) to smoke from the age of 12. His grandfather was a butcher and used to love eating raw lambs' fat. The family had been butchers for generations. We were joined by another man who had spent many years working in Germany. I feel sorry for these men who have to work away from home - and we know the prejudice that they receive as immigrant workers.

We took our leave and drove out of the village on a dusty road between raised vineyards and olive groves and small patches of wheat. We passed demure women in their white headscarves and nut brown faces, and couples jogged by in hand painted carts. They waved to us and smiled shyly.

We stopped the car and walked along a track to a prominence of white rocks and wild flowers and put out our picnic in the shade. A small valley of cone shaped rocks opened out into a vista of rock formations and cliffs.

We picnicked, sketched and drew, soaking in the solitude and the extraordinary configurations of the landscape with the lonely peak of Mt. Erciyes peeking at the horizon.

It was four o'clock before we drove back into the village and found, opposite the mosque, a shady café called The Family Tea Garden. We sat under a tree sipping tea and watched the men answering the summons to prayer. Old men sat on their plastic chairs either chatting in a desultory way or gazing into the future, or the past, who knows.

We strolled along the bottom part of the square and found an antique shop open but empty - but were followed in by a man in a cap, beard and a rugged yet mournful face. He was interested that I carried a book with me and thought I might be a student. He told us that he wrote poetry and he read one for us that had been translated into English and then he said I should copy it out for my diary, which I did:

So goes the world
So strong our ideas
Some building, some destroying
And youth is for a season!

Poverty bruises
I wonder if wealth is sweet
The wished desire
How long for life to be full

Come you, come too
No matter who you are
You are enough, so come
We are brothers being human

All living creatures are friends
We must be brothers and sisters
I, you, he, she, we, they
I wish the world so to be!

Then he read us another one about the flowers by the river and the birds flying up and down - melancholy and sweet. His name was Crazy Ali, crazy because he wrote poetry, who knows. He offered us tea, but since we had just had some, we declined and headed back to the hotel.

We decided to avoid the hotel dining room and walked into the village to the Meat House above a travel agent and car hire office. We followed our noses up some stone steps to a wooden door that we opened to reveal a large room with some old carpets on the walls and round wooden candelabra with most of the bulbs missing. The ones remaining shed a gloomy half light. There was a small open kitchen to the side where we chose our meat to be grilled. On the other side of the room was a small Hammond organ, a chair and a microphone. A lady who looked a plump version of Edith Piaf with bright red lipstick had helped us in a gruff way to choose our menus. She now sat at the organ and played and sang in a gravelly voice, beginning with 'Que sera sera' and continued with a medley of French and Italian songs. I wondered what had bought her to this impoverished village and did she sing for her supper?

Our waiter, a thin sensitive looking man, sat down with us after the meal and wrote down Turkish words in Ralph's book. He too was worried by the lack of tourists. On the way back to the hotel we were accosted by a middle aged, flashily dressed businessman who tried to sell us onyx ornaments and then a young man with a brief case stopped us and tried to sell us a house!

Wednesday, 12th May

Goreme, is the tourist capital of Cappadochia because of its rock formations that are integrated into the fabric of the town. On the way we turned off to a sign to a church. The road dipped down into an enclave of vineyards, walnut groves and olive trees. At the end of this small valley was the Aynali Church.

It had narrow steps leading down and had been carved deep into the rock, its walls painted with pigment the same colour as the red pottery at Avanos - charming images of pigeons intermingled with various early Christian symbols including the remains of a crucifix.

The church guardian appeared from nowhere (as they do) and issued us with tickets before showing us around. This was not merely a place of worship. It was also a living area and fortification. The doors could be blocked up with stone in times of danger and there were places for hanging up clothes, crushing grapes and holes bored through the rock walls from chamber to chamber which acted as telephones in times of need. Some of the inner chambers were so deep in the rock that they made me feel claustrophobic, so I wandered outside. I soon found myself being shadowed by a plump pudding faced teenage girl who was there with a wizened old lady in Islamic shawl and long skirt. The girl offered me walnuts from the trees. As Ralph wandered off filming and photographing, the guardian directed me towards a low hand made table in the shade of a rock. He gestured for me to sit down on a tiny wooden stool and brought a bunch of wild flowers in a jam jar and set them on the table. I thought what a gracious gesture it was. The girl sat next to me chomping on her walnuts and I surveyed the tranquil scene. On Ralph's return we drank tea with the guardian. He too was worried by the lack of tourists and in his broken English bemoaned the horrors of war with 'pum pum pum' machine gun mimicry and throat slitting gestures. Why can't people live together peacefully, was his question.

We stayed only a short time in Goreme and its plethora of tourist shops, hotels and cafes - just long enough to buy bread and water for our picnic (we had plenty of cheese and salad left over from the day before).

Driving on, we somehow strayed away from the familiar landscape of rock formations and steep valleys and found ourselves in a gully shaded by trees by a dried up river bed. The nearby village had an unusual mosque with a tiny minaret much rounder and chubbier than most and made of thin red bricks. A few chickens clucked about and it seemed ideal for our picnic, but rather smelly from a sewage plant on the other side of the river. A young man leaned over the fence of a ramshackle garden and asked us if we were French in such a brusque manner that we decided not to stay. Further on we found a dirt path that led to a small olive grove and in the distance a vista of red cliffs.

On the way back to Urgup we came upon the perfect picnic place for tomorrow - a secluded valley with an abandoned rock dwelling and olive trees.

