Turkey 2026 - Day 10 Antalya

November 1 - I'm writing today with a heavy heart. It was announced on Friday that a pair of Turkish newlyweds and a French woman were killed in the collapse of one of the fairy chimneys at the Göreme Open‑Air Museum that we visited on Day 7. Five other people were injured. The authorities believe that the structure was weakened by recent heavy rains. While this is just part of the erosional processes that created the fairy chimneys in the first place, it is still a tragedy. I hope that this will encourage the authorities to inspect the fairy chimney sites that are open to visitors more often.

Today, we are going back into Lycian history. The Lycians were peoples that occupied the Leke peninsula directly to the west of Antalya. Beginning in the 14-15th century BCE, Lycian culture continued until they were conquered by the Persians in 546 BCE and later by the Roman Empire under Alexander the Great. Under the Romans, there was a sort of home-rule of Lycia by the Lycian League. This was an early attempt at establishing a federation under republican principles of government. These principles came to the attention of the framers of the US Constitution and particularly James Madison.

Our drive to the Leke peninsula begins with a ride alongside Güllük Mountain National Park and get a good view of the Taurus mountains which make up the interior of the peninsula:

Our first stop is the ancient city of Xanthos (near present-day Kınık). This is in a broad valley following the river Xanthos. It doesn't look much like a city; it is more like a collection of orange and olive groves with a lot of greenhouses:

where, our guide tells us rather tongue-in-cheekly, that they grow perfectly looking and completely tasteless tomatoes for export to Russia! Our first indication that this area used to be anything of importance is this Roman road:

It still looks pretty good after more than 2,000 years! Our guide tells us that the Xanthos river used to take up almost the entire width of the valley, so the Romans built an extraordinarily long bridge to span it. Here is one of the 40 arches that supported the bridge:

Across the street from the bridge are some of the many Lycian hillside tombs:

In the second picture, you can see in a language that looks a bit like Greek. This would have described the Lycian family and not the occupant because the Lycians reused their tombs. When the next generation passed away, they would remove the previous occupant of the tomb, cremate them, place their ashes in a funerary jar and install the next family member. You can see in both pictures the color that remains from these once brightly decorated tombs.

We stop at a small roadside restaurant for tea and then head on to what is the main archeological site of Xanthos. Here are a couple of pictures of the ruins:

Although a team from Austria has been working at this site for several decades, there are a lot of pieces just lying around. For a site that has been here through the Lycians, the Persians, the Greeks and Romans, the Ottomans and the Byzantine Empire, a lot of the pieces were reused. Here is a wall from the Byzantine period that clearly used the bottoms of columns from the Roman period:

On the other side of this wall is the site of a church; you can see that the river now goes down the central street of the city from the Roman era:

There are a lot of people at the site today.  It turns out that it is a group of scientists training students on how to make water quality measurements. There is also a reconstruction of what archeologists think a Lycian house might have looked like based on the design of their tombs:

Of course, it uses only tongue-and-groove technology, and it remains reasonably cool in even the hottest weather.

Our next stop on our Lycian tour is the ancient city of Myra. The first thing that we see is this fantastic theatre:

It is a little hard to tell from the picture, but the whole theatre is perhaps 30 feet below ground level. Alluvial deposits from the river Myra piled up and, despite the best efforts of the populous, eventually buried the city which was then abandoned. This may explain why the theatre is in such good shape. It had an estimated capacity of about 4,000 people making the population of Myra during Roman times in the low 10,000's. The big arches on the left were the way out of the theatre on one side and there is another set of them just to the right of this picture. The wall in the center is the back wall of the stage, and the stands are divided into three sections. The lower half of the main stands were reserved for the most privileged men. The top half of the main section was for the lower-class men and the very top, set off from the main section by walls was for women and children.

Like Xanthos, there are a lot of pieces laying around, but many of them are quite interesting:

This would have been the lintel above the columns on entering the theatre and the faces would have had brightly colored stones or glass for eyes.

Behind the theatre is another Lycian necropolis:

The picture on the right was the tomb of a high-status person. Unlike the other Lycian tombs, he would not have been removed and cremated. His family would have been buried in neighboring tombs. That allowed the family to carve his life like image into the stone.

