Travel clicks: Colours of Harran Day 116

Harran, in SE Turkey, is an ancient place, older than the Bible. Here Abraham lived and met Sarah as any local will tell you. Here in this mud village 4-5m high cone shaped houses (sometimes called beehives; cool in the summer, keeping warmth in winter) are still in use, either as tourist exhibits or storage places now that the predominantly Arab population moved to modern dwellings either in the village or slightly away from it.

Traditional houses are apparently made from mixture of mud, oil, and egg. Apparently they also smell after rain, our guide confided, luckily it does not rain much ;-D

Village that used to be only dusty is now dusty yet surrounded with green fields of cotton and wheat, curtsy of successful
irrigation with waters from the dam that swallowed Zeugma (village of the mosaics Day 115). Yet the village and excavation areas are still pretty colourless. So actually the only vibrant colours are the skies (sometimes) and clothing (mostly children's) and the purple headscarves locals, man & women alike, wear.

The site of the university of Harran (where astronomers met and studied, and where works on philosophy and medicine were translated to Syriac and Arabic) is open for exploration although the few bricks that you can still see standing, do not tell much of a story - hiring a guide is a good idea otherwise you’ll have no clue what you’re looking at. No worries, if you come there by yourself, the sharks come to feed as soon as you've parked ;-P

BTW locals are actually camera shy.
PS I'm not sure about brightness level or colours since I'm traveling and my screen requests another calibration.


The structure on which the kid's clothes are drying is a summer bed for the whole family. They cover it with mattresses and sleep outdoors.

Each room has a cone roof or two and this house even has a little pergola in front.

Interior - living room (show house)

Good luck charm:

The university of Harran

The magic of Zeugma Day 115

We went to visit yet another hidden jewel, forgotten or overlooked by most tourists in Turkey. Therefore I'd love to share some of it with you. Absolutely amazing. We were speechless really. Wow!

Just before Sassanid army of King Shapur I. reached Zeugma, the Roman inhabitants fled. Their city was burned down and destroyed, never to be rebuild again. The rubble covered the site and preserved it incredibly well. Archeologists had to dig the mosaics out from depth of 3-5 meters. They had to hurry too. The waters of the new dam were raising and it was known the site will be engulfed soon. This treasure is now in the Archeological museum in Gaziantep, SE Turkey.


The 1st mozaic is displayed under cool lights to show off the colours [It is unclear but it's also quite possible this mosaic was found elsewhere in the area}. The rest of mosaics, which are much bigger, are displayed under warmer lights, therefore the colour difference.

Museum (size of the mozaics is absolutely amazing, so is their state of preservation!)

The bottom of a fountain:

Centerpiece of a floor mosaic:
(to understand the size check the photo of the museum indoor, top left you see a man, on his right you see a mosaic, this one is the one, I'm showing here only the central part sans the geometric borders)

Detail of a floor mosaic:

Full mosaic:

Detail of the mosaic above:

Detail of another one:

Geometry was also prized:

Datails are so good that mosaics resemble paintings:



...and there were more. Some not even displayed yet due to lack of space. Next year they open a new, purpose built museum. In the mean time we'll have to make do with the book we bought that shows them all.

Verdict - worth going to Gaziantep just for this.

Extra - one more house remains, on the spot and will be turned into an open air museum. One day...

Karatepe Day 114

I love hotels with free wireless internet. It means I'll manage to keep up. Amazing!! Regards from Urfa in South East Turkey!

We started our trip leaving Adana and traveling inland towards Hieropolis Castabala and Karatepe. Out of the two, Karatepe is more important and far more impressive. It's an open air museum on the location of a Hittite fortress of king Azatiwada in a beautiful setting of Karatepes-Aslantaʂ national park. Historically it's very important since findings of bilingual inscriptions in Phoenician alphabet and Hitite (Luwian) hieroglyphs meant Luwian could finally be read/translated/understood.

The stone fundations of the fortress still stand while the brick walls have crumbled away. Yet, not offering much on the architectural part, it"s still an amazing treasure of reliefs and statues lovingly restored to the two entrances into the fortress. The inner walls of the gate-houses were adorned with sculptures of lions and sphinxes, inscriptions and reliefs, depicting cultural, mythological and daily-life scenes carved on blocks of basalt. More










Who are you staring at? =P



King with Phoenician (lingua franca at that time) writing down his front:

Weather was absolutely miserable..

... which did not bother the sweet water crab going for a walk in the forrest some 100m above the water. Poor thing had to pretend to be a weird shaped leaf statue while we admired it =D It didn't even blink =P

Hieropolis Castabala offers a nice walk in a meadow like environs (if it's not pouring)

When the east wind blows up Helford river the shining waters become troubled and disturbed... Day 113

I took the title from the 1st chapter of the Daphne du Maurier's Frenchman's creek. Here the wind is blowing in the opposite direction of the flow of the water causing the stripe like waves. I spent the whole day in front of my screen, working and was grateful that this quick snap presented itself :-) SOOC

Rickety old house, lovingly repainted Day 112

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It's also sunken and has half a door ;-D

BW nature Day 111

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Colour version

To catch the sunlight shining through Day 110

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