Day 49: Hasankeyf

Mosque Inscription

The journey from Diyarbakir to Hasankeyf was ridiculously easy. If you know me then of course you know that there was no way in hell I was actually going to wake up at 5:30 AM to catch the bus to Hasankeyf. I hit that alarm so fast it didn’t even know what was happening. So when I woke up 4 hours later, I put my faith in the Turkish transportation system and made my way to the Ilçe Otogar, a small regional bus station not to be confused with the main otogar. Whenever I arrived at the otogar, this old man who had been watching me on the dolmuş gently took me by the arm when I started to walk the wrong way and led me over to the minibuses I needed.

It turns out that buses leave Diyarbakir for Batman every 10 minutes. Yes, that’s right. Batman. You say Baht-mahn in Turkey but damn if it isn’t cool to go to a town named Batman. It’s a completely unremarkable oil town (like Tulsa!) but there are regular buses leaving there for Midyat (and Hasankeyf is along the way). All in all it took me about 3-4 hours to get from Diyarbakir to Hasankeyf.

Cave homes on Tigris

Hasankeyf is a very small town of 3,000 people that is situated on the banks of the Tigris River. Apparently it was a stopover on the Silk Road back in the day, and its strategic location made it a prize to both the Byzantines and the Sassanids.  The Arabs dealt with all that back and forth business when they swept through in 638 and took the town. It reached its peak from 1101-1232 when the Artukid Empire rose and made Hasankeyf its capital. It swapped hands a few more times until the Ottomans rolled in during the 16^th-century.

Aside from the obvious ruins and things, the town is also well-known for the roughly 4,000 cave houses that have been carved into the sandstone cliffs along the Tigris. Oddly enough the whole thing has been scheduled to be flooded by a dam project that was supposed to be implemented 60 years ago. There’s been a lot of opposition to it because Hasankeyf is such an important site and so far the project has been on hold indefinitely.

Hasankeyf Girl

There’s only one motel in town, so that’s where I stayed. It didn’t have AC but it did have a fan. Thankfully I also got a room away from the bridge because apparently the rooms near the bridge will shake whenever a truck does over the bridge. There was an American girl and a Dutch lady also staying in the hotel; whenever I checked in the American girl was suffering from dehydration so we agreed to meet up later. Having experienced dehydration before I didn’t want to disturb her so I went off in the afternoon on my own.

The Mosque of Rızkıye was built in 1409, and its minaret has two sets of staircases inside, which is apparently unusual. The 99 Names of God are inscribed above the entrance to the mosque, and there are also some very interesting carvings at the base of the minaret. For me the most amusing thing was the see an enormous stork’s nest on top of the minaret.

There are ruins of an old bridge running across the Tigris near the mosque. It was built in the 14^th-century on top of the ruins of a Byzantine bridge that was supposedly so big that it had a caravanserai inside of it.

Tigris at Sunset

The highlight of the town is supposed to be the castle, but the site was closed when I arrived because an entire section of the cliff inside had collapsed a few days before. It killed the owner of one of the cafes that are attached to the side of the cliffs near the castle, and the government apparently deemed it too dangerous for anyone to go inside. A policeman was stationed near the entrance, and he was watching me like a hawk – if I even so much as shuffled near the site (it isn’t all enclosed by a fence) then he would start yelling at me.

Afterward I went to the Sultan Suleiman Camii, built in the 14^th-century. But it was also closed and locked. I could have climbed the wall but I wasn’t that interested in seeing the ruins of an old mosque. The impressive minaret was enough for me, even if it was missing its top. While standing at the mosque, I noticed a cliff-face with some of the cave houses carved into it so I went off the beaten track to get a better look. Then I discovered there was a canyon leading into the cliffs, lined with cave houses. Feeling rather Lewis & Clark-ish I decided to venture inside.

Sultan Suleiman Camii Minaret

Well. The cave houses stopped quickly and then it just got creepy. The canyon was small enough that in some places I had to shimmy between some rocks to be able to go forward. It was very rewarding but the further I went the more I started to worry. What if I broke my leg? What if a scorpion stung me? What if a snake bit me? My overactive imagination got the better of me so I turned back when I reached a point that would have been particularly difficult to navigate.

Back in town I met up with the American lady in the Internet café. She had arranged a guide for the afternoon who promised to somehow get us into the castle site, so I agreed to go along for a mere 15TL. True to his word, we circumvented the policeman and slipped into the site, which didn’t look the least bit dangerous to me. Sure, an impressive chunk of the valley wall had come crashing down but lightning never strikes twice…right?

Anyway, we began the long ascent up and around the cliff to get to the access point for the castle, which meant going through a beautiful valley filled with sheep and shepherds. I was freaking out about losing the network signal to my cell phone and thereby missing an internship interview (it turns out she sent an e-mail to reschedule for next week) and my American companion, Elizabeth, was still recovering from dehydration. We took it nice and easy, which is my preferred way of doing things (unlike Turkish guides, who always seem to be trying to set some speed record for most sites seen in an hour).

The Canyon

When we got to the castle access point, it was a giant ramp up the side of the cliff. Elizabeth and I looked at the ramp, looked at each other, back to the ramp, over to the guide and back to each other with a look that said, “I’m not going but you can if you want.” The guide consoled us by saying even Turkish tourists usually didn’t want to go up the ramp. We continued on through the valley and descended some steps to find ourselves emptied on to the banks of the Tigris. The guide led us to a pool right next to the river and said it was spring water. It seemed like a pretty dubious claim but we drank the water (I thought I was going to die of thirst) and I’m not dead yet. I assume Elizabeth is also still alive.

I spent a good chunk of the evening at the Internet café catching up on e-mails and other stuff, so I was late to dinner with Elizabeth. Whenever I approached the hotel, the receptionist bolted out of the front door and started waving toward a restaurant, jabbering in Turkish. I couldn’t even put my stuff down before he took me by the arm and started guiding me over there. I didn’t feel so bad whenever I arrived and saw that Helena, the Dutch lady, who departed shortly after I arrived, had joined her.

Valley Behind Castle

And that’s when I found out she was a sex tourist, which totally revolts me. They are increasingly older single women who go to exotic locations for fun, sun, sights, sounds, food and sex with local men. And the local men are only too eager to bed a foreign woman, more as a matter of bragging rights than anything else. I hate it because it can give tourism a seedy reputation in places, and it can turn public opinion against tourism in some places (especially small places) or against whole nationalities (i.e. “all those Dutch women just sleep with our men”).

The night was rough without AC. I had the door open and the fan on but the heat persisted. I spent a largely sleepless night tossing, turning, sweating and telling myself it was definitely worth it.