After a nice (and too large) lunch at an outdoor cafe, we walk across the city square to the Church of Saint Nicholas. Outside is a nice statue of Nicholas:

Nicholas was a Greek priest in the late 3rd-early 4th century CE and is supposedly the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, toymakers, unmarried people, and students in various cities and countries around Europe.

In fact, there is no historical mention of Nicholas until about 200 years after his death in 343. What is known is that he was born in Patara on the western coast of the Leke peninsula and at some point, became Bishop of Myra. This was a bad period for early Christians as the Roman Emperor Diocletian tried to wipe out Christianity from the Roman Empire. Nicholas was supposedly jailed and tortured by the Romans.

There is not enough room in this blog to talk about all of the things that Nicholas supposedly did or the complete lack of proof that he did any of them. But here is the story that connects Nicholas to Christmas. Nicholas was born into a wealthy family; his uncle was the Bishop of Myra and was responsible for Nicholas becoming a priest. Nicholas inherited his parents' money when they died in an epidemic and he quickly established a reputation for giving his money away. It is said that Nicholas heard of a man who had once been wealthy, but whose fortune had been stolen by "agents of Satan". The now destitute man had three daughters. Since he could not arrange proper dowries, his daughters would stay unmarried and were likely to be sold off into prostitution. Nicholas did not want to bring attention to himself, so he reportedly went to the man's house in the middle of the night and threw a purse of gold coins through an open window. The man immediately arranged for the marriage of his oldest daughter. After the wedding, Nicholas went back to the house at night and threw another purse of gold coins through the window. Again, the man arranged for the marriage of his second daughter. After that marriage, the man supposedly stayed awake for two nights straight and caught Nicholas in the act the third time. The father fell on his knees to thank him, and Nicholas made him promise not to tell anyone what he had done.

Two hundred years after his death, Roman Emperor Theodosius II ordered that a new church be constructed in Myra dedicated to Nicholas and built over the site of the church where Nicholas had served as bishop. Here are some of my pictures from the church:

Nicholas' tomb is in the back of the third picture, but there are no human remains there. Current archeological research indicates that Nicholas might have originally been buried on the Turkish island of Gemele, about 25 miles west of Myra and close to his birthplace. In the 7th century, the island was vulnerable to Arab raiders, so his remains were moved inland to Myra. Then in the 11th century, the Turks temporarily gained control of the Leke peninsula. Christians were worried that they would no longer have access to this holy site, so a group of Italian sailors went to Mura and in 1087 CE, took most of the larger bones to the newly constructed Basilica di San Nicola in Bari, Italy.

Venice, who was then the major Italian power, took note of what Bari had done and decided that they would go back to Myra to get the remainder of Nicholas' skeleton. They first constructed the Basilica of San Nicolò al Lido on a small island next to Venice. In 1100 CE as part of the First Crusade, they stopped in Myra and removed the rest of the bones and later placed them in the Basilica.

Our final stop of the day is at the Simena Castle. Our guide describes this as a crusader castle but said that it was used to defend the Byzantine Empire from attacks from the crusaders. Online information indicates that it was likely constructed by the crusaders in the 14th century. In any case, the views are quite stunning:

This ride back is pretty long and we arrive after dark. We had been searching for a particular restaurant and this time we find it. It was established in 1954 and is now operated by the 3rd generation of the same family. The food and wine are excellent. We stop at the same sweets shop again and then head back to the hotel for some much-needed rest. Tomorrow, we have a free day and are thinking of visiting one of the local waterfalls. Stay tuned!

Turkey 2026 - Day 9 Cappadocia to Antalya

Today, we fly to Antalya on the Mediterranean coast of southern Türkiye. This time, we are flying out of Keyseri, about an hour east of Uçhisar, instead of the Nevşehir airport where we flew in. This means a 7:30 AM departure from our hotel in order to catch our 10:30 AM flight to Antalya. The good news is that means we are awake in time to see the balloon launches:

As you can see, ballooning is a big thing here. So big that they have two different departure times to accommodate all of the balloons: one just before dawn and a second about an hour later.

I saw one thing that some of the balloons do that freaked me out:

You can see that these balloons are descending into the canyons. It freaked me out because at the one other balloon ride I've taken, the pilot said that the tricky thing with flying balloons is that when you hit the burner to either hold altitude or rise, there is a several minute delay before anything happens. Flying this close to the ground and to other balloons really decreases the margin of error.

