A Spectacular Point of View
Jacqueline de Gier, a fellow traveller, describes the journey east of Antalya
From Between the Taurus and the Deep Blue Sea
-------------------------- This southern crook of the Turkish coast, from Antalya to Mersin, is perhaps not as easy to enjoy as the picturesque bays and harbours of the Turquoise Coast to the west. Dominated by the Taurus Mountains, its beauty is in its austerity. Its wild, often deserted unpredictability no doubt explains why it was a favourite hide-out for pirates, priestesses, oracles, nuns and heretics. It lured the most eccentric men and women, as, in an odd way, it still does... The moment I saw our lecturer (a former classics master and deputy head of St Paul’s School, London) take to the water off our twenty-six metre gulet and swim in his panama hat, any reservations I had about the trip wilted. He also carried an old-fashioned parasol to protect against the fierce sun. Sailing offers many advantages. It is comfortable. You can focus on the waves with a cold beer in hand. You can try to catch a tuna for dinner while discussing maritime matters with the captain. Above all, though, you enjoy a spectacular vantage point. Many of this coast’s most impressive ruins can be seen from the sea. Spread across a clifftop and several promontories, and towering 1,000 feet above us, Antiocheia ad Cragum looked magnificent. So did the stunning fortress at Alanya, old Coracesium, which glowed like old copper at sunset. It was clear the first evening, having dinner on deck, that dull would not be part of the itinerary. One guest, a Hungarian countess, wore a toga assembled from pink silks she had bought in Rajasthan, with a loud necklace around her head and a medallion on her forehead. “Citizens, I am a Roman,” she declared by way of a toast. For two weeks we were treated to a new performance every night at dinner. The countess would appear as an Indian maharajah or a Roman slave girl or something resembling a sequinned butterfly collection. In Alahan the desire to fly almost overcame me: just strap on some wings, jump off the cliff and soar above this outrageously spectacular Byzantine monastery, there to take in the spiritual air before ascending to an even higher place heaven, with any luck. There is nothing quite like Alahan. Its location, high up in the forested Taurus Mountains, is entirely to the point: a staging post on the road to elevation. The monastery sits on a narrow shelf overlooking the valley of the Göksu river and its surrounding mountains. The churches, from the late fifth and early sixth centuries, are grafted on to the rocks as if they have organically grown out of them, but elaborate friezes and reliefs show a delicate human hand at work. The font in the baptistry is in the shape of a cross and carved from rock. But Alahan’s reputation as a kind of Christian Delphi guaranteed that - helpfully intoxicated by altitude, the spicy smell of pine and whatever else was at hand - the early Pagan-Christian rituals were vigorously exercised here. The steep road up into these solitary mountains gradually prepares you for it: apricot and ecru cliff faces, charcoal-coloured rock formations, a thin bluish haze and then suddenly the odd tree decorated with coloured strips of fabric. This is a modern ritual in Turkey, to bring good luck, to cover the whole gamut of wishes for something better in the future, and to entice God into making those wishes come true. Call it superstition, magic, an Anatolian form of flower power, whatever - the mountains edging this coast have always been home to it. |  | 
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