We have just started the “off the beaten track photo tour of Eastern Turkey” with Mehmet Ozbalci of Turfantastik. This will be our sixth trip with Mehmet since discovering him nearly a decade ago on our first tour of Western Turkey (click here to see the list of 26 blog posts from that trip).
The photo above is a view from our hotel, Arcadia Blue Hotel, in Istanbul. To our surprise, the Blue Mosque is now bathed in warm pink lighting instead of the previous blue after the recent remodel.
We typically arrive a couple days early for these trips. That allows us to acclimate to the timezone change, and allow for any flight problems to be resolved. Well… this time we really needed that buffer. When we arrived in Istanbul, we discovered that our luggage was still in London (our 2nd stop on the 3-hop flight between Honolulu and Istanbul). We have AirTags in all our luggage and could tell both our bags were still in the Turkish Airlines storage area at Heathrow Airport. After 11 calls from me, and several more by Mehmet, our luggage finally arrived 4 days later… in Trabzon, another airport as we had already left Istanbul. We were rather anxious about getting those suitcase, as they had our cold-weather clothes, needed a few days later.
Other than the wasted time on phone calls, and the small amount of money spent on temporary clothing needs, this was just a minor hiccup in a trip that otherwise went smoothly. After having traveled to 98 countries (this is our third time in Turkey), these small bumps in the road are just just something we can shrug off and use to tell stories at parties… ☺
We spent the first couple days in Istanbul just wandering the streets in the Galata Tower area. We lived in Istanbul for 3 months in 2016 on a home-exchange, so we were already familiar with most of the landmarks. We were surprised at the long Disneyland-like lines to get into the Haghia Sofia and the Blue Mosque this time though. We were able to just breeze through in 2016. The tourists are back… (Of course, we do not consider ourselves tourists… We Are Travelers! ☺)
Our tour will explore various UNESCO designated world heritage sites in Eastern Turkey, where our civilization began. One of our first stops was to photograph the 14th century Greek Orthodox monastery of Holy Mary known as Sumela located on the side of a cliff enroute to Uzungöl, a small mountain village in the Caucasus. Our trip takes us across many tea plantations, where we occasionally stopped to watch the lucious tea plateaus.
Reflections from Uzungöl Mosque onto Lake Uzungöl (upper left). We then walked around the village of Karaster, which is a village where the nomadic tribes roam and a second home to some Turkish families. Enroute, we’re enjoying the beautiful fall colors.
We returned to shoot the quaint Uzungöl mosque at the magic blue hour, with its two minarets cast onto the still lake below. Mehmet captures the interior of the mosque (upper-right) as well as more scenes enroute (middle-right).
In Erzurum, we explored many ways to capture the reflection of the Yakutiye Madrasa on the glass tile (lower-right). This was originally a 13th century theological school, and is now a museum. We next photographed the 12th century Ulu Mosque, one of the oldest mosques in Turkey. Regular characters enjoy just sitting in the park to socialize (upper-right).
Before lunch, we shot the “Oltu” bazaar in Erzurum, which is known for its “Oltu” stone, a semi precious stone (fossilized carbon) known as black amber.
On our walk to lunch to taste the best kebabs in Turkey, at a restaurants known as “Cağ Kebab”. we passed by a 3-D mural depicting scenes from World War 1. All but 200 Armenians were executed in WW1.
More scenes from medieval Erzurum, with its rich history. Here’s a link providing more details of the town and history of its people.