Scandalous Pamukkale!

I'd rather not expand to much on Pamukkale.

Yes the travertine site is absolutely breathtaking. No doubt. Those giant white formations in the middle of green parks and city is incredible.

But the way the city has dramatically altered the natural way this phenomenon was evolving, for the sole purpose to build a tourism empire (mostly to please Koreans and Japanese) is scandalous. They have rerouted the whole spring flow away from the natural flow leading to the build up and feeding of these formations, in order to not only keep the whole touristy trail cleaner and comfortable but also to build up this useless unappealing superficial little lake at the bottom of the travertine, so that tourists can go paddle boating and walk around the lake. The whole thing leads to about 80% of the whole travertine to have dried up. The city even hires a crew of women to brush clean the travertine and remove the while build up. Why?! Seriously, why?!

And the worst case is that thousands of tourists, clueless, ignorant, or rather indifferent tourists walk by every single day, in awe, taking photos right and left, and assuming that the city is doing all this altering work in order to preserve and sustain the phenomenon. I literally heard an older French couple saying this.

People. Just walk around and observe, use your brain and realize what's going on?! Come on!

Oh, and though the entrance to the park cost TL25 (about $13), which is OK given the size of the site including some interesting roman ruins, they have a place cold Cleopatra ancient bath, which is basically the well preserved ruins of some roman bath back then, and they turned the place into a sort of silly water park, where tourists swim and dip on the ruins of rocks and columns, while surrounded by a fence, lounge chairs, restaurants, ice cream stalls, and a gazillions of people walking around the 400 square meter "pool", taking photos of the people!e swimming in it. And wait for it, they charge TL32 to get access to the pool! Both price and concept are just ridiculous.

Curiosity didn't kill the cat, it only made it smarter. So I learnt. I was super curious about this site. Look up the photos on Google images and you will understand what triggered my curiosity. But perhaps going to Efez or Izmir would have been a better option...who knows.

It is strange, but before doing this long trip I would never ever have thought this, but two weeks is way to short to do anything in a country. Or at least that's the way I feel today. So with only two weeks in turkey I felt that I should try to hit the most interesting spots not necessarily focusing in the culture but rather on natural sites. Though Pamukkale was a downer, Cappadocia was the absolute opposite, so it is OK. But next time I visit the country, I am definitely aiming straight for Kurdistan. Iran, Syria, Iraq borders with turkey, just the sound of this !makes me dream...