Phrygian Highlands (Frig Vadisi)

This quiet Anatolian backwater between Seyitgazi and Afyon belies its past. In Cornucopia 39 David Barchard evokes the sense of timelesssness that hangs over the idyllic green Phrygian Highlands. "Everywhere along its roads one sees monuments and fragments, chunks hewn from the past, that has almost assumed the status of legend: the times of Midas, Gordius, Alcipiades, and Seyyit Battal Gazi, the Romans, Seljuks and Ottomans." The Phrygians dominated western central Anatolia for around 500 years after the fall of the Hittites, just before 1150BC. They left behind carved monuments and tombs, such as the Lion Tomb at Kümbet. Later cave churches at Ayazin are similar to those in Cappadocia but not so well embellished, and can be seen in the 1887 photographs. p[erhaps the first taken, by John Henry Haynes in <a href=http://www.cornucopia.net/store/books/john-henry-haynes-18491910><b>John Henry Haynes: A Photographer and Archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire 1881–1900</b></a>. There are fairy chimneys at Üçlerkayası

A car is essential, and there are few places to stop. Eskişehir, Kütahya and Afyon make good bases. Seyitgazi is 206km southwest of Ankara.