We are the Travelers….We often enjoy joining small group photo tours with less than 10 people, such as Mehmet’s. We hate seeing so many tourists wherever we travel, so we label ourselves “Travelers”. First, all the travelers in our group have common interests – a passion for photography combined with travel to exotic destinations and […]
Turkey #7 – Gaziantep
We are enroute to Gaziantep, the sixth most populous city in Turkey. It is a diverse community populated mostly by ethnic Turks, plus Kurd and Syrian refugees. When we drove through town, we saw substantial damage from the Turkey-Syria 7.8 earthquake, which was followed by a 7.7 after shock, on February 8, 2023. We learned […]
Turkey #6 – Adiyaman and Mount Nemrut
We left our hotel in Aidiyaman by 2:00 AM to climb Mount Nemrut to see the sunrise. Mount Nemrut is 7000 feet high and was designated a World Cultural Heritage site in 1987. The site is covered with statues of the gods, and some consider this site as the 8th Wonder of the World. When the sun […]
Turkey #5 – Sanliurfa
In Sanliurfa we photographed the biblical Abraham’s Pond and also Abraham’s Cave and Mosque in the afternoon. We visited Karahantepe, an archaeological site in Sanluirfa, where we saw the oldest structures that have been discovered, and were built some 12,000 years ago. This was the first temple built by a mysterious civilization and considered the cradle of our […]
Turkey #4 – Mardin
Above is the view of the ancient city of Mardin in South Eastern Turkey, from our hotel balcony. The minaret did not light up until well after the blue hour ended, which is why the sky is black. Mardin is a UNESCO protected city and one of the most significant cities located in SE Turkey. […]
Turkey #2 – Kars & Dogubeyazit
We photographed the ruins of the old Armenian capital of Ani located right on the border between Turkey and Armenia. Ani is an old fort situated at the top of a massive hill, and is currently being restored. We met shepherds with their cattle still working the hills. There are impressive ruins of Armenian churches […]
Turkey 2023 #1 – Istanbul, Uzungöl and Erzurum
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 […]
Peru – Arequipa
We have visited Peru on four occasions in the past, but never made it to Arequipa, Colca Canyon nor Lake Titicaca, so we decided to make that a destination this time. On our drive from Arequipa (a UNESCO heritage site dubbed the White City), we saw this flying saucer shaped cloud hovering near the Misti […]
Istanbul – Resuming Travel in 2022
We are traveling again! The world of Pandemic COVID has not completely disappeared, but it is finally fading into the background, where the variants will likely become an embedded part of everyone’s lives forever. For those with access to vaccines, there is not much more of a concern than seasonable flu. We flew from Honolulu […]
Turkey – Cappadocia Timelapse
Last year, we spent three months in Turkey (click here to see the blog posts from that trip). We traveled to Cappadocia as part of those travels (blog here and here). I rarely show photo or video work from others in my blog, but am making an exception today. I came across this fascinating 3 […]