Hattuşa - Gün 2

2:30 am
We hear banging on the streets. They've begun pounding the drums, waking people up to eat before the sun rises. Early Ramazan breakfast. Too early.
We go back to sleep as the pounding travels away from our pension in the town center.

8:00 am
We wake up to the sound of rain. Not again. But, we decide to go on with our day and opt to use the shared showers in the hallway bathrooms, rather than the shower planted directly in the corner of our room. It was just odd.

We ate our kahvaltı/breakfast, prepared by our host, and headed to Hattuşa for the day. By the time we left, it had stopped raining.


Torben, conversing with a burro
As we approached the site, several men came running out of their homes and cars, trying to get us to buy their "Hattuşa Lion" statues (we eventually both ended up buying one).


We continued on to Büyük Mabed (Large Temple), where we saw yesterday's cows again. Seeing as Boğazkale was overrun with cows, sheep, geese, and goats, it made perfect sense that these 3000 year old ruins were also populated. We were the only visitors to the site, until we reached the very end and a bunch of tour buses showed up.


A view of the large temple, one of the best preserved ruins


The green Ramses Stone in Buyuk Mabed


A view from our 5 km walk


"Lion's Gate", one of a handful of gates in the wall that we were able to visit


The exit to a Hittite (pre-arch) tunnel.


The remains of some smaller temples, seen from afar


A view of the village from the ruins


A golden tree situated in front of the "Big Castle"


A view from the road to Yazılkaya
After our 3 hour walk through the hilly Hattuşa site, we headed towards Yazılkaya, but a car picked us up and gave us a quick lift there. Yazılkaya was once a religious temple, famous for its reliefs.


Reliefs in the narrow gallery.


A close-up of a well-preserved relief

After Yazılkaya, we headed back towards Boğazkale, now 3km away.


A house and gate along our way back


The bronze head of Atatürk, proudly displayed in front of a village school.

We gathered our belongings, bought some more bread, and headed off along the road to Yozgat. A man in a tractor stopped us, and gave us a bunch of apples for free. We were now fully stocked with food.

There aren't any dolmuş on Sunday, so we had to hitch a ride. As usual, it started raining, but a man in a car picked us up. It took a short while to haggle him down from his original price of 30 lira to 20 lira, but we were running low on cash. The Boğazkale bank didn't have ATM facilities.

So, we made it home around 7pm without any major problems.