Turkey Part 4: Cannakale, Eceabat, The Dardanelles, ANZAC Cove & Gallipoli

(...Continued from Turkey Part 3.)

On Monday 3^rd January, we had a long drive day from Selcuk to Eceabat in the Cannakale Province of Turkey.  The drive included a short ferry crossing which took us across the Dardanelles from the town of Cannakale to Eceabat on the other side. After seeing so much of Africa and dipping our toes temporarily in Asia, we were now back in Europe (with the Dardanelles serving as a divide between the Asian and European parts of Turkey).

It was dark and cold when we arrived in Eceabat and it seemed that as we’d journeyed north towards the European winter, everywhere we went we were taking the weather with us. Ironic then, that the hostel we were staying at in Eceabat was called ‘Crowded House’. As the name suggests (and like ANZ Guesthouse in Selcuk), this guesthouse too seemed to cater to the Antipodean fraternity…. but with good reason.

Eceabat is the closest town to ‘ANZAC Cove’ and the battlefields of Gallipoli. If you’re not too hot on world history or just an ignoramous (like me) you may not know much about this place other that it spawned a classic movie featuring a young Mel Gibson and an awesome retro electro soundtrack provided by Jean-Michel Jarre.

Old school movies aside, Gallipoli and ANZAC Cove were the site of one the most tragic stories to come out of World War I. Unfortunate navigation and bad timing compounded catastrophic strategy and left the majority of the Australian and New Zealand troops involved in this campaign as little more than cannon fodder.

The Battle of Gallipoli was the first major battle fought by the ‘Australian and New Zealand Army Corps’ (ANZAC) and to quote Wikipedia “is often considered to mark the birth of national consciousness in both of these countries.” Furthermore. “Anzac Day (25th April) remains the most significant commemoration of military casualties and veterans in Australia and New Zealand, surpassing Armistice Day /Remembrance Day.”

So, after a quiet first evening in Eceabat, we set off early the following day and an English-speaking guide accompanied us in the back of the truck ‘til we got to the site now known as Anzac Cove – where the Anzac troops landed on 25^th April 1915.

Here everybody stood in silence listening to our expert guide explain the story behind the chaos: how the Dardanelles formed a supply route to Russia; how the British wanted to support the Russian efforts on the Eastern Front to relieve pressure on the Western one; how an Allied naval attack had failed; how the Aussie and Kiwi troops had been on training exercises in Egypt and were therefore perfectly placed to provide the infantry needed for a second attempt at the campaign; that this was the first real battle in the war for both countries; that chaos ensued after the commanding officers were either killed or removed from the field with injuries…What was planned as a swift attack took over 8 months and had over 20,000 troops occupying an area of land totaling no more than ¾ of a square mile.

Everybody found a time and space for themselves as they strolled around the cemeteries, reading the epitaphs and looking for an age or even a name that they could identify with. The whole morning was made even more eerily somber by a solar eclipse.

From the Cove, Marjane drove Roxy (with us and the guide in the back) up to the top of the headland, beyond a prominent landmark known as ‘The Sphynx’ and to the cemetery and memorial at ‘Lone Pine’. We then drove further up the hill along a road – which our guide soon pointed out marked the boundary between the Anzac trenches and the Ottoman ones. We stopped the truck on the roadside and got out to explore the still intact trenches – unbelievably, the road was probably less than 10 metres across – which meant the opposing forces frontlines were close enough to hear each other talking. When our guide overheard us noting this, he detailed stories in which the two enemy forces that had fought so fiercely on this very spot, also used to exchange cigarettes and food rations by throwing them from trench to trench. Supposedly unwanted SPAM used to get launched the Ottoman’s way by the Anzac troops…and the Ottomans would launch it straight back…it seems they were all hungry, but not that hungry. Yoichi would have disapproved (private joke you’d only get if you’ve been reading the whole blog!).

Our guide was undoubtedly a knowledgeable chap and the stories he told were nothing short of fascinating: the two bodies of enemy fighters discovered in either a brotherly embrace or a hand-to-hand fight to the death where both and neither were victorious; the fact that in the summer, you could dive off the shore and invariably surface again with a rusty bayonet or other war artifact; how for the entire 8 months of fighting, there was only ever one day of ceasefire allowed…and that was to remove the fetid, putrid and bloated carcasses of the fallen as the smell had become too overpowering in the heart of the summer.

