Malatya, Turkey
Atop Mount Nemrut
July 5, 2012
There's a big, a big hard sun
Beating on the big people
In the big hard world
- Eddie Vedder
In and of itself Malatya really doesn’t hold much of interest. I suppose it is just a typical big Turkish city with half a million inhabitants. Tourists only visit to use the city as a base from which to visit Mount Nemrut, the site of an ancient burial tomb. While the city offers no sights of note it does offer a glimpse of everyday life in a big Turkish city. There are shopping malls, billboards, neon signs, and traffic. There is a traditional bazaar where metal work is done next to a kebab shop. The local specialties are dried fruits, notably apricots, which can be found everywhere. The most interesting thing I saw here, which speaks to the diversity of Turkey, was a giant advertisement for women’s clothes showing a picture of a woman with a headscarf while just in a front of me a woman with exposed thick brown hair was passing by.
On top of Mount Nemrut you see this same diversity in the flocks of Turkish tourists that come to the mountain to see the sun rise and set. The rest of the time the place is mostly deserted and is as peaceful as a place can be when the wind is whipping by at 30 miles per hour. Just below the summit there are two sets of statues, all beheaded and in ruins, that are supposedly guarding an ancient burial tomb of Antiochus from the first century BC. At sunset and sunrise the fading and growing sun lights the ruins in complex shades of colors while the mostly Turkish tourist crowd clamors over each other for photo opportunities. Sunset brings about a chorus of cheers, prayers, and clapping, followed by a quick exodus from the harsh wind and cold evenings at 7,000 feet elevation. Sunrise is considerably less crowded, probably because it occurs at just before 5am, but nonetheless the views are worth it with perfect lighting of a panorama of sweeping rock formations, lakes, and plains that seem to extend forever.
The number of tourists here is a reminder that I am heading back into the familiar and well-traveled route that most tourists take. I can only hope that the scenery to come will be worth sharing with so many other people.