The ride to Keyseri is pretty dull - the same high planes as the area around Uçhisar, but without the fairy chimneys or other interesting rock formations. Fortunately, the hotel in Uçhisar kindly provided us with boxed breakfasts since we left before their restaurant was open.

Both Keyseri and the airport are much larger than anything in other parts of Cappadocia. Here, we notice that all passengers go through two security checkpoints: one that includes the baggage that you will check and a second after checking in to drop bags and get boarding passes. The whole rigmarole of taking out laptops, removing belts, etc. is really a pain and I find myself wishing that there was a worldwide trusted passenger list instead of separate ones in each country to make the whole process a little less invasive. But we still manage to get to our gate in plenty of time. Boarding is also a little different - they board from the back of the plane, so people sitting in the back half of the plane get on first. I'm not sure how they manage to keep the people in the back from scarfing all of the overhead bin space in the front of the plane, but we have plenty of space for our backpacks.

The flight takes a little over an hour during which we pass over some serious mountains. Once on the ground, we find a totally different world from Cappadocia. It is warmer and quite humid (at least compared to Cappadocia). We see palm trees in the distance as we get out of the plane. We also notice planes from a Russian airline. I guess that this is a safer beach location than Sochi because of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Outside, we find our driver for the ride to our hotel. The hotel is an older building that used to be the home of an artist. The best part is the garden which backs up to the old walls around the city, which were built during the period when the Roman Empire controlled this area in the first couple centuries AD. You can see part of the garden and wall in this picture:

This seems like a good time to talk about cats. When we arrived in Istanbul, we found that it was called the City of Cats. But honestly, we have seen cats everywhere we have gone. The Turkish people love cats. Even if they don't have cats, they leave food out for homeless cats. Even the feral cats seem to be in good condition. Consequently, there are a lot of cats. This hotel has at least four adult cats and four or five kittens. Even in Türkiye, the cats seem to gravitate to the only member of our group who is allergic to cats; me! 

We go out for a walk to check out the old part of town where we are staying. The area is quite beautiful:

but also quite touristy. Every shop and restaurant seems to have someone outside trying to attract business. We are accosted by the same hawker outside a restaurant three times in the first hour - at least he has a sense of humor - the last time, he says, "I'm still here."

We walk down to the water hoping for a good sunset picture before dinner. It doesn't quite materialize, but here are a couple of pictures:

If you look closely, you can see the writing on the archeological ruin is in Greek. This is from the period shortly after the Roman Empire broke up.

The hotel had recommended a restaurant, but we must have misheard the name because we couldn't find it. We ended up having Thai for dinner at a restaurant in the older part of town, stop by a place selling all sorts of sweets (we end up buying some Ottoman-style Turkish Delight) and then head back to the hotel.

Turkey 2026 - Day 8 Cappadocia

Today, we have travel surprise. Late last night, we received word that there was a tour that we could join today, but we have no idea what the itinerary is. All we know is that our guide is picking us up at 9:30 AM.

At the arranged time, in walks Benjamin, our guide from yesterday! We are happy to see him, not only because he is a really good guide, but also because he already knows what we've seen. Before we get in the van, he sits down with us to plan out our tour. Our first stop will be the Underground City known as Kaymakli. Benjamin assures us that it is the best one. Then, he ominously asks whether anyone in the group is afraid of enclosed spaces. I tell him that I might freak out if it is tight and dark, but if there are lights on, I will be okay. I tell him that I'm more worried about the heights of the tunnels. He says that I'm correct to be worried. He says that there are a couple places where the tunnels are low and that there is one place I can turn around and go out if I need to. I guess this makes me feel a little better?...... So off we go.

Benjamin explains that there are two levels to the city above ground and about five levels underground. But this does not mean that there is a floor every so many feet - it is much more freeform than that. There is a long line to get in. Benjamin tells me that he will let me know when we get to the place where I can go back out. There is a sort of layout of the city, but he says ignore this. There are only three places to think about: #1 - where we go in, #2 - the bottom of the stairs on the lowest layer directly under #1, #3 - at the end of a long, low tunnel on the same lowest level. Once there, we go straight up to go out. The turnaround point is just before location #2. He also explains that this is upside-down anthropology. Usually, deeper in the ground is older, but here, deeper in the ground is newer!

