Moonscape, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, the Flinstones. These all come to mind in this mind-blowing region in Central Turkey. Successive layers of basalt, iron, copper, sulfur and much softer tufa were laid down by cataclysmic volcanic eruptions millions of years ago. Erosion took its natural course and left behind some spectacular geography, some of which looks deliberately carved.

Quite literally in a time out of memory, people discovered that the caves could be carved and chiseled further into living spaces relatively easily and that’s just what they did.

Those nooks etched into rock surface are pigeon holes. Local people actually harvested  pigeon poop to use as fertilizer. Gives you an idea of how difficult life must have been.

Early Christians, escaping the Romans, came here. In the groups of three fairy chimneys together they saw the Holy Trinity and set up camp here. There are thousands of churches in this area which once had a population of 200,000.

Climbing into these caves we saw amazing spaces. Dating back to the earliest days of the religion, these are small churches with four apses in a cruciform space. The earliest paintings conceal the religion from prying eyes with hidden meanings depicted in ciphers and allegory. The Maltese Cross, for example, spells out Jesus’ name in Greek with the letters stacked on top of one another. The triangles represent the Holy Trinity.

Towards the 9th & 10th centuries, very skilled artists came in to paint frescoes, meant to educate the illiterate followers.

Some churches were well-protected from invaders and the elements and the frescoes are pristine.

Keeping with the cave theme, our hotel room is a cave, carved into the hillside. Really, we were sleeping in a cave!

It was lovely, extremely comfortable, romantic, and had a great view.

Dinner was a funny dish called pottery kebaps. A stew of meat and vegetables is cooked in a sealed amphora and served by dramatically cracking the pottery open. Of course we had our now ritual plate of baklava:

Tucking ourselves in at night with a fire going, it seemed those old cave inhabitants had a good idea.

While Istanbul has hundreds of mosques built by the Sultanate over time, there are only a couple of royal palaces. Topkapi Palace was the Ottoman’s home until the mid-19th century. It looks familiar from all sorts of paintings since the Turkish court was a favorite subject.

It’s one important-looking building after another and actually a little dull. There were some nice things like some more tile and doors made of inlaid mother of pearl and tortoise shell.

There’s even a whole building used for circumcisions of the royal princes.

It all got a lot more interesting when we visited the royal treasury rooms, where everything seem to be gilt and gem-encrusted. The Spoonmaker’s Diamond, whose story has something to do with a poor man who found the 82-carat diamond being gypped in the trade of 3 wooden spoons was astonishing. The Topkapi Dagger, emeralds and all was made famous in the old Peter Ustinov-Melina Mercouri movie. (not my pictures below)

There was also a wide-ranging collection of religious artifacts, including bits and pieces of Muhammed and Moses’ rod.

The harem was a completely different sort of thing, quiet, mysterious and intimate. The Sultan’s wives, concubines and sons lived here, and gruesome things happened like the everyday objectification and repression of women to the horrific, despicable sultan who, having tired of his 382 wives, had them packed up in bags and thrown into the Bosphorus to drown. Even the grandest space was filled with a sense of story.

Quite unexpected was the chance to see the Sultan’s Toilet.

THE GRAND BAZAAR

The largest covered market in the world with its rabbit warren of stalls and caravansaries, we found a few things we might buy, but the whole place was a little obnoxious with the aggressive salesmanship. Every once in a while though, we’d run into someone who made their obligatory pitch, but then were very happy to just chat about this, that and the other thing for a few minutes.

MEATBALLS

Istanbul people are supposed to be fond of meatball patties called köfte.  Traditionally served with a white bean salad picked peppers, they were tasty. At the local restaurant we tried, there was nothing on the menu besides the köfte.

It was a grey, rainy, miserable morning so we thought we’d be clever and ride a tourist bus around town. Wrong. It was almost unbearably boring.