Finally, he told us of the famous command uttered by Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal (the commander of the Ottoman 57^th Infantry Regiment) “I do not order you to fight, I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can come forward and take our places.” (Subsequently, the entire 57^th Regiment died defending their part of the Gallipoli peninsula. As a mark of respect, there is now no 57^th regiment in the modern Turkish army.)

The Allied Forces had under-estimated this Turkish resilience that was typical of the whole campaign. In all, approximately 23,000 troops (from both sides) were killed or wounded in the landings at Anzac Cove. The Gallipoli Campaign in its entirety claimed the lives of over 250,000 troops from both sides of the enemy lines.

After a fascinating - if not sobering - morning, reality hit home that I was in a very privileged position and had spent the last ten months on a trip of a lifetime…and it was now coming to an end. It was January 4^th and we were three days away from our final stop-off in Istanbul.

As such, people were using that afternoon to clear all of their stuff out of their lockers in the truck…it was time to get rid of all the crap we’d accumulated over 10 months of travelling across three continents. We had to be realistic and brutal about what we thought we could truly manage to get on the plane home (without having to pay the extortionate excess baggage fees).

I’d packed my bag pretty well, but was left with a giant cardboard box full of souvenirs, books and other weird and wonderful things. I took it to the nearby post office where my lack of Turkish and their lack of sympathy made it impossible to convey what I needed to do. After half an hour of struggling, I was called behind the counter where an obese, grey-haired Turkish guy grunted orders to a slightly more sympathetic woman who proceeded to help me.

Even though I’d packed everything perfectly and used up what seemed like an entire roll of parcel tape keeping the package from falling apart, I was asked to take everything out for security purposes. BUGGER! The long and the short of it was that I finally got the parcel sent, but at a cost of over £100…and that’s without The Dead Sea Mud that Kay and Allison had picked up and packed into a Tupperware container for me in Jordan….apparently it resembled explosive material.

The next day was a long, cold drive-day towards Istanbul. So cold in fact that at one of the service stations we were able to have a snowball fight. During the drive, people were wrapped up in their sleeping bags or whatever they could bring themselves to unpack from their rucksacks that had been so carefully jam-packed like jigsaw puzzles the previous afternoon.

Syria Part 2 - Palmyra & Aleppo

(Continued from Syria Part 1 - Damascus) 

The following day (Monday 20th December 2010), we left Damascus and made for Palmyra, the home of some pretty impressive ruins. Some ran off to explore and get their snaps whilst others chose to chill and get some grub at a local restaurant...it was after eating lunch here that we stumbled across the chefs hard at work preparing dinner (dismembering a sheep) in the car park.

Pretty surreal build up to Christmas...in the middle of the desert, in a majority Islamic country, Paddy dons his Santa hat in the sun.

Dinner being prepared for the evening punters in the restaurant car park. Thankfully we were eating off the truck that night.

As you’ve probably gathered by now, by this point in the trip, a lot of us were fatigued by all these ancient monuments and ruins, so I’ll let the photos do the talking as I don’t think I appreciated it as much as I would have done had I visited the place in a single, isolated trip.

As Ish, Son, Ronald and I walked around the ruins, Kimbo and Berbs came out of nowhere on this bike.

Herbie Berbie Rides Again

Vicram

Kimbo Slice

Homeless

Gabaroni

The highlight of our time in Palmyra was actually the place we stayed at: we slept in a Bedouin tent; everybody scattered out on the floor; on mats and in their sleeping bags and with an awesome furnace in the middle. After a nice bowl of warming chicken soup (cooked up by Dan and Yoich) we got cosy huddled in the tent, those that were quick enough managed to secure a place close to the in-tent stove. The chimney poking out through the middle of the tent only did half a job and every so often we had to let the thick smoke out of the door…more for the fear of one of those hands coming out at us like in that movie “The Fog” than anything else.

Our stay there was a very cool experience, albeit slightly marred by one of the slimy members of staff there who tried taking liberties with a few of the girls.