He explains that the first level below ground was actually constructed by the Hittites. They used this level for livestock and a place to get out of the weather or escape the heat when necessary. The lower levels were all constructed by the early Christians to avoid the Roman soldiers or later Muslim Arabs, Mongols or Ottoman Turks looking for them. Here is a picture of the first level:

The notches in the walls were for torches or for places to store food for the animals (horses, sheep, goats, cattle, etc.). The also had wine cellars and grain storage for their food. Note that none of these caves are natural - every square meter was dug out of the rock by some guy with a copper or iron tool. Here, the ceiling is pretty okay - perhaps just under 6 ft.

We go down a staircase into the Christian section. The rooms and passageways are much smaller:

The spaces in the last picture are for amphora which could contain wine, olives, olive oil, water, etc. - basically a big storage jar. At this point, the passages between rooms are quite low. I have to bend 90 degrees at the waist to get through - kind of like walking through a bulkhead on a ship only shorter. At this level, we start to see huge round stones like this one:

Benjamin explains that these are doors that could be closed to keep the Roman soldiers out. The wheels sit in a low depression and beyond the depression, the path of the stone is downward and cuts across the passageway. Think of it as the original pocket door - it was not too much effort to get the wheel rolling to block the entrance, but it was a lot of effort to get it out of the way unless you had access to the path of the stone which the inhabitants did and the soldiers did not.

We go down several more flights and Benjamin turns around and asks me how I am doing. I tell him that so far, I'm doing okay. He says that the next part of the tunnel is the worst - about 50 meters long, and meandering to left or right. He says that he will wait as long as possible for the big group ahead of us to go through because getting stuck in the middle would be terrible. I can see that this is not going to be good, but I'm committed, so off we go. To get through this section, I have to duck walk - head pointed straight forward and crouched so that my butt is below my knees. By the time I get out of this section, I've got a scrape on my head, my heart rate is above 140 bpm and I'm covered in sweat. I also notice that since we are in the lowest level, the air quality is not great. The Christians built two long vertical air shafts to ventilate this level, but I can imagine with dust from workers building new rooms and smoke from the wall torches, it wasn't pleasant to be down here. Knowing that the worst is over makes the process of getting out much better. I'm happy to have done it, but I don't think that I'll be volunteering to do this again!

Next, we headed to Mustafapasa. This is where Benjamin grew up. There are a lot of old, very fancy villas here:

Benjamin explains that most of these homes were built by merchants who got rich selling caviar from the Caspian Sea (east of Turkey, near Georgia and Armenia). Benjamin said that one story is that this was to make up to their wives for the fact that they were away from the family for so long.

We also got a dose of more recent Turkish history involving Ataturk. Until the early 1900's, Turkish people did not have surnames. Mustafa Kamal (Ataturk) was born in 1881 and was one of the original Young Turks - a group of young people in Turkey agitating against the autocratic rule of Sultan Adbul Hamid II. His military career began with the Ottoman Empire's wars against the Italians and in the Balkans, but his reputation grew with his defense of Gallipoli during WWI. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WWI, the victors tried to partition Türkiye which Mustafa opposed. He led a successful revolt and defeated Greece, Armenia, France and the United Kingdom. He also led the overthrow of the 36th and final Sultan. Possibly due to the war, ethnic violence and ethnic cleansing broke out in Turkey against resident Greek and Armenian people. Ethnic cleansing also took place in Greece against the native Turkish population.

Mustafa realized that there would never be lasting peace in Greece or Turkey if he left things as is. Instead, he proposed a massive population exchange between Greece and Turkey. In this process, more than 1.2 million Greek Orthodox Christians in Turkey and 400,000 Turkish Muslims in Greece were exchanged. The displaced people had a finite amount of time to sell off their property in their old country before they were removed. They lost everything that they failed to sell or take with them.

At the same time, Mustafa made a series of revolutionary changes to Turkish society. He declared Turkey a secular state with freedom of all to practice whatever religion they wished while greatly reducing the political power of all religions. He converted Turkish to Roman characters (previously it used Arabic lettering) as well as building thousands of schools to teach the new writing style. Woman were giving the right to vote. Foreign companies and assets were nationalized and state-owned companies were established. In 1934, Mustafa was granted the surname Ataturk (father of Turks). While many of Ataturk's policies were progressive, Turkiye was still a one-party nation with Ataturk as the dictator. 