We thought we had something promising when we went to a seaside restaurant with nice fresh displays outside. The bread with a spicy tapenade in olive oil was pretty good, but the meal went quickly downhill. So a month into our trip, we have finally had a bad meal. In retrospect, we should have paid more attention to the fact it kind of looked like Fisherman’s Wharf at home.

THE BLUE MOSQUE

We’re staying in the old part of Istanbul, called Sultanahmet. Sultan Ahmed, tired of worshipping in Hagia Sophia which was, after all, a Christian church, decided to build a new one of his own. Officially named after him, its popularly known as the Blue Mosque because of the blue iznik tiles that cover so much of the interior surface.

Like the church across the way, it also has a large dome, surrounded by myriad half domes and little domes.

I noticed an office in the mosque offering information about Islam, so I went inside and had a nice half-hour chat and learning a tiny bit more about this religion. (It was a little sad that while we there, among the hundreds of gawking tourists, none had gone into this office, nor had more than a handful made a donation to the mosque’s upkeep.) One funny slam against us males: the reason women have to stay behind screens out of sight in the mosque isn’t because they’re inferior in any way. It’s just they’re too much of a distraction to the men folk.

DINNER

We had a fun, fun dinner at a göreme restaurant. Istanbul is full of aggressive touts, for trinkets, rugs and restaurants. It can all get kind of annoying, but the guy who ushered us in here was so charming, ebullient and nice, we couldn’t not go in for a try. Göreme are described as a pancake, but instead of batter, a little lump of dough is rolled out. I guess more like a tortilla. They’re then filled and cooked on a flat grill. Simple but completely delicious. Looking back, it’s a Turkish quesadilla.

Another reason we came in is because they had a a fiddler, lute, zither and drum that looked like they were having a lot of fun. When the fiddler found out I also try to play the violin, he just had to show off his bag of impressive tricks.

Rounding out the meal were a couple of meat dishes, some kebaps, and one called Sac Tava. That was a big meat patty of ground lamb on a bed of eggplant puree along with some peppers. The kebaps were swimming in an addictive pool of paprika-laden oil.

Having decided to eat baklava or some kind of Turkish pastry every single day we’re here, we ate today’s delicious plate: the familiar triangle of a buttery pile of phyllo, a ring of walnut and a roll of pistachio.

Just out of the picture in the upper left corner is a glass of Turkish tea, which is really nothing more than your basic Lipton tea bag, but everyone drinks it all the time so we do too. Sometimes, you’ll even see a tea delivery guy.

As if we hadn’t upped our risk of diabetes already, I had to try something called sahlep from a pushcart vendor.

A sweet, milky drink redolent of cinammon, sahlep is made by adding liquid to sahlep flour, which is, get ready for this: ground orchid tubers. Yes, it was good and the perfect thing for a cold evening.

So, for a day that had started out so dismally, we actually had some fun.

There must be something about coming from a very high elevation all the way down to sea level, because we woke up after a good night’s sleep still feeling a little logy. Regardless, food must be eaten and sights must be seen, so off we went. But first, a little maintenance…

Massive monuments were on the agenda so, to ease into things, we stopped first at the graceful mausoleum of Sultan Selim II, built by Sinan, perhaps the greatest single architect who ever lived, in the late 16th century. Sinan’s buildings dominate the Istanbul scenery from the Suleymaniye Mosque to the turkish bath we’d visit later in the day. Hundreds of buildings proudly announce that they were done by the architect.

Inside we were introduced to Iznik tiles, originally an imitation of Chinese porcelain which grew into a major art form of their own. Instead of clay, the tiles have a very high quartz content. It’s amazing that they display the same brilliant colors so many years later.

We moved out of the shadows of the hulking Hagia Sophia, once a church, then a mosque, and now a museum. At first, it looked to me nothing so much as a 19th century factory.

Inside was a feast of Byzantine mosaics.

Normally I run or yawn through museum galleries of Byzantine art, but here, in situ, they invite close inspection and enjoyment. The church, which was built in the early 6th century, gives the mosaics context. It was for a thousand years it was the largest church.

