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Day 13 Thursday
Aug. 04, 2004
Van , Ahlat, Mus, Istanbul
Submitted by
Rector, Helen M - San Mateo, CA
Ruha750@aol.com; dogbarn_99@yahoo.com
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Still in
Van. 4:145 am wake up. Early breakfast. (Thank you Hotel Buyuk Urartu)
5:15 and we are off to Mus to catch the plane. Meli explains how the
log journal will be pieced together. We send 7 pictures for the days
we did the log. On CDs. Labeled. Send 7 for the day and your
favorite 3 from the trip. Also email the write-ups. Trip themes
seem to be: Turks as nomads, cycles in Turkish history, changing
borders, mixtures of peoples, keeping the culture while improving
education and opportunities, pushing on to all the edges. We
certainly went to all the Eastern and northern edges of Turkey on this
trip. And experienced the rest.
We stopped on the way to Mus at a Caravanserai called El-aman Hani. The "we've had enough" caravanserai. Got caught up in a huge flock of sheep and goats. The herders had 950 animals. And dogs. We looked at the P shaped shepherd's crook. It's like that so he can throw it or poke the sheep and not injure them. Low tech. They also had camera cell phones. The high tech aspect of sheep herding these days, I guess. Meli told us a joke about the prolific stud sheep. But once the state bought him he slowed way down. The former stud sheep told the herder that he had become a bureaucrat, and now only did his job when he chose to. |
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We took (yet another) tour into Mus. Meli bought a samovar She charmed a young boy, Hasim, into getting onto our bus and directing us to the best tea garden in town. He did and it was delightful. No doubt he had stories about being taken up by space aliens when we dropped him back off downtown. But meanwhile, with
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