This did not change when the current president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took power in 2014. Perhaps it is the world view of our tour guides, but all of them speak fondly of Ataturk and have nothing at all to say about Erdoğan. It may have to do with the fact that they are worried that Türkiye's status as the only secular Muslim nation is under threat as Erdoğan is much more supportive of the Islamists than any of the country's previous leaders. But people here are not really free to speak their minds on these subjects. On the other hand, they are all very interested to hear what we think about President Trump and are quick to point out that the war in Iran has really killed Turkish tourism and caused huge jumps in fuel prices which is saying a lot in a country that has very high inflation.

We stop for lunch at a place in Mustafapasa called the Old Greek House. This started as one of the fancy mansions in town, but the owners have transformed it into part restaurant/part hotel and according to a plaque on the wall has been awarded the Michelin Bib Gourmand. Turks tend to overeat at every meal, and we are not too hungry after our big breakfast, but the food is so good, we have to try a variety of mezes. Among our favorites are Patlıcan Şakşuka (an eggplant dip like Baba ghanoush), Acılı Ezme (a finely minced tomato salad with chili peppers), and Havuç Salatası (a minced carrot, garlic and yogurt dip).

Our next stop is a cafe in Göreme overlooking Uçhisar:

The huge rock formation is called the Uçhisar Kalesi (Uçhisar Castle). In fact, Uçhisar means outer citadel in Turkish so this rock formation is how the town got its name. Despite the name, there is no evidence that this was ever a castle. Our hotel is somewhere in the lower right part of the picture. We take some pictures, have a glass of Turkish tea (which always comes in a tulip-shaped glass with no handle), and then head back to the van for our next stop.

The next stop is the Rose valley. Here, the rock formations are supposed to look like animals. Here is the camel:

I guess some hallucinogenics must have been involved! Our final stop is at the Pigeon valley very close to our hotel. It was named this because this is where the most nests were carved out of the rock so that the farmers could collect the guano for fertilizer:

While there is little farming here now, there are plenty of pigeons who are fed regularly by the tourists.

Benjamin takes us back to the hotel and we have a little while to wind down before we head out to our wine tasting. 

The tasting is at a hotel/restaurant in Göreme with a great view of the pigeon valley. We are greeted by the restaurant's sommelier and led down several flights of stairs into their wine cellar. This part of the restaurant has been built into the hillside which makes for convenient wine (and pickles) storage area:

After a quick tour, we're led to a room set up with a cheese and meze platter and five bottles of wine. Before tasting each wine, the sommelier tells us something about the wine: color, grapes used, acidity, what it smells like, etc. Then we taste each wine and our host recommends cheese and a particular meze to go with it. When we get to the last wine (a full-bodied red wine), he asks us to guess what fruits we smell or taste and says that if anyone gets it right, they get to take home the rest of any of the five bottles of their choice. He is surprised when Chris correctly says it tastes like black currants! I just think it tastes like wine!

Tomorrow, we are off to Antalya on the Mediterranean coast of Western Turkey. Stay tuned!

Turkey 2026 - Day 7 Cappadocia

When we wake up this morning, we can see why our balloon ride was cancelled. There is a dense ground fog across all of the nearby valleys. Here in Uçhisar, we are above the fog layer, but down in the valley where the balloons launch, visibility is very low.

No matter! We have a busy day planned with a 7 hr tour of Cappadocia followed by seeing a whirling dervishes ceremony in the evening. Our first stop is the Göreme Open‑Air Museum. On our way, our guide, Benjamin, starts by explaining the geology of Cappadocia. He says that 65 million years ago, Türkiye was at the bottom of a shallow sea. During that time, there was a volcanic eruption in the area from one or more super volcanoes that dumped huge amounts of volcanic ash called Ignimbrite into the sea forming a perhaps 1,000-foot layer of the stuff. Ignimbrite looks like this:

Ignimbrite is pretty soft, but over time much harder layers of basaltic lava and tuff were added. Over time, the sea dried out and the area was uplifted. Any small cracks in the top layers would lead to rapid erosion of the much softer Ignimbrite underneath. Eventually there were only small areas of cap layer left protecting the Ignimbrite. This results in the weird geology of the region:

In some of these pictures, you can see the much darker and tougher top layers. This whole process is similar to what you would see in the canyonlands of Utah, except that the hoodoos there are not made out of Ignimbrite.