Moving down in scale, we found a lovely pastry shop in the neighborhood we’ll be visiting again I’m sure. Consumed were a napoleon and a slice of Sultan’s cake, the cake being much more honey than cake, with a cream filling. Yum.

Rounding out the day was a visit to a famous Turkish bath, Çemberlita? Hamam?, built by that architect Sinan and in continuous operation for over 400 years.

A new experience, for sure. Going in, there’s something like a huge living room, where people read the paper, drink tea and just generally hang out. To start your bath, an attendant leads you to a resting room where you can change into a towel. Going into the hamam itself, you see a huge dome with round windows hovering over a huge marble dais, well-heated. Lowering onto it, I felt like a plate of fajitas. After a little while it was exquisite. Not a sauna, and definitely not a steam room, it is different. After your body temperature has risen, an attendant comes by to give you a good scrub with a rough washcloth and plenty of olive oil soap. It was weird to be bathed by a complete stranger, but I guess that’s how it’s done. After that, some more baking on the marble, relieved by visits to the ring of water tubs where cold water can be poured. After a while, into the shower you go and back to the resting room to recover from your experience. Of course, I couldn’t take any photos, but here’s a few from their website:

Ugh. Having to get up at 1.30am to make a 5.30am flight from Delhi to Istanbul was not pleasant. The long flight on Turkish Airlines was redeemed by the best airline food we have ever had: simple with 3 kinds of cheese, nuts, dried apricots, cold salmon, delicious olives, fresh rolls, a fresh fruit salad, turkish rice pudding, and sour cherry juice. I don’t know why airlines try to serve hot food when it’s always horrible. Simple is always best.

Our hotel in Sultanahmet gave us a teensy-weensy postage-stamp sized room.

This was more than made up for by the spacious common balcony with views of both Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. A sense that we were surrounded by history was unavoidable.

A quick nap, then we set out, still bleary-eyed, for a walk to orient ourselves to this new city.

There was a clear destination for our stroll: on the other side of the Golden Horn, Gülüloglu, makers of what say is the best baklava in Istanbul. Inside we had an amazing plate of seven kinds of baklava, including chocolate. The phyllo was crisp at the top and melting with butter below and the different nut fillings were absolutely distinct. Unlike pastries we’ve had before, you could say this was almost dry, not sticky with honey. I much prefer this type.  Our first cups of Turkish coffee, strong, sweet and with the sludge of coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup gave us the energy for the trip back to the hotel.

Quite unexpectedly, while walking back we found ourselves in the Egyptian or Spice Bazaar. Fantastic piles of spices, the country’s famous dried fruits and Turkish delight invited us to contemplate what surely is going to be a week of good food.

Dinner was a kind of Turkish pizza called pide, which is a flattened loaf of light bread topped with different kinds of fillings.

Not bad for a first day, I guess.

Whew, that was close! Just as we got our visas to come here, India decided to change the rules on multiple entry visas. They now require a minimum 2 month gap between visits. The reason they gave was to prevent de facto permanent residents who go out of the country for a day and then return. Whatever. It makes it difficult for tourists when India is a logical base for trips nearby, like Bhutan. So we land in Delhi and while Tom sails through immigration, I get stopped by an agent who keeps pointing at the stamp in my passport that says “2-month gap” and telling me to go away. Yikes. It was a tense few minutes in an otherwise charmed trip so far. A supervisor was found and gave me the discretionary permission to come back in for the 15 hours before our flight out the next morning. Thank goodness!

We felt like we’d already said our goodbyes to India and we intended to hide from Delhi’s horrendous smog and stay in our hotel room to regroup for Turkey. That got boring after a few hours, so we ventured out in the evening air to walk around Connaught Place, a circular colonnaded shopping mall the British built as part of the new city of New Delhi. It was good to see something different. And then something the same.

