Rumi, Traveling Cross Country

After the last blog, I'll try to make this more concise. This was a long driving day. The country is beautiful and mountainous in places--more so as we advance on the Mediterranean. Here was the plan:

Drive to Konya (2 hrs) to visit the Mevlana (the person Americans know as Rumi) Museum. This is the town where legend says Mevlana was passing the shop of a goldsmith one morning. When he heard the hammers of the artisans, he began to whirl there and then in the street, and thus this is also claimed to be the place where the Whirling Dervishs first practiced. Dervish beliefs also appealed to the large Christian population of Anatolia. They helped bridge the gap between the Christians and their Seljuk rulers. Rumi, the leader of the Dervishes preached tolerance, forgiveness, and enlightenment and was said to have intervened on behalf of townspeople many times.

On the way we will stop to view a 13th century Selcuk Turk Caravansarai-- a way station for camel caravans similar to those made famous by Marco Polo. We continue our journey to the remote mountain village of Urunlu via Beysehir Lake on seldom-used back roads (3 hrs). Black goat-haired yurts of Yuruk nomads can be seen in green meadows surrounded by cedar-covered mountains. Urunlu is a traditional community rarely visited by western travelers.

Deniz always has a surprise in store, and today it was a stop at a Mosque. The Imam here is someone Deniz respects and likes, so we had a personal tour of this very ancient and simple mosque. The structure is supported by huge cedar columns. When building the mosque, the cedars were cut down in nearby forests, then submerged into a lake for 40 days, taken out and allowed to dry. This process made the cedars hard as stone. To keep the cedars humidified, a pit was dug in the center of the mosque, and in winter snow as allowed to accumulate and gradually melt...now large humidifiers are brought in once a year to do the same work. The Imam talked with us for awhile, answered questions, and then sang for us--in a beautiful voice (at Deniz's request) the morning call to prayer. After that we were invited to pray with the Imam, and four of us took the opportunity, following his lead in a short experience.

Our home stay was lovely. I'll leave you with some pictures and a story. We were invited to bring a gift for our home stay family. Pam chose a simple cutting/serving board and a card. On the card she wrote in Turkish (with the help go Google translations): "Thank you for your hospitality and for sharing your house and family..." So we thought to have Deniz check it just in case. He took one look at the card and burst out laughing. "What did you think to say?" he asked. Pam explained. He laughed some more and said, "Well, it is not exactly that. The connotation is something like, thank you for giving us your house and giving to us your wife...or something like that." The three of us were in hysterics, but decided to give the card as it was written. It was received very graciously.

Without further words, here are a few pictures of our travel to Urunlu, and a few from the travel to Antalya. Here by the Mediterranean we rest for the night.




Entrance to caravansai




Room inside



Konya, Mevlana museum. Rumi is buried under the green dome.




As it might have been in Mevlana's time




Main entrance detail



Roman aqueduct ruins



Aspendos amphitheater







Katherine in the upper hallway


Eating area of our home stay...kitchen and sleeping area behind doors to left.




Walking in the early a.m. We met a woman who had just gathered juniper berry-like berries. They are used for cooking.




Kids waiting with their mom for the school bus in our town.




Enime and her husband cooking breakfast before we left. Waaay delicious!




Our home stay family. From left brother of our host, a neighbor, Enime our hostess, and Enime's husband (names escape me at present)




Sunset on the Mediterranean from the terrace where we had dinner.


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Location:Konya and on to Urunlu