(Note- Turkish drivers cannot back up their cars. We watched one guy try to back up the car on the ferry for at least 10 minutes).
Our car wouldn’t start when trying to get off the ferry and we had a heart attack moment trying to figure out what we would do in the middle of no-where in a land where the horse is the primary mode of transportation. It finally started and we headed off for Nemrut Dagi. The road disintegrated as we make our way up to the summit.
We finally got to the top, parked the car in an empty parking lot and went to buy our tickets. It turns out that today was a festival day and it was free. It was terribly windy and cold, so the local soldier guarding the site gave me his sweater to wear to the top and then escorted us to the summit. Gazi (his name means warrior in Turkish) was a professional soldier, 31 years old. He had spent 10 years in the army and was charming as he helped me up the rocky climb, holding my hand on the more difficult climbs.
The site itself was spectacular. It was formed when a megalomaniac pre-Roman king cut two ledges in the rock and filled them with colossal statues of himself and the gods, then ordered an artificial peak of crushed rock 50 meters high to be piled between them. Earthquakes have toppled most of the heads from the statues-and it’s a strange site to see these huge (2 meters high) heads standing on the ground. We actually made it down from the summit and onto the return ferry. I finished up the journal while being stared at by a 10-year-old boy who was mesmerized by the PC and typing.
We finally got to Sanlurfa (Urfa) and spent the evening planning our next few days and the drive back.
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