We stopped in at a McDonalds for our ritual fried pie, but the only one they sold was pizza-filled. Yuck. So what to eat? You might already know this, but McDonalds in India does not sell anything made with beef or pork. Tom wound up having his usual fish sandwich, while I went for the Chicken Maharajah Mac. That was a spicy patty of ground chicken on your basic Big Mac everything else. We had been protecting our stomachs pretty well by being careful about the water we drink…until we realized to our chagrin that we were happily drink our cold soft drinks which had ice cubes. Oops. We’ll see how that turns out. Oh well… the fries were pretty good.

On now to Istanbul!

For our last day in Bhutan, we made the ascent to one of the country’s holiest places, Taktsang Monastery, also known as the Tiger’s Nest. Ever since laying eyes on a picture of the place, I had wanted to come here one day.

There’s a story: Guru Rinpoche, in his terrifying manifestation, Dorje Dorloe (Buddhist gods are always turning into something else), got on the back of his consort, who had herself turned into a tiger and flew from eastern Bhutan to come here to deal with a demoness terrorizing the area. Did I mention the lady tiger could fly? Their landing place was near a cave for the meditating Guru Rinpoche: the Tiger’s Nest.

Still amazed at the fact we’re in the Himalayas, I’ll just point out that Taktsang hangs onto a cliff 900 meters above the Paro Valley floor, which itself is 2050 meters above sea level making for a total elevation a little short of 2 miles or 10,000 feet.

At the beginning of the trail, there’s a prayer wheel powered by running water.

Like the journey to Mecca is for Muslims, hiking up to Taktsang is the same for Bhutanese Buddhists.

Even though we’d had a week to acclimatize to the altitude, we still played it safe and sat on the back of some unfortunate horses who took us about 60% of the way up. (We would have to make rest of the ascent and all of the descent on foot.)

Quite soon after starting off, we could catch a glimpse of the place. (Click on the picture for a better view.)

Riding quietly up the trail, one of those rare moments of clarity and calm in our lives realized itself.

Still climbing, the monastery comes closer into view.

Tragically, the original wood monastery was burnt to the ground in a fire probably caused by a butter lamp like this one. After the fire in 1998, with tireless work and substantial international aid, it was rebuilt as it was before and reopened in 2005. So it’s a good thing the butter lamps are enclosed like this now:

On the subject of butter lamps, there’s a lovely station where we lit some lamps of our own. It also hangs precariously to the mountainside.

Drawing closer, we could see more signs we were approaching a revered and holy place: little piles of stones and tiny stupas left here by pilgrims.

One final footbridge across a ravine and we were about to enter the monastery. Once again, photos are forbidden. The monastery has a handful of temples in the complex. Visiting one of them, a wave of emotion struck. Mahayana Buddhism, with its magical creatures and fantastic stories has never had much appeal for me, but for this moment in this place, nothing could have seemed more real, more honest or truer.

Having worked up an appetite, it was time for dinner.

Our final meal began tonight with butter tea, a Bhutanese favorite that is exactly that: a cup of tea with a lot of butter. It’s always good to try new things, right? This was followed by some buckwheat soup,  the usual red rice, a kind of flat bread that had been fried in butter, buckwheat noodles with peppers and minced meat, buckwheat dumplings, beef with chili, and more very hot chilis with cheese. Also broccoli which was the chance for our guide to say that we westerners like our veggies seriously undercooked. Here, cooking vegetables properly means they’re in the pot for at least 30 minutes. I forget if I’ve already said this: Bhutanese food might not be an international cuisine, it is nevertheless very tasty and interesting.

Tthe Fifth King’s birthday was yesterday and he was just here in Paro, all the buildings flying the country’s flag.  Here’s the handsome now-30-year-old birthday boy.

So now we leave Bhutan, what is surely one of the most remote countries on earth. First contact came in the 1960s before which Bhutan had no contact whatsover with the outside world, not even its neighbors Nepal and Tibet.

For us, visiting such a calm, beautiful place with pure air is a trip we’ll always remember. It’s true for every place we go, but especially here…I feel lucky to have had its dirt on my shoes.

