Quiet night up on the hillside. We decided to brave it and try and park in the city as it sounded quite nice in the Rough Guide. No chance! “No Karavan”…but it’s not a caravan 🤣
Had to abandon the idea, so we retraced our steps a little and turned back up the coast road. After twenty minutes of crazy racetrack behaviour the driver said “Get me out of here, they’re all loons!” At that point, we passed a man with a camel walking alongside the dual carriageway. 🤣
We turned inland on our route up to Beyşehir Gölü. We’ve been trying to time our journey in order to reach Konya tomorrow so that we can hopefully see the Whirling Dervish.
Mainly good wide sweeping roads up through the mountains.
Stopped for lunch near a mosque, a service station, and a broken down lorry. The mosque started its Friday prayers, then the lorry driver got his engine started, jumped out and did some rather loud, too many fags type spitting. Guy nearly choked on his tuna salad! 🤣
We stopped at a roadside fruit and veg stall, greeting the lady with a cheerful ‘Merhaba’ – made her laugh! Among other things, we bought some kind of little pepino pear/melon thing to try. The stall owner said you just peel and eat. It tasted like it should be boiled and mashed and put on the top of a shepherds pie!
Arriving in the lakeside town of Beyşehir, I immediately noticed that all the women were in full robes and headscarves – this, I was not yet prepared for…it’s still 30°C, and I wasn’t expecting to have to cover up until we reached Konya.
Less than happy, I had to put the long skirt on and stuffed a big scarf in my bag as we’d hoped to see the mosque. Tripped over said skirt about four times on the walk into town.
When we reached the Eşrefoğlu Camii (mosque), the muezzin was just starting the call to prayer. It was so very loud and as we walked around the corner, we were so surprised to see that it was just a young lad of about twenty years old.
We sat in the shade and waited until everyone came out, then asked if we could go in. Shoes off, head covered.
Built around 1299, this is apparently, an exceptional example of a medieval wooden beylik mosque. In fact, virtually everything inside was made of wood, apart from the turquoise tiled mihrab (the bit closest to Mecca).
It was lovely, and the old men sat outside seemed very proud of it and also pleased that we’d gone in.
Called into the toilets once we got outside, forgetting they’d be ‘Turkish’ style and not very clean. I might just have to take the hem up a bit on this skirt – there’s some floors you just don’t want it to drag on.
