Photos: Puppy, pita plank lunch, triple protected from Sun, covid, and being asked to leave the mosque

October 24, 2022- To Antalya Yesterday Rudy asked if we liked dogs. We all do. Our surprise today was a visit to a dog ranch, aka, breeding facility for Aksaray Maliklise. Our 40 passenger bus morphed into an off-road vehicle as we ventured down the dirt lane. The owner wasn’t there and advised us not to get off the bus. The dogs are large and protective. They came out of their kennels barking, yowling, and ready for action. We got off the bus trusting in the fencing and barbed wire between us. Our rest stop was voted “the best in Turkey” in a newspaper survey. David noticed that the area of the toilets was called a Pishvar. There was a Mado restaurant where we had Turkish goat milk ice-cream served in a block.and eaten with knife and fork. Konya is the most religious city in Turkey and largest consumers of alcohol. It’s also a dust bowl. Land is barren and so cheap the government gives it free to industries willing to re-locate. Consequently, there’s a permanent haze obscuring the mountains. Lunch was a treat of plank pita bites extending the length of our table . It was fun reaching, sharing, and rotating the pitzas. The monastery of whirling dervishes is a museum dedicated to the works of Rumi, a poet and master. He was born in 1207, in Afghanistan, but when Barbarians swept in and raided the treasures of the land taking them back to Mongolia, his father fled ending up in Konya. His group of Sufi Muslims was welcoming to all religious backgorunds. Kings of the time were fighting illiteracy and established madrasas. As teachers, Rumi and his father were assets to the town. Rumi said, “I was raw, I was cooked, I was burnt,“ meaning I was ignorant, I learned, then I reached the truth. Everything is illusion but God. The buildings of the museum included the students’ “cells,” refectory, and former mosque, now Rumi’s shrine. There was a relic of a piece of Mohammed’s beard in a decorative box that was a magnet for those who prayed to it as if it was Allah, a clear violation of idolatry. We went to the shop of a man who was a dervish, a holy and learned man. The frenzied whirling we’ve seen in shows is an extreme of the ecstasy that is the goal of prayer. Twirling is a meditative aid and may be done at any speed. The conversation evolved into similarities between Islam and Judaism. We both assign numerical values to letters giving words special meaning. You may be familiar with the Hebrew word “chai,” meaning “life.” Over the Taurus Mt. range we went cresting at 6,000 feet and ending up at sea level. We left our hotel at 8AM at 41 degrees and arrived at our hotel at 8PM and 71 degrees. The time on the bus was painful. We napped, toured, napped and napped again. Somewhere along the way we were told there’s WiFi on the bus. Would have been nice to know sooner. Rudy tried to pass the time filling us in on the Kurdish and Armenian situations. I don’t think he considers the Armenian loss of life a genocide since they were combatants in a war. As for the Kurds, they’re fighting for territory. That’s a summary. I’m not informed enough to agree or disagree. The Aspen Hotel is in the old city so the bus couldn’t drop us off. A car transported luggage to our destination and our feet transported us. The walk was longer than expected with most of it downhill. That means up to the bus tomorrow. As we neared the hotel there was a steep incline followed by several steps to the lobby and twelve to the room. David said a “wordy derd .” We grudgingly ate dinner for sustenance only and settled into our rooms. The blanket is the consistency of a scratchy pee pad, the room is tiny, and we’re being serenaded by bar patrons. As far as I can see, the only good thing about this place is cheap laundry service. Tomorrow we meet with experts to learn about Turkish politics and law. Toby