This was the magnificent view from our hotel room during the two and a half days we were attending the Punakha Drubchen.

Punakha dzong, or Pungthang Dechen Phodrang (Palace of great happiness) was built in the early 17th century at the confluence of two rivers. Easily the most magnificent structure in the country, it sits in the Punakha valley, which itself is quite temperate for being only 1250 meters above sea level. Officially sub-tropical, it certainly was the warmest place we visited. They can raise two crops a year here, no mean feat, as well as grow mandarin oranges, bananas and cactus (used to feed pigs).

Each dzong in each district in Bhutan seems to have at least one religious festival each year. We were in Punakha to attend the drubchen, celebrating victory over the Tibetan invaders. Say what? Well, remember Guru Rinpoche? He brought the Nyingma school of Mahayana Buddhism to Bhutan. The Tibetans were after him once he discovered a tiny statue the size of a grain of rice that came from the back of a lama. He had brought it here and they wanted it back. Apparently the battle wasn’t all that hard-fought, since the Tibetan army was pretty exhausted after their trek through the Himalayas  to get here.

At first, we watched some rehearsals going on. Excitement was building towards our second day here, the official first day of the festival taking place in a phenomenal temple (no pictures allowed). Visitors are allowed in the tiny gallery above the temple floor, from which we were able to see the Je Khenpo, the abbot of the monk body in Bhutan and the highest religious official in the country.

Our necks hurt from  all the craning to see so we stepped outside, thinking we’d be on our way. We momentarily stood in a doorway that we thought surely was off limits to visitors only to be pulled into the temple by a monk, this time to sit on the main floor of the temple, so close that the spinning monks could have whacked us with their costumes. Apparently I was sitting next to the governor of the Punakha district. Shoes are always off when you go into temple, so it was pretty fragrant with all those people!

What we saw being performed for the monks themselves was repeated in the dzong courtyard the next day for everyone to see. Coming into the temple, we all received blessing strings to wear around our necks and some kind of seeds to munch on.

Looking above the fortress gate, we saw the h-u-g-e-s-t bee hives ever.

The drubchen is a social party as well, and everyone comes in their best kiras and gos.

Gathered under the bodhi tree, the crowd waits.

Music comes from monks with drums and cymbals, singers with traditional instruments like the lute and zither, and reedy-sounding horns, which Tom says are made from human leg bones.

First, some traditional singing and dancing.

Then the real excitement: masked dances. I couldn’t tell exactly what was being portrayed, but it sure was colorful!

Like us, another face in the crowd, watching the show:

Just like at home, there are vegetable markets everywhere this Saturday morning. The produce looks familiar for the most part, but the faces are compelling.

In this next picture, you can see the cakes of yeast in the lower right that are used to make wine, a bottle of which is just in front of the saleslady. (And in the first row above, second picture, the box of brightly colored things are sort of like shrimp chips at home, which puff up when you deep fry them – these are used for temple offerings.)

Somewhat oddly, Bhutan faces the same issue as we do with locally-grown produce not always being the most available. For example, Bhutanese red rice, which can be found at most natural food stores back home, is too expensive for most people here, so they eat rice from India (which I don’t think is very good). We’ve been lucky to have the delicious red rice at most meals: it’s a shame that one of Bhutan’s most unique foods isn’t actually widely consumed within the country. The same goes for much of the produce, being trucked in from northern India. And, worst of all, is the egg situation. Bird flu is still a concern here and much of the poultry stock of Bhutan is gone, making the principal egg source India. Indian commercial eggs are a sorry thing: wan, and with egg yolks so light in color and lacking in nutrients, they might well be confused with the egg white. On the few occasions when we had what were clearly local eggs, the difference was amazing.

Two final odd things we saw: this spotted dog, and the ladies loo, listing the prices in Nu (Gnultrum).

