Soumya describes his Turkey visit with sites, sounds, food and fun – a colour and mood story, with wit and humour, exclusively for Different Truths.

The Delhi International Airport at midnight is like Sealdah station or Mumbai Central or Sadar Bazaar at peak hours. Queues for immigration and security check are like going to Sribhumi puja, Tirupati, or Lal Baug cha Raja Ganpati.

 Experience post-retirement travel in economy class, without special gates.

Indigo is a no-frills airline. Scrunched up in a cramped space shivering with cold, a baby is wailing, and the sound is like skewers in the brain. No blanket, pillow, eyeshade, or earplugs are provided. But the body is resilient, especially after 1.5 hours of standing in immigration and security queues. I slept and snored, and the baby and I kept the whole plane awake between us. The pilot didn’t escape with a parachute because we flew over Pakistan and Iran.

Turkey is full of cats as the Prophet loved them. Now we know why he wasn’t keen on dogs.

One hundred years of secularism and being the heart of Christianity make the Islamic moves half-hearted. The churches and museums are converted to mosques, but the Christian frescoes are only partly covered by sheets in the inner chamber, but you can peer behind, and Jesus and the saints reign on the outer side and passages. Even earlier, Greek, Roman, and Egyptian images are everywhere. Dress codes and segregation are mentioned but often ignored. The dress is also predominantly European. Only a few locals in hijab, primarily tourists from Islamic countries. Maybe because we’re staying in the European part.

The food is fantastic—a wide variety of cheese, olives, salami, sesame sweets, fruits, and honey. The soup, however, is plain masur dal without tadka or phoron. Kebabs are dry hard, and unmarinated, so they are not to our taste. I had the original Chello Kebabs; ours is better.

This place has people from so many countries. It’s incredible. East Europe, Central Asia, cis countries, North Africa, Middle East, France and no one speaks English. Except for cruise ship geriatrics from the USA and Indians from the gulf of South Africa or England. A Bangladeshi guy sang amazing Rabindra Sangeet.

Many Turks have mixed ancestors. Our guide has Greek and Bulgarian ancestors.

The Turks are beautiful. An average person can walk into Bollywood. And the women dress in western clothes that look like starlets giving photoshoots.

Lots of Turkish food gave Istanbul belly, and I used a surprisingly clean public loo on the mosque’s premises, ironically, the Hagia Sofia.

Cappadocia is magical. The balloon ride and the underground city were unbelievable. I also did the ATV ride forgetting my age and narrowly escaped serious injury, but it was an experience. Staying in a cave hotel in refurbished ancient Greek houses

A Mediterranean breakfast. Fruits, cheeses, olives, sesame bread, honey, cinowa, eggs, salami, coffee

The top-rated beaches in Turkey like Kusadasi and elsewhere in Europe, including the fancy Cannes and Nice in France or the famous Brighton in England, are gravelly, rocky, strewn with pebbles, narrow, and no surf; the water is cold, although it’s obvious to clean calm and blue, suitable for swimming. They’re often not free, and certain rock-free areas are roped off, and you pay to swim.

In contrast with the Indian beaches, vast expanses of glorious fine yellow sand, and roaring surf, though the water is sandy and not clear. And currents often make swimming difficult and dangerous.

And even 5-star resorts aren’t permitted to rope off beaches or the sea.

Despite this, hordes of sun worshippers spend so much to lie on mats on the gravel, which aren’t very comfortable on all European beaches, which Indians wouldn’t even visit in India.

I was wondering why this is so.

Maybe our sun is too hot and grills the bathers instead of tanning them, or perhaps it’s the fear of oglers, who are absent from European Beaches. But if the bathers are there in the multitudes, I’m sure the oglers would disappear, as it wouldn’t be a rare and prohibited sight to see skin.

I also wonder why India has not become a surfing destination.

Taksim square.

Street music.

A Karolbag feels.

Turks have one thing in common with Bongs — an incredible and bewildering array of unique sweets.

I fulfilled a long-standing ambition today. I had always been envious of the government clerks who slept peacefully in public parks in the afternoons on weekdays.

Finally, I did it.

Sitting in a beautiful garden by the sea, watching families picnicking, tourists strolling, and cats frolicking, I dozed off and spent a lovely afternoon sleeping on a park bench by the Mediterranean Sea.

Kusadasi

A delicious seafood dinner on the waterfront after the sunset cruise and a vigorous swim in the incredibly blue waters of the Aegean Sea, and a beer on the beach

Pamukkale

Among the hot springs. Limestone terraces, Greek ruins, mud bath, feeling hopelessly overdressed among a sea of bikinis. 

Cappadocia

The incredible sunrise ride in the hot air balloon over a magical canyon

The temptation of riding through the ravines in the spectacular Cappadocia, which we had earlier seen from the hot air balloon, made me forget my age and the fact that I was never a biker dude, was overweight and had hardly driven myself in the last dozen or so years, and go for an ATV ride through the canyon. It was a harrowing experience; I had to ride pillion for the last 5 km after one accident. But at least then I could get to experience the scenes.

Earlier, my total concentration was on staying upright.

Photos by the author

Soumya Mukherjee

Soumya Mukherjee is an alumnus of St Stephens College and Delhi School of Economics. He earns his daily bread by working for a PSU Insurance company, and lectures for peanuts. His other passions, family, friends, films, travel, food, trekking, wildlife, music, theater, and occasionally, writing. He has been published in many national newspapers of repute. He has published his first novel, Memories, a novella, hopefully, the first of his many books. He blogs as well.

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