Adventures in Turkey part 2

Got to bed at around 1am this morning (+2hrs from UK). I did an odd thing too – I had forgotten to buy any bottled water – so brushed my teet and rinsed them with diet coke… Not such a good idea I guess, but preferable to the Turkey Trotts.

Today had to travel to close to the Syrian /Iraq border to an industrial town called Gaziantep. To get here I had to get up at 4am to catch the 6am flight from Istanbul. Needless to say I didn’t get a great deal of sleep last night. When I rose, I didn’t feel hungry, but was surprised to see the buffet restaurant in the Hotel filled with people. I just had a quick coffee and caught a Taxi to the airport, just 20 mins or so from the Hotel.

On the way here, we flew over what looked like desert, interspersed with the odd bit of green in the valleys. As we got nearer to Gaziantep, there appeared to be loads of fields of what looked like little trees. I’m not sure what they were. Perhaps they were Pistachios which this region is famous for. Flying into the airport was strange. A few tiny old planes on the edges of a superb new runway. At one end on the right the tiny airport building. No bays to pull up to. Men ran out with parking cones and boxed the plane into its place. Thankfully a driver was waiting for me to take me to my final destination. There were 2 others heading my way. We all squeezed into a little old Renault.

Gaziantep itself is probably the least attractive place I’ve ever seen on the planet. The way in from the airport resembled a scene from a badly bombed war zone. I once saw on TV pictures of bombed out Afghanistan, and it was like that, but not caused by bombs and no bullet holes. Why its like that I have no idea. I would guess only 1 in 10 of the houses was populated, the others half smashed or completely raised to the ground lying in piles of rubble. In between these demolished houses, people seemed to be living with corrugated iron for windows and clearly little protection from the elements. All were concrete block type constructions. Strangely even though clearly poor, they seemed to all have satellite dishes for TV on them. There was rubbish strewn about, old burnt out cars and people looking very poor and dirty. This scenery continued for at least a few miles. The traffic on the roads was equally tragic, with old trucks full of dirty looking workers, tractors pulling trailers hugely overloaded with boxes and all sorts of things. Old men squatted at the sides of the roads in groups, and young children no older than 7 or 8 I would guess dodged in and out of the cars trying to sell cheap biros, or nuts to anyone who made eye contact.

Once through this interesting area, more middle class apartments and houses rose from the litter covered ground. All the houses have water tanks on the roof for some reason painted in many colours. Many of the houses seemed to be unfinished, like the owner had run out of money and only got as far as building about 2/3rds of the top floor. Lots were fitted with solar panels. Strangely there was a beautiful green park with a children’s playground, right amongst all this, completely clean and litter free.

The company I was visiting itself is pleasant, the people very friendly and keen to learn. Looks like it will be easy for them, they only make Yarn! In comes organic raw cotton bales, out goes organic cotton yarn. Simple. Tomorrow looks more challenging. The offices are very nice, marble floored, air conditioned and clean. They have Internet here, but it’s not as fast as even the HF office. I can see why they say our software is slow.

In a couple of hours time, my lift to Sanilurfa arrives to take me by road some 2 hours to the east of here. That could be an interesting journey. The fella who I’ve spent the morning with, tells me that the country gets rougher and poorer as you head east from here. Hmmm, somehow I doubt I’ll be able to post this tonight.

I discovered a few hours or so ago that its Ramadam. This Muslim festival means that no one eats or drinks during the hours of light. Hence the crowded buffet at 4am. I should have realised… Right now I’m feeling very hungry and know that my first chance to eat will be when its gets dark tonight.