Bhutan is currently divided up into 30 districts, which are roughly the same as the pre-monarchy states. Each district has/had a tzong, or fortress, for protection and as the location of the monk body. Today we visited a charmingly ramshackle one in Wangdue district, high on a cliff above a glacial river.

As traditional as the other ones we’ve seen, this one looks well-lived in with its aging timber and fading paint.

I wish I could show you what the temple interiors look like. They’re all slightly different of course, but there’s always a statue of Lord Buddha, flanked by at least two other statues, usually of Guru Rinpoche (the second buddha and crucial in bringing Buddhism here), and one of his manifestations. The temple books are kept in nearby bookcases. To the side is the platform from which the head monk gives his lessons. In front are the offerings, burning butter lamps, special colored flour cakes, packaged foods (for some reason, there’s always Lays potato chips). The most touching common offerings are just cups of water. Buddha said that all should be able to give equally, no matter how humble their lives might be. A simple cup of water is the same as the most extravagant offering. Here are Tom and Karma, our guide, just going into the temple here:

This dzong houses a school for many young monks. Unlike in Thailand where entering the monkhood can and often does last only for a year or two, monkhood here is a lifetime commitment. Children become monks for a variety of reasons, personal belief and family size are the two most important.

Always planted near monasteries is Bhutan’s national and holiest tree, the cypress. A lovely flowing tree, it certainly makes sense.

And on while we’re on the subject of holy things, I don’t think we’ve ever had holy water in a bottle:

This comes from a magical spring within a rock that Guru Rinpoche found. Really and truly with all the salubrious effects you would expect. We feel better already.

Leaving Thimpu this morning we saw what, when complete, will be the largest free-standing Buddha in the world.

The drive took us up to Dochula Pass (3140 meters, or just about 2 miles above sea level).

It’s hard to imagine a more auspicious place for prayer flags to catch the wind. There were plenty of them.

On the way down, before lunch, we visited the Chimi Lhakhang, a temple dedicated to Lama Drukpa Kunley, known as the Divine Madman, one of Bhutan’s most beloved Lamas. Drupka Kunley taught in a pretty unconventional way, using humor and magic to enlighten people. For example, one day he had an entire cow and an entire goat for lunch and somehow created the takin creature we saw yesterday..

The most outrageous story we heard involved a cannibalistic demoness inhabiting the land demanding sacrifices. One day, Drupka Kunley decided to take the place of her next meal, an old woman. He stripped naked, aroused his, ahem, lingam until it was quite erect, tied a lucky string around it, and put some flour in his other hand, and lay as if dead. The demoness came in for lunch and was surprised by the sight in front of her, this corpse with an erection. As she came closer, Drupka Kunley threw the flour from one hand in her face, temporarily blinding her. With the other hand, he, um, achieved release, shooting into the demoness’ mouth, thereby subduing her. The demoness then turned into a dog and ran, which Drupka Kunley of course caught and then trapped underneath this black stupa:

Thanks to this and other hijinks, the Divine Madman is quite beloved and the squirting penis is a good luck symbol, unironically adorning many buildings in Bhutan.

The temple is unsurprisingly also a fertility temple. Women wishing to conceive receive the blessing of being knocked on the head with a wooden phallus, a stone phallus and an ivory phallus. Then they spend the night on the grounds and if they have the right sort of dream, they’ll conceive. Men visit to be absolved of their sins. When our guide and I received our blessings from the child monk in charge, we got a little tap on the head. When Tom got his, there was a most distinct crack!

We ate lunch in a typical Bhutanese house:

In olden times, livestock were kept in the ground floor, while hay, straw and drying vegetables were kept in the open attic. The middle floor was for the people. Heating, quite cleverly, was provided by the warmth rising from the bovine neighbors below. It’s now illegal to keep cattle in the house for health reasons, so most people rent out the space. By the way, all new buildings in Bhutan must have traditional painting and construction.

Lunch was, as usual, tasty Bhutanese dishes. I am beginning to wonder, however, about the omnipresence of chilis and cheese.

Here a few of the people we met today:

And the lovely countryside: