Yet, every now and then, a few crazy souls roam around in these sands, those who’ve probably lost themselves but end up discovering me. I know it in their eyes. I know it when they see me..

..in the vibrant hues of the turbans that adorn me…

Or in the smiles that run as wide as the pride in my glorious moustaches..

Or in the valiant chapters of history that my eyes behold..

In the music that wades through my streets and alleys..

Or even in the poverty that snakes its way into the hands of my children..

In the graceful walk of my women..

Or in the not-so-grand humdrum of my grand palaces..

In the countless tales of men & women crossing the border to meet their kin..

And of the camels that accompanied..

In the innocence of my kids..

And in the solitude that this innocence meets..

In the endeavour to find your own God in the middle of my desert..

 ..perhaps you may just find yourself here, as you explore my people and my land.

I was & I am the spirit of ‘Rajasthan’!

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This is the second in my series – ‘Us & Them’ – capturing the people I’ve met along my travels

You may also like – Us & Them – Kids in Ladakh

As I sit down to finally share the ‘sweet’ moments of my Middle east trip, I take a second to wonder what makes sweets so special? What is it that makes the Cadbury advertisement in India say ‘Kuch Meetha Ho Jaye‘ (‘Lets have something sweet’) before an auspicious occasion? Why is it that festivals, across peoples, regions, religions, whether they be Christmas, Eid, Diwali or even the Chinese Mooncake festival, are marked by the preparation and consumption of sweets? Why is it that a humanity which subsists itself on salt (salary, the word is understood to have come from ‘salt money’), finds the expression of its utmost happiness in sugar? How is it that sweets such as Halua/Halwa/Helwa, Zlabia/Zlebia/Jalebi and Baklava/Paklava have made their way across nations, each nation adding its own identity to the sweet, a modicum of saffron added here, a bit of pistachios sprinkled there, sometimes just a nuance added to the preparation while sometimes altering the sweet altogether? Among all this, what does prevail, is the inherent sweetness, cutting across barriers of societies, in some ways akin to the goodness of people, which has kept civilizations in co-existence over millennia. No wonder, sweets end up representing the good.

As I continued to explore the rich associations of these foods tendered sweet by human interactions over ages, my travels took me to the middle east. Here I just share a glimpse of some of those wonderful sweets that made me admire the food culture of Dubai & the middle east in general. If you like sweets, there’s little doubt that you’ll like what you see next. If you don’t, I hope the pictures that follow help you reconsider :)

Ligamat

This I believe, is similar to (or exactly same as) what the Greeks call Loukumades. This was being prepared at a desert excursion we went to. The very first bite of these delectably honeyed fried dough balls is enough to ensure you do not stop at the first one. Very frankly, I cannot remember the count of how many I ate.

Ligamat

Basbousa

A cake made with what we call reva or semolina. Made soft & gooey with the addition of syrups, it’s a must taste on a middle east trip. And if the usual one is too sweet for you, try the ones with date fillings or the ones with coconut sprinklings.

Basbousa with Dates

Baklava!

For me, this is the king of all sweets middle eastern. It’s crunchy, it’s full of nuts and yet it’s soft. One of those sweets, which’ll simply melt in your mouth as soon as you eat them. Do NOT eat the local ones you may find in your cities. Come to a middle eastern town to enjoy the fresh ones prepared every day. They come in varieties Syrian, Lebanese, Turkish, Greek, Iranian and with fillings of all the nuts you can imagine, pistachio, almonds, walnuts. Diamond shaped, square cut, rectangular, rolled over, round, you’ll have your hands full if you like baklava.

Some more..

And some more…

A sweet start to the day

I know one can’t really call them sweets, in the strict sense of the word. But they are worth craving for. The pancakes with Maple Syrup at the Arabian Tea House Cafe in the Bastakiya quarter (which otherwise also, if a wonderful place to visit) are a vegetarian’s delight. Yes, they are eggless and don’t seem to go wrong anywhere.

Pancakes at the Arabian Tea House Cafe

And finally, a bit of these as well..

The Cheesecake Factory in the Dubai mall is a dessert lover’s paradise. They willingly let you have a look at their menu, which goes on and on with descriptions of the most sinful desserts. Wonder if anybody has ever been able to resist having these desserts..