We left Palmyra relatively late in the morning and arrived in Aleppo in the evening for our stay at The Spring Flower Hostel. It was a kind of gothic little place nestled in between hardware stores down a side street. It had dimly lit, stone corridors set at jaunty angles and the communal area at the top of the building had a section cordoned off (by little more than a curtain) which doubled up as a cheap dorm, with even cheaper mattresses for our lot. It was extremely basic, and there was nothing to block out the noise from other guests watching tv or playing cards in the communal area…but we didn’t mind.

The "dorm" we stayed in at The Spring Flower Hostel. Very cheap, very basic.

The communal area - right next to the dorm.

The (locked) hostel library.

What we did mind was the most anal hostel manager in the world (…and yes, I do realise the sort of traffic I might get arriving at my blog having searched for “anal hostel”). He was an apparently educated and well-travelled man who could speak French, English and Arabic (and probably more); he was occasionally pleasant but he ruled his staff with an iron fist. They couldn’t fart without his permission…let alone make us an early morning cup of coffee (careful not to get those two confused)…but how could they, the manager was the only one with the key to the fridge/till/bar/bookshelves/coffee-maker…and he didn’t arrive til 10am every morning anyway.

To be fair, I don’t think his staff minded being repressed as, when they weren’t asleep in the communal area, they were busying themselves yawning. Seriously, back home being thick means you might only have a couple of G.C.S.Es but I don’t think these guys could even spell G.C.S.E.

Our first night in Aleppo happened to fall on Allison’s (31st) birthday so we ventured out for a bite to eat. After the obligatory decision-making calamity that comes with a large group we ended up at a cosy little restaurant with our own room cordoned off from the riff-raff (or, were we the riff-raff being cordoned off from everybody else?).

Our wee room in the Syrian restaurant...separated from the riff-raff. (Photo courtesy of Allison Harvey.)

The food was good there and I’d opted for some kind of cherry-sauced kebab, which despite being very rich, was inhaled in a matter of seconds. Back at the hostel, we all worked stealthily to retrieve Allison's birthday cake (bought in a town we'd stopped in that day and stored in the truck all day) and keep Allison distracted as we put the candles (READ: fireworks) in place.

This was my (blurry) distraction shot. I got Alli to pose for a photo as behind me, the rest of the gang hurried to get the candles lit on her birthday cake.

I spent the next two days (our entire time in Aleppo) pretty much tucked up in a mattress feeling rough. Not sure if it was the food, or the general feverishness that had come and gone every now and then over the past few months, but I was pretty incapacitated. Lying in bed ill for the next couple of days, I came to realise one thing...I was probably born upside down...

My feet smell...

...and my nose runs.

Before we left the hostel, I had one last run-in with the owner: as you've probably seen from the photo above, the hostel library was very well stocked - albeit with multiple (photocopied) versions of the same book. We were evidently at a regular stop for overlanders going both north and south as there were guides (Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, Bradt etc) to both the Middle East and African countries. As we had a few copies of the LP East Africa guide on the truck and didn't need it anymore, I thought I'd enquire about the hostel's openly advertised 'book-trading/buying' scheme.

Once the owner had located his keys to the bookshelves, he donned his - no word of a lie - special, rubber, book-handling gloves and got me down some books he though would be a fair swap for my almost pristine condition East Africa guide. When I suggested a straight swap for his used, one edition out-of-date Turkey guide, he snorted at me and said I'd need to buy that off him for 15 EUROS...oh, and give him the book too! When I explained that that was more expensive than it would cost in the shops he simply said, "well, I suggest you go buy it from a shop...if you can find this book in one here." Man, this guy was so anal he'd have made Elton John blush with inadequacy. Thankfully, we were moving on.

I don’t want to make a sweeping statement about a city I hardly saw, but the impression I got from the others was that apart from an old castle/citadel here and there, there was not much to get excited about and it certainly didn’t compare to Damascus. Damascus seemed full of character, a heedy blend of the old and the new, of east and of west whereas Aleppo seemed more like an urban jungle. I should have found time to at least visit the Citadel of Aleppo, but feeling under the weather was just the excuse I needed to disguise my lack of motivation to see yet more old stuff...it's sad but it's true.

The view of the "urban jungle" from the roof of the Spring Flower Hostel.

Syria – our short stay with you flew by but don’t lose sleep over it: you’ll definitely have the pleasure of my company again, even if only in Damascus.

Next stop, Turkey.

  

Jordan Part 1 – Aqaba & Wadi Rum ("The Valley of the Moon")

After a painfully long wait in the ferry terminal at Nuweiba (Egypt), and with nothing to do apart from read a book or stare at your feet for about five hours, we finally boarded the ferry for Aqaba at about mid-afternoon.

The crossing was painless and uneventful, unlike the film I watched on Son’s laptop – Adam Sandler’s “Grown-Ups” - which was painful and uneventful. It only took about two hours or so to cross, but we had to wait for Marjane and Roxy to catch us up once we were on the other side (he’d taken her on the ferry behind us).

To pass the time whilst we waited, we played a game of “tig” which some of you may remember from your playground days.  Much to the locals’ amusement, there were about a dozen of us 20-30-somethings running around outside the terminal like idiots.

Homeless, posing on the ferry from Egypt to Jordan.

The gang catch a breather at the Aqaba terminal after our game of tig.

Eventually, Marjane rocked up honking Roxy’s horn and we all piled in bound for the ‘Bedouin Garden Village’ – our campsite just outside (12km) of central Aqaba. It was dark and cold when we pulled up, so we put our tents up quickly before chowing down on some koshery (inspired by our time in Egypt) cooked up by Yoich and our new recruit, Dan.

That night was possibly the windiest we’d had the whole time I’d been on the Trans. The four sides of my dome tent were literally closing in on each other and touching in the middle above me…I was glad I’d spent time pegging her down.

Over breakfast we shared tales of woe about how little sleep we’d all got before venturing off into town. The wind showed no signs of relenting (in fact, quite the opposite) so a few of us dumped some boulders (donated by the outer wall of the site’s car park) in the corners of our tents before departing.

On the way in, Ish mentioned a place he’d read about that offered good, cheap Turkish baths (‘hamams’) and in spite of it seeming a bit premature (Turkey was two weeks away), Pat, Tanja and I chose to join him for an hour or so of indulgent relaxation…

We got changed (the local guys would usually go in nothing but the small cloth/towel that’s provided, but we all wore our swimmers) and congregated in the steam room. After 20 minutes of profuse perspiration, we were called out by a hairy-knuckled, surly local guy for a cold shower and a scrub down. Another shower followed before waiting outside two small cubicles and being summoned by another equally hairy local guy for a deep muscle massage.

This sort of thing always sounds so seedy, but in fact it was very tourist-friendly for both men and women. Unlike with the sort of massage and bath houses you’d find in South East Asia, the only happy ending we had was the bill – JD12 (17USD) at time of writing, which by comparison to others we’d seen advertised, was pretty cheap.

L to R: Ish, Pat and Tanja doing 'the serious pose' after their massages.

Feeling refreshed, we stepped outside to feel even more so: the wind had picked up significantly since we went indoors. As we traipsed around town looking for some decent shawarmas or kebabs, both sand and seawater was being whipped around in the air. On the seafront, with Israel just across the water, mad local kids were throwing themselves over railings on a pier and into the tempestuous sea.

There wasn’t really much to see in Aqaba, in fact, I think we were well and truly out of season. Even though Aqaba had plenty of dive schools and apparently many more dive sites just offshore, and even though we’d just had a whale of a time diving in Egypt, across the pond the notion just didn’t seem as inviting here. The one thing Aqaba did have going for it was its people: everywhere we went they were just friendly and willing to help out or just banter with you. It was such a relief after our time in Egypt and we soon learnt from day-to-day dealings that it wasn't just the people of Aqaba that were awesome, it was the people of Jordan in general.

Back on the truck, Gab gave us a lesson in Italian reggae (yes, it exists) as we waited for everybody to filter back into the truck.  Once everybody was onboard we made our way back to the campsite with the truck’s tarps flapping furiously in the gale force winds.

We were still on the main road outside the site when we saw one of the tents flapping around on the hillside in the breeze…about half a mile away from where it had been pitched. This didn’t bode well…and when we turned into the car park we saw the full extent of the devastation: snapped poles poked out through flysheets like broken legs through ripped trousers; smaller tents had been blown from their original foxholes and were now cowering behind some of the more seasoned veterans. Most of the tents escaped with minor shell-shock but casualties included: my flysheet (superficial wounds held together with stitches); Pat and Tanja’s tent (sustained multiple fractures and lacerations which proved fatal); and Ish’s tent bag (M.I.A.)

We re-grouped the tents in a sheltered spot between Roxy and another parked truck and pitched the tents in a tight, Spartan-like huddle. No Persian onslaught was going to penetrate this formation.

Ronaldo struggles to keep his tent from blowing away.

Pat & Tanj assess the damage.

Dan is first to get his tent in the shelter between two trucks.

Yoich's lonley walk to find his tent that had been blown the furthest away!

We spent the rest of the day doing not a lot…it was cold and extremely windy and there were flies EVERYWHERE. We passed time making the most of the wi-fi and tooting on the customary sheesha pipe in the relative shelter of a gazebo/Bedouin tent down near the campsite bar.

By mid-morning the next day, we were up and out in town again for cook group supplies and some grub before moving on to ‘Wadi Rum’ (otherwise known as 'The Valley of the Moon'). The scenery on the way was the usual breath-taking expanse of desert and giant rock formations that had become so much a part of our daily routine that you almost started to take it for granted. My choice of book at the time seemed apt to me “South” by Sir Ernest Shackleton...just that day I’d read a comment by him that echoed my sentiments regarding the scenery. He was describing a big open bay in the Antarctic as a "magnificent sight, even to eyes that had dwelt on grandeur long enough and were hungry for the simple, familiar things of everyday life." 

We bush-camped outside Wadi Rum National Park at the foot of an imposing, giant lump of rock that provided all sorts of caves, nooks and crannies for us to climb into as cook group prepared dinner. All was fine, until Yoich decided to go for a ‘walk’...at dusk. On his own. As the mist was falling. With no torch. Wearing the same clothes he wore day in, day out (and didn’t keep his skinny seven stone frame from shivering in less bone-chilling whether)...and to a rock formation that sat closer to the horizon than to us.

Ronaldo, Marjane and Gab helping Kimbo at cook group time - where's her partner Pat though?

Son goes for the 'baffled' pose.

"Dis how make proper I-talian coffee...eeets sincredeebull!"

Can't remember who that was way up at the top there...

In the meantime, Homeless, Berbs and I entertained ourselves with a massive old tyre we'd found in the sand. The entertainment value soon wore off annd after Uncle Marjane told Homeless he couldn't set fire to it, our thoughts went back to Yoichi. After an hour or so of him being gone, the first murmurs of worry started but it soon spread like wildfire and everybody’s imaginations were running away with them: we all had visions of being ‘talking heads’ on one of those Discovery Channel documentaries with titles like “When mother nature attacks” or something similarly epically over-the-top. 

After another hour, we all genuinely feared the worst – isn’t there some film out at the moment (or least, due for release) about the rock-climber getting stuck and having to cut his arm off with a pen-knife? Those are the sort of places our imagination was taking us when thinking about what might have happened to Yoich. Eventually (and, if you were on the truck or having been reading the blog, you could have predicted this one), Yoich turns up just in time for dinner...as some of us had joked would happen. His wee venture was an extremely badly-judged one that was done out of naivety rather than selfishness and disregard for the rest of us. Every other passenger had better sense than to go off, on our own, in the freezing cold dark, without telling anybody our plans, without appropriate clothing and gear and in a place we didn’t know, let alone an unimaginably vast, desolate landscape where the weather could turn at any minute!!

The truth is, he’d got lost on misadventures a number of times before (e.g. his marathon swim off the coast of Ghana - which, again, he didn't tell any of us he was doing!) and each time our concerns and moans had proved unjustified as, every time, he’d eventually show up shuffling his way back to the truck in his two over-sized orange Crocs...and usually wielding some strange, but dirt cheap type of food or drink that had been the sole purpose of his mission. I seriously think Yoich could open up a specialist safari company in Africa; buy up a load of old jeeps with ‘Hunting Safaris’ emblazoned along their side and simply add the word ‘Bargain’ in front.

