Mardin

Remember those biblicalish movies starring Charleton Heston from the 60’s? Mardin was pulled right from a set of one of those films. But here’s a tip: If you drive here (which is best), whatever you do, do not follow Google Maps. Mardin is perhaps the most vertical place you’ll ever be in and “roads” aren’t really that.

It is built into the side of a mountain that overlooks the Mesopotamian plain and has been here for about 2,000 years. It’s filled with narrow stone alleyways about wide enough for a donkey.

More on that later. Our drive from Lake Van brought us here in about 5 1/2 hours, with nothing really of note along the way except for these two things.

First, the town of Batman.

Batman is the Turkish frontier. It’s an oil boomtown plus mining. It’s dusty, not very attractive, and busy. We skirted the town on our way and were delighted to see a place actually called Batman.

The other was the Tigris River. Yes, that one from the bible and the same that dlows through Baghdad. In this location it didn’t look very biblical, but it was definitely the Tigris.

Our route for the day looked like this:

You’ll note that we ended up in Mardin which is about 20 miles from the Syrian border and about 80 miles from the Iraqi border. But honestly people have been so gracious and welcoming that you don’t even give it a thought and never for a minute have we felt even the slightest bit unsafe.

We left Van early so arrived in the town of Mardin at around 2:15. It was then that the fun began. We followed Google Maps as it sent us up a nearly verticle one car-width alley. We weren’t alarmed until we turned the corner and it got steeper and narrower.

And then the wheels of the car started to spin because they weren’t getting a good grip on the stone path. It was then that we drew a crowd of neighbors all gesticulating and speaking very animated Turkish.

We asked via our translate app if this was the way to our hotel. Animated Turkish in reply. So I held up the translate app and what madame was saying was that the hotel was up on 3rd Street and we needed to turn around and go back. Ugh.

So after a 26 point turn on a hill in a space for one car we got turned around and headed back down. We crept along and everything was fine until we encountered a van coming up the hill. So we ever so carefully slipped around each other and went on our way.

It was then we knew we needed a plan to get to the hotel because every other way looked exactly like the way we just tried. So we circled back to the one paved road that is in the old city and sat in an epic traffic jam as this was the same street for busses, taxis, delivery vans, and cars. And it is one lane, one way.

So you had to sit for several minutes at a time while someone ahead of you, out of sight, did their business and then drove on. It’s madness with donkeys and horses thrown in for good measure because there wasn’t enough chaos already.

It took us over an hour to go the few blocks to get near our hotel where we double parked as best we could and put on the flashers. Jeffrey ran down the hill to try to get to our hotel where he was going to bring someone back that could help us with the bags and park the car.

10 minutes later Zayhel from the hotel appeared with Jeffrey, grabbed out bags and took off down the stairs to get to the hotel. We locked the car and ran after him.

10 minutes after that we were checked in and after ascending some very tricky stone steps we were in our room. We immediately walked out to the terrace to see our view. It was this:

Wow oh wow. It made the struggle to get here worth every minute. As the sun set the view keep on giving.

Down below our terrace was the courtyard for the hotel (there are just 10 rooms).

Incredible.

The next morning we had our magnificent Turkish breakfast on the terrace and then took our walk around town. There are really just a few historic things to see here, it’s mostly all about the maim shopping street and the views. Every restaurant offers a terrace after a punishing trip up several flighrs of stairs.

One of the sights is an old school called the Zinciriye Medresesi and the views from it were stunning.

Looking up from there you could clearly see the old fort (not open or accessible), but looking down you saw this view of the old city.

And this view too.

Of course to get up there were stairs.

And these were only 1/3 of the way up. This is why they offer these:

You can rent them to take you up and down the steep alleys and stair cases.

We also did some shopping, lots of dried fruits and nuts and Turkish delight for sale.

And here.

But after a few hours of hiking up and down stairs we were done.

So we headed back to our terrace for some Turkish coffee with a sweet rosewater chaser to watch the sun set.

The whole place is just incredibly photogenic and easily one of the most interesting and different places we’ve ever been. It’s a challenge but totally worth it.