Now we get to human history. Cappadocia sits at almost the center of Türkiye along what was later called the Silk Road. There were clearly Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in this area, but the first real civilization was the Hittites from 2000-1200 BCE. These were primarily local peoples, but those locals, likely the first Turkish people, probably originated in the areas of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. For large periods of time, the Hittites were the dominant powers in the Near East with their empire extending into northern Syria and Mesopotamia. There is talk that it was the Hittites who discovered the process of making iron tools and weapons, but this has not been confirmed.

As a crossroads of the world, a lot of foreigners came through Cappadocia, including the Persian and Roman Empires. With the Romans came Christianity. But in the first 3 or 4 centuries of the Common Era, Christians were hunted down and killed by the Roman soldiers. This led to the construction of places like these:

There were no natural caves in this area, but since the Ignimbrite is pretty soft, once iron tools existed, it was possible to carve caves out of the rock. Here, the Christians made temporary living quarters and churches that they used to escape the soldiers. They just rolled big rocks in front of the doors and waited for the soldiers to leave - the Roman Empire was really big, so these "visits" by soldiers did not happen too often. It was not allowed to take photos of inside the churches, but here are a couple of pictures of what the insides look like:

The picture on the left is a picture of the last supper from the later Byzantine period. Some of the artwork in the churches was much more elaborate - I strongly recommend looking here: Göreme Open‑Air Museum to see some of the pictures. The picture on the right is of a communal dining hall with a space for your feet around the table and a bench to sit on.

Next to this museum is the Valley of Hermits. Here, there are only a few cave dwellings where religious men sought to get away from civilization:

I should mention that while we are visiting the museum, the Cappadocia trail-running festival is going on. This is three days of racing at distances from 14 km to 119 km. The winner in the 119 km race was a Russian guy in a record time of 10 hr, 38 min, 35 sec. As you can see, there is no flat ground out here and almost no soft ground. And it is fairly high altitude here - these guys are nuts!!

We are still looking for artwork from this trip so our next stop is at Kapadokya Seramik. This is a 5th generation family-owned business making ceramics. Our host sits us down in a round room with a potter's wheel in the middle:

He explains that in his family, if you are a talented male, you become a master potter. If you are a talented woman, you specialize in dyes and designs. If you are untalented, you study languages and business management. So far, this has worked great, but he explains that the younger generation has no interest in traditional arts and would rather find something that will make more money with less effort.

The master, using a kick wheel pottery wheel starts with the local clay which they call red clay. The master will have gathered this red clay from the local streams, sieved it to get rid of the pebbles and filtered out the other minerals. Our host also explains that they also work with white kaolin which they call white clay. If there are using red clay, it is pottery. If they use white clay, it is ceramics. In about 10 minutes, he makes an elaborate Hittite style wine vase. Here, he is working on the base of the vase:

:

In the next room, we see artists adding decorations to the items after they have been fired in the kiln. This master has learned over his career to make elaborate and very fine Hittite-era designs:

We are so impressed with his artwork and the fact that he can still make such elaborate drawings at his age without his hands shaking or his eyes wearing out that both Chris & Mark and we buy items with his artwork.

The Turkish government has deals with companies like this to protect them from tariffs. Essentially, the company quotes us a price for the item and then shipping to us and insurance is free. The company then applies to the government for reimbursement for the amount of tariff they have to pay.

We stop at a couple more sites in the area to look at more of the fairy chimneys and then head back to the hotel for a short rest before going out again.

Our last trip of the day is to Saruhan Caravanserai. This is a sort of inn that was built along the Silk Road:

The caravanserai was built in 1249 and included dining, medical care, religious services and security to travelers free of charge for the first three days. Today, we are going to experience a Sema ceremony - a part dance/part meditation performed by members of the Mevlevi order of Sufi, a branch of Islam. The actual ceremony is performed first by five members led by their master. After the actual ceremony, three of the members and the master return so that the audience can take pictures. The dancers are accompanied by three musical instruments - a reed flute called a ney, a string zither known as a qanun and kettle drums. The dancers slowly revolve with one palm upright to connect with God and one palm pointed down to let loose of worldly possessions. Here are a couple of pictures:

During the day, we had received notice that our rescheduled balloon ride for tomorrow morning had again been cancelled, so contacted our travel agent to see if there was something else we can do tomorrow. More when we know more!