The Red Velvet cake at Cheesecake Factory

The Oreo Cookie Cheesecake topped with Oreo cookie mousse and chocolate icing. Descriptions and views such as these fill your senses at the Cheesecake Factory :)

The Oreo Cheesecake at Cheesecake Factory

Suggested Eating : All the above and the Kunafa, Mammoul, Ummali that I could not have :)

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Have you too been to the Middle East? Did you too like any of these or other foods? Is there a history associated with any of them?

What seems to bind all these together, is the world of Sufi music. A world that spans far beyond what we usually imagine. From the whirling dervishes & Sufi music of Turkey to the quatrains of Omar Khayyam & quotes of Rumi, the poems of Bulleh Shah in Punjab, and the compositions of the Grammy winning A.R. Rahman in India, it transcends beyond states and their borders. Singers over generations have weaved these lyrics into profound yet beautiful songs in a multitude of languages from Turkish & Persian to Punjabi and Hindustani. Instruments from various musical schools such as the Ney(a kind of flute), Rubab ( a lute like instrument), Tabla, Iranian Bagpipe, have all tuned their way into this music. Songs of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Abida Parveen, A R Rahman (such as Kun Faya from the movie Rockstar, Haji Ali from Fiza & Khwaja from Jodha Akbar) or the famous Lal Meri Pat (performed by several singers & bands such as Junoon) have been adored by listeners for decades, each of these compositions somewhere retaining their Sufi influence. As intense as it may sound, this is music that has struck a chord with deeply varying peoples, cultures, languages, and traditions. It is, what one would call, “Music that travels”, that finds reverberance across continents.

Join me as I travel to the far off desert of Thar in India to the World Sufi Spirit Festival to unravel a bit more of this wonderful form of music!

Until then, if you may want to, try closing your eyes & listen to ‘Paimona Bideh‘ by Zeb & Haniya or ‘Kun Faya’ by Mohit Chauhan/A.R. Rahman or ‘Lal Meri Pat‘ by Junoon or may be just ‘Bulla‘ by Rabbi Shergill to build up the mood. :)

‘Ki ki so so lha gya lo’

Six voices shout in unison with those of our driver and his friend as we cross the mighty Chang-La on the way to Leh. Our driver and now friend, Namgyal Tibetan, as he insists we call him, tells us that everyone who crosses the several passes in Ladakh chants this. Ladakh means “the land of passes”. Namgyal, who perhaps has the most impeccably managed car in the mountains, tells us the meaning of the phrase, which I now only bleakly remember (and with a bit of help from Google) to be somewhere close to “Victory to the Gods”. The stereo of the car plays songs sung by Namgyal’s Tibetan friends who have been long enough in India to be in the army and get posted at the LoC (Line-of-control). As a male voice sings ‘LoC pe baithe hum yahaa… (Here we sit at the LoC)’, we wind our way back from Sumdho, where we had stayed back last night at a school for nomadic Tibetan kids, while visiting the twin lakes of Tso Kar and Tso Moriri, during the weekend.

Curious Kids at the school in Sumdho

And I say weekend, because it wasn’t a vacation. It was a six week internship, with Ladakh Ecological Development Group, that brought us to this fabled land. LEDeG, as it is called, is an NGO working for and in Ladakh and seems to have been around for donkeys years. It is only a testimony to the extensive development work done by the organization that almost everyone in Leh and the surrounding villages knows them by the name of ‘Ecology’.

We started our stint with a brief introduction to everyone at the small but spacious office at Karzoo in Leh. For the next few weeks we were going to work with the very same people and gather some key information for them. These would form the basis for an informed case study of the development work done by the NGO over the past several years, or even decades. We were about to realize, volunteering doesn’t always have to be about building houses with spades and shovels or clearing crops. In our case, the NGO wanted resources that could help with more managerial inputs and devote time to a case study for them. It is here that for so many of us, who have studied at technical and management institutes, the opportunity lies, to give back to our society.