We bought postcards in Urgup and had a Turkish coffee in the same café as we lunched at on Monday. Then back to the hotel where to our amazement a coach load of French tourists had arrived. So we will no longer be in such splendid isolation.

We walked to the village square and ate at the Meat House again. We sang along with the lady on the organ.

Thursday, 13th May

We hadn't seen Seyhan since Monday but were relieved to see him again. We thought he might have got into trouble for going out with us, but luckily not.

We took the low road out of the village and then the same cart track as on Tuesday to follow the sign to 'Pancarlik Church and Chapels' situated in a narrow gully with the church carved out of a cone shaped rock.

We headed straight for our picnic spot, pausing at Goreme to buy food and drink a coffee.

Let me describe the scene. We are in a shallow gully. Down the dusty path two rock figures confront us across a small orchard of walnuts on our left and haphazardly positioned humped white rocks on our right. In the middle a meadow of wild flowers and grasses are crisscrossed with narrow footpaths worn no doubt by the passing of the villagers to tend their plots of potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers and vines. In front of the two solitary rocks a house has been carved out of an igloo shaped formation with windows and a door. Insects buzz across the grasses, a bird sends its gurgling song across the valley and the wind shivers the low growing trees. Buff coloured chipmunks emerge from their maze of holes and stand on their hind legs twitching their noses. Lizards perform strange gyrations on the warm rocks.

The hotel is now buzzing with two tour groups. They arrived hot and dusty from Antalya in the South and we were amused at the way they were being controlled by their guides.

Friday, 14th May

Notes on our expedition to the Soganli Valley:

Heading South from Ortahisar - orchards, wild flowers in the verges. A wide valley of rifts and patches of cultivation on the valley floor and to the outskirts of Urgup. Out of Urgup, verdant valley floor, young wheat, poplars - the road curves through the valley. White serried cliffs in the background. Back down into the valley - Mustafapasa. A white horse hitched to a plough. A pretty village with a cream mosque - foothills covered with scree, crumbling grey rocks emerge from the rises, now following a river bed and arid hills. Past the gate for Damsa Baraji. A lake on the right, blue green water. Flat topped mountains. A village halfway up a mountain. A woman hoes a field. A donkey waits patiently. A man trudges up the hill with a spray pack on his back. Cemil - built into the rocks. A graveyard with unpolished stone blocks. A slope of small rock chimneys. A man throwing seed onto his field. Taskinpasa. A lot of new houses. Cows with cowman. Finely tilled fields. A water fountain looks like a shrine. Fields with grassy margins. Blobs of mistletoe in the trees. Sahinefende. A cow walks down the street. Two turkeys and some hens herded by an old woman with a stick. The turkeys chase each other and gobble. A cart with a painting of two houses, a bridge and a river. A white hen crosses the road. An old lady ushers her cows into a shed and a man with a nut brown faces leans into the car to shake our hands. The cow lady smiles at us. Driving along a ridge. Doorways cut into the rocks and used as garages for trucks and tractors. Up on a flat plateau above the valley. Very bleak. Down a desolate mountainside with a town at the bottom - an oasis of cream houses and poplar trees. Guzeloz. Brick walls, rocks and houses, small herd of cows at roadside with two men who wave to us. A man on a donkey. Two men raking in a field. A strip of fertile land on the valley floor. Flat topped mountain to our right.

Turn right for Soganli. Climbing again. Lichen covered rocks below. Red serrated cliffs above. Desolate row of huts made of breeze blocks. Rock face punctured by dwellings. Feels deserted, abandoned. Dry stone walls and mud coloured houses. Houses and rocks blend together. Rocks peppered with pigeon holes carved into different shapes.

We stopped to buy our tickets at the car park kiosk and drank coffee outside a café with a meadow and a small stream. Very peaceful. A donkey brays loudly. Left along a stoney road in a narrow gully. Rocks with pigeon holes and carved windows all the way along. Steps up to a rock church at the end of the road. Donkeys graze on the slopes. Then the road to the right. 'The Church with Snakes', 'The Domet Church' and 'The Hidden Church'. The Church with Snakes - rich primitive frescoes of the saints and partially visible snake patterns in red. Beside the church are the living quarters with fireplaces, a channel for the wine to run along after being pressed, storage chambers and open chimneys to let the smoke out.

Back the way we came and turning West along the road to Derinkuyu. A rock strewn landscape with chalky verges, shallow gullies like the cracks on an eggshell. A dead straight road across the plateau. A shepherd with yellow sheep. Tilkoy. A sudden vista of snow on a veined mountain range. A wide plain with humped mountains and then the snowy range. Buff ploughed fields. Very flat. Rubbish dumps by the side of the road. Derinkuyu. A dusty town with a car park by the entrance to the Underground City. Decided against going in. Flat road across the plain. Up on the plateau again. Kaymaki. Another flat dusty town. Planting of potatoes. Guvercinik. Houses built into the rocky edged mountain. On the Goreme road.

The twin rocks of Ochisar come into view. Lovely long lunch at Urgup.

Sign for Hospital Monastery intrigued us. An incredible enclave of rock carved buildings with frescoes painted above the doorways and a beautifully shaped pillared chapel. Much more sophisticated that the other churches we have seen. Having read the guide book, it's probably 8th century. Exquisite. In what was probably once a courtyard, there is a potato patch!

And so this diary abruptly ends. The following day we travelled home.

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