He got a justifiable ear-bashing from Marjane when he returned (and the rest of us turned down the truck stereo so we could hear what was going on from the other side of the truck).

Rightly or wrongly, Yoich had become a focal-point for venting frustrations amongst a lot of the gang during the course of the trip. He’d done and said a lot of stupid things throughout the entire Trans but he never – to my knowledge – did anything maliciously. I had nightmarish visions of how the truck politics and group dynamics would all pan out in a fly-on-the-wall style documentary like Big Brother: You know? Where the ‘alpha’ members of the group pick on the weak to the point of ostracising them or worse still, til they snap. Nobody stands up for the weak for fear of being the next piece of sharkbait. 

I wouldn’t say that all the grief Yoich got was undue, but it did seem that if ever there was a lull in conversation, Yoichi-bashing became de rigeur...usually when he wasn’t around to defend himself.

The rock/mountain Yoich walked to.

Aside from this mishap, it was another great bush-camp with unforgettable scenery. As if to mock me for comparing part of my 43 week "holiday" to Shackleton's gruelling two and a half year Endurance Expedition, the air became bitterly cold as dusk descended upon us and we half-expected snow to fall overnight...we just weren’t sure whether to be dread it or look forward to it. Those who hadn’t gone to bed seeking early shelter in the comfort of their sleeping bags were left huddled close together around the dying warmth of the fire and reminiscing on adventures of recent months. Gab swore he was going to relive those warmer days by camping under the stars like he had done in Sudan. This proved a short-lived plan as the under-side of the truck’s table (used as shelter from possible snow) was no substitute for the Sudanese night sky and Gab’s Mediterranean blood just couldn’t withstand these temperatures.

We were at Wadi Rum National Park the next day - a location made famous by 'T.E. Lawrence aka Lawrence of Arabia' who used it as a base for some of his operations. We reached the ticket booth (which was overshadowed by the rock formation Lawrence called 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom') and paid 5JD (just over 7USD) per person before enthusiastically (if somewhat over-optimistically) the group decided to reach the places of interest just using our feet and a map. About two hours or more later, and having passed 'Lawrence's Spring' (the spot where Lawrence of Arabia reputedly washed during the Arab Revolt) we turned up at an impressive rock formation with a crack down the middle of it that would make Beth Ditto blush with inadequacy. A quick glance at the map told us it was called 'Khazali Canyon' and was home to some 'petroglyphs' (i.e. rock inscriptions).

Berbs takes in the view, looking back at where we'd just walked from.

We wandered about half-way down Khazali Canyon before reaching a dead end and turning around to ‘mmm’ and ‘aaaah’ at the ancient engravings. Only half an hour or so past before we began the journey back. Before we set off properly, we stopped by for a tea in a nearby Bedouin tent complete with open fire, 8 year-old waiter / souvenir salesman and Arab noblemen (in truth, they were just guides, but they looked noble in all of their traditional Arab get-up).

Berber has a crack habit.

Ronaldo does some rock-climbing to see if we can get any further down the canyon.

Looking back towards the entrance. Kay poses, with Berbs in the background.

The 'petroglyphs' in Khazali canyon.

Unbeknownst to Berbs, Spencerman is scaling the rock wall behind him.

I think this photo is courtesy of Allison Harvey.

These guys just look cool.

That's right, this Bedouin kid is on his mobile. I imagine he's texting "M8 u wdnt belve how far i got on Call of Duty 2 last nite!!!"

By this point, everybody had split into little groups and Berbs, Elisa, Ronald and I all walked back together...another couple of hours later, we were back at the truck and had about an hour to find some lunch (in this case for most of us, a falafel sandwich).

Wadi Rum was undoubtedly a beautiful place, but I'd recommend anybody who goes there to avoid walking it. There's loads of interesting formations to climb, trek or marvel at but we only got to see a little bit and as such, I can't tell you that the juice was worth the squeeze. Next time, I’ll be taking the 4x4 tour of the park.