Surveying the locals on one of the field trips

Over the next few weeks, with great help from the NGO, we extensively visited the remotest of villages within Ladakh; from Leh to Kargil and the valleys that lay in between and beyond, of Suru and Sham, of Shyok and Nubra. The key challenge with an arid land like Ladakh lies in the seasonality of agriculture and irrigation. For more than half of the year, the land remains covered with snow. Realising this, LEDeG has over the past several years, invested in developing alternative sources of energy, irrigation and water distribution across Ladakh. And we had set to gauge (and if possible, measure) the impact of these interventions. We met several families. In some places, the interventions had massively helped farmers to the extent that they could now buy multiple cars and in others, only modestly. We met farmers who loved the machines provided by LEDeG, and those whose cattle, houses, and trees (and hence wood that is a crucial commodity here) could all in some way be linked, even if indirectly, to the aid and support provided by our NGO. We surveyed them, chatted with them, ate with them and stayed with them in their homes.

There were the other experiences, which were difficult to measure in counts of cattle and houses. Like the moment when we met the residents of a village which had ended up being in a different nation at the end of one of the Indo-Pak wars. Borders mean little here. If you ask them, “Which nation do you prefer?”, they don’t have an answer. But then, if we had been the ones facing the brunt of enemy shells in three different wars, would we be left with any answers?

But most probably, you’ll come back with much more, with the understanding of how people in a far off land, with little access to even electricity, leave aside cinema, live their lives with such grace and contentment. How, in spite of gathering their own wood and walking miles to collect water each time they want to wash their clothes, they don’t complain and how money is just a small part in a community that somehow just knows how to greet every visitor with a smile, whatever the difficulties.

The Happiest People

Lots to learn? Yes. Visit them once. More than anything else, you’ll come back with the experience of a life time.

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This article was originally published with The Alternative

Here they go.

These were the kids of the owner of a cafe where we stopped while on our way to Kargil from Leh. Their initial shyness turned into playfulness as we continued to play this game of camera hide & seek with them.

The only boy among the kids at the cafe – but perhaps the most mischievous of them all. He had a running nose and the characteristic burnt cheeks.  But his eyes clearly give away the mischief :)

One of the little girls over there – finally gave in to the pleads of the several cameras around her and smiled :)

The amazing joy of getting a chocolate, remains the same across the world

Two boys in a house in Leh. The shyness associated with the kids in earlier pics was nowhere to be seen here. These guys were more like models posing for photographs. :)

And here, the attitude is replaced by wonder. At the crazy thing, namely the cameras, that they saw with us. These were students at a school for children of nomadic Tibetans in Sumdho, near the Chang Thang plateau in south-eastern Ladakh.

At a village by the name of Fanjilla. The weather in Ladakh is so harsh that you wouldn’t realise when the tan of your cheeks turns black from red.

At a school in Udmaroo – Far north of the whole country

No words needed here – at Pangong Lake

Trapped Dreams?? – A Girl in Fanjilla

Signing off – with a pic of the happiest people I’v come across. Nubra valley.

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This is the first in my series – ‘Us & Them’ – capturing the people I’ve met along my travels

“Oi, You speak English?”, asks the guy to the taxi driver. “No”, comes the reply.

“French?” “No”

“Deutsche?” “No”

“Espanyol, Italiano?” “Noooo!”

Then Let’s Get Lost..! (Textual translation of a National Geographic advertisement, if you can recall)

Way to GO!! When I look back at the travels of the previous year, this Nat Geo ad seems to offer some succour. Not one of the 7-8 nations I visited over the last year spoke a native language I knew. But then isn’t that how we want our travels to be, and even though it’s a bit of a pain, it offers you the immense opportunity of discovering the people and the land through their language. As more and more people across the globe learn each other’s tongues, it amazes me how several of these languages are linked across not just countries but continents. And one doesn’t have to be a linguistics expert to understand that.

For instance, during a (super) tight budget trip to Europe, I had the rare fortune of possessing a two hundred Czech Krona(or Koruna)  note for a brief time. What they wrote for ‘200’ intrigued me- ‘Dve Ste‘. I found it oddly similar to what one would call it in Sanskrit – ‘Dvi Shat‘. Similarly, while waiting for change in front of a foreign exchange counter in Prague, my friend asked how much change we were expecting back. ‘Dus‘ I replied in Hindi, meaning ten. Surprisingly, we heard the guy on the other side of the counter say the same! No, he didn’t know our language. In fact he was simply speaking Czech – actually saying ‘Deset‘, Czech for ‘ten’.  Then there was Czech for ‘heart’ - ‘srdce’, once again makes you think if it has got anything to do with the Sanskrit word – ‘hrday‘. Perhaps even the English ‘cardiac’ is linked somewhere. There’s ‘pivo’ for beer. In another instance, in a lonely planet guide, I read what the Czech word for ‘source/fountainhead’ is – ‘zdroj‘. Similar to Sanskrit ‘Srot‘ for the same?? Not very sure though.

