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I have mentioned a few times in describing my recent travels through Turkey, that I have once previously travelled through the country nearly 35 years ago in April 1975. Recognising that the only people likely to be reading this blog who knew me 35 years ago are my two older sisters, I thought a blog post of explanation was called for. If there is anyone else visiting my blog who also knew me in or before 1975, then please leave a comment & get in touch!
Although born and brought up in the UK, from July 1970 until mid-February 1975, I lived and worked in Australia. I then left Australia, flying from Sydney, via Singapore, Bombay and New Delhi, to Kathmandu in Nepal. There, on 25th February 1975, I joined a coach party run by a company called Penn Overland Tours and travelled all the way to London, where I arrived two and a half months later, on 7th May 1975.
I travelled what was then known as the ‘Hippie Trail’, except that I did it in reverse! It was in the era when the Shah was still in charge in Iran and the Soviet Union was yet to invade Afghanistan. Both these events happened some four years later, thus putting an end to such trips by Western visitors.
My journey across Turkey was therefore from east to west, entering the country from Iran and staying our first night in Erzurum. From there, we travelled via Sivas, Urgup in Cappadocia, Konya, Pamukkale, (see my previous post), Izmir – visiting Ephesus en-route, Canakkale, before crossing the Dardanelles and heading on to Istanbul. If I ever discover how to put a map into a blog post then I’ll put one in to help readers visualise the journey.
Therefore, my recent journey that I have described so far in this blog – crossing the Dardanelles, driving along the Aegean coast to Izmir and then travelling on via Ephesus to Pamukkale took me along the same route I had had travelled almost 35 years previously, but in reverse. On Tuesday 13th October, I continued that journey in reverse, driving first to Konya, where we stayed overnight, before driving onto Urgup the following day. We then stayed in Urgup for three nights, in order to explore some of the amazing sights of the Cappadocia region about which I shall write in my next blog posts.
The main record I have of my 1975 trip is a series of nearly 400 colour slides taken with a Kodak Instamatic Camera. Such is the manner in which technology has advanced since then, it is now impossible to purchase films for such a camera even though I still possess it. However, courtesy of present day technology, Sybille has successfully scanned a number of my old slides onto a memory stick which will allow me to post them on this blog.
The first of these is on the left at the top of this blog post, alongside a picture I took on my recent trip. Whilst taken from slightly different angles, they show the same three fairy chimneys in Cappadocia, but nearly thirty five years apart. I hope my readers will find comparing the two photos as fascinating as I do.