Ten days in Turkey - Part 1

A day in Istanbul

Istanbul has always been a mysterious entity for me. Perhaps it came from reading all those post-WWII spy thrillers or watching those James Bond movies and dreaming of travelling on the Orient Express from Paris, through the Iron Curtain and the Balkans all the way to Istanbul. But there isn’t another city in the world like it, a city divided into two continents, a city where East meets West, a city that rose to glory with the Great Ottomans and ruled lands far away for hundreds of years. All great cities have two things in common – strategic geography and the never-say-die spirit of its people. Istanbul has an enviable location with the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea on either side, connected by the Bosphorus, a river that flows right through the city and is an integral part of its life and culture.

The Istanbullu (resident of Istanbul) is a survivor who has enjoyed the glory of the Ottomans and endured the defeat and despair that came with its fall. The Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk describes the pain and neglect of Istanbul during much of the 20th century through what he calls hüzün (melancholy) overcoming this city. The Istanbullu is traditional at heart but consciously acts modern. This conflict of the head and heart has gone on for almost a century and is easily seen by a discerning traveler.

I will write this blog more like a diary in retrospect, with chronology being the only sequence to be followed. The reader will see my preference for people, history and architecture, but in no particular order. Many of the thoughts expressed here will reflect my own biases and shortcomings, as a traveler and more so as an amateur writer. Nevertheless, being completely awed by the experience, I will try to share my joys and to some extent my despair.

Our travel over the next ten days took us to various parts of Turkey, the route for which is shown below.

We boarded the Turkish Airlines flight from Delhi for Istanbul. The flight experience was quite different from what we were to experience over the next ten days in this beautiful country. The plane was old and cramped with minimal facilities and the service was poor. The 6.5-hour flight passed off uneventfully. We landed at the Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul at 7:45 am, about an hour ahead of schedule. This early arrival and Istanbul traffic ensured that our host for the day, Adil, was not to be found at the arrival gate.

Adil, in his late 30s, is a mechanical engineer and works in the Istanbul Büyüksehir Belediyesi (Metropolitan Municipality). He was the first among an elaborate network of uncles and cousins I would meet over the next few days. This connection was through my former student Hasan and his wife Yurdanur who lived in Delhi for 5 years and had become part of our family. Though he knew very little English, Adil agreed to be our guide for the day. But his English was certainly better than my Turkish!

Keen to start on a spiritual note, we visited the shrine of Hazrat Ayoub al-Ansari (locally called Eyüp Sultan), a sahabi (companion) and standard-bearer of Prophet Mohammad (pbuh), who was martyred in the siege of Constantinople in 668 AD. Located in the Eyüp district in the western part of Istanbul, this shrine and the Eyüp Sultan Camii (Mosque of Great Eyüb) are packed with locals, and thankfully, very few tourists. The original mosque built in 1458 was destroyed and what stand today was built in 1798-1800 by Uzun Huseyin Efendi, a nobleman during the reign of Sultan Selim III. The interior of the baroque style mosque is plainly decorated unlike others of that period. It is a tradition in Turkey for young boys to visit this shrine following their sünnet ceremony, a family get-together to celebrate the boy’s recovery from circumcision. Dressed in traditional attire as young sultans, they are quite a sight.

A short gondola ride up the hill offers spectacular sights of the city and so does the tree-covered Pierre Loti Café on top of the hill.

Our next stop was the Dolmabaçhe Palace, a lavish new Ottoman palace built for Sultan Abdul Mecit in the mid-19th century. This palace built within a garden (baçhe) is different from the typical Ottoman palace architecture we were to see later; it follows a more European style, the interiors done by the designer of the Paris Opera. Entered through a beautifully designed outer gate, the palace is divided into the selamlik (ceremonial suites) and harem (family) sections. The crystal staircase in the former section was rather impressive. Later in history, Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, lived and died in its harem quarters. All the clocks in this palace show 9:05 am on November 10, 1938, the time of Ataturk’s death.


Adil drove us along the Bosphorus River through the western suburbs of Besiktas, Ortaköy and then to Arnavutköy for dinner at a very nice balik (fish) restaurant.

A tiring but memorable day in Istanbul.