Moving closer home, while roaming around a beautiful beach in Sri Lanka, the name of an antique shop around the beach struck me – ‘Santhara‘. Very frankly, it’s a word I could have associated only with the texts of two religions in India – Buddhism & Jainism. The word literally refers to a mat, or something similar that’s stationary. Turned out it was the name of the store owner as well!  I came home and after a bit of homework realised that Sinhalese, one of the major languages of Sri Lanka, has evolved from Prakrit (which itself was derived from Sanskrit) and not from the Dravidian languages (though definitely influenced by them). Of course, only two religious texts in India use Prakrit as their language in a major way – Buddhists and Jains. No wonder the similarity.

On the other side, the proximity of north Indian languages with Persian amazes me. No, not the use of Persian words in Hindustani. That is hardly a point worth making. We are so used to using Persian  words in our language that most times we don’t even realise the difference between Sanskrit and Persian derived words. Though it does surprise you pleasantly when you hear the same words in Middle east. You’ll smile when in an inadvertent conversation with a Turkish (who doesn’t understand much English) you realise that in Turkish too, soap is ‘sabun‘, floor is ‘zemin‘, ground is ‘meydan’ and ‘air’port is ‘hava’limani.

But that’s not the point. The point is the similarity between ancient Indian languages and old Persian. It’s still said that the Avestan language of the Zoroastrians (another language from ancient times in Persia) was understood through the similarity it bore with Sanskrit and Old Persian. One wonders if Persian and Sanskrit were indeed sister/similar languages at some really ancient time, how did they evolve so much that Persian ended up influencing Indian languages all over again when Urdu came up as a result of this influence.

Perhaps it’s getting a little confusing now and so I’ll leave you with just this one last thought. How is it that the number ’8′ is called in German, Hindi, Sanskrit, Sinhalese and English in so strikingly similar ways – Acht, Aath, Ashta, Ata and Eight, respectively? Mere coincidence??

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Do you really think our languages are connected? Have you too come across any such similarities?
Share your thoughts.

At the climax of the small uphill ride are the caves. Once you have reached them, they need to be explored on foot. So you park the bike and set off to have a look at the scores of caves from centuries ago. These are Buddhist caves, like the several others that adorn the hills in other parts of Maharashtra. There are caves that would once have been viharas and caves which resemble temples. Some of these are huge. Like the one where two majestic statues of the Buddha stand on both sides of the entrance. And if you retain a bit of interest in languages, there’s more to these caves. There are numerous inscriptions in a script that looks very similar to the very old Brahmi (considered to be the parent of several scripts in India and hence, of considerable significance in the study of Indian languages). A bit of secondary research shows it is the Gupta script (derived from Brahmi). You can go on and on, climbing up the stairs and watching these caves, the inscriptions and the carvings on their walls (and the dozens of monkeys that seem to be climbing up and down on each of the caves).

When you are done, you resume your journey and trace the same road back. And now, the sound of the wind gushing past you on an incredibly fast speed  on the bike – that’s only because you are now going downhill :) – totally makes up for the effort put cycling uphill. As you cross the same streams of water again, take a break and sit besides them for a while. Here, this ironical tranquility in the middle of a mad mad city will make you realise why coming to the national park made so much sense.  I’m not sure if it’s an out of the world experience but surely a rewarding one. The roads are broken at parts, or cracked here and there. The ride is bound to be bumpy in places and it’s kind of pointless to expect the kind of butter smooth routes they have for bikers in Europe. Your cell network gets lost several times(But isn’t that exactly the reason why you came here??). And you can hardly spot any people (wonderful!), apart from the love birds and the occasional fruit or cucumber sellers.  Yet, cycling for these few hours is better than burning all that oil for breathing in pollution, or perhaps drinking away your health on a jobless weekend. For once, let’