Konya

I confess it was a miserable overnight at the Sahib Ata Termal hotel in Ilgin and a street kebab would have been a better choice than their offering. I stuffed the meal down regardless including breakfast.

Taking secondary roads I quickly got caught up in picketing outside a factory. So closely together were lorries parked there was no way through .... another unexpected detour!

The highway was today my friend, after the various issues encountered, and on a lumpy section the plateau rose to a few meters short of Ben Nevis summit. The entire massive plateau level is well above Snowdonia.

Konya on the map looked straightforward enough but I had no idea it was a 1.3 million population city. The shrine of Rumi, the celebrated Persian poet and mystic, is here and it's the destination for Sufi Trail travellers from Istanbul. The shrine is now a museum and I'm seeing for the first time, since leaving Istanbul, tourists! And overhearing a bit of spoken English is quite comforting.

Rumi is the founder of the Swirling Dervishes movement which I seem to remember as a child had rather a bad reputation. All that trance enducing stuff and rather incomprehensible. It seems he taught of love being the current that runs through all life. The green tiled tower is constructed over the shrine of Rumi.

Rather more famous is a well preserved section of the Silk Road leading east from Konya with very well preserved caravanserai but I'm heading more southerly on my route to the Mediterranean.

David Jury, walking to Jerusalem is currently ferrying over to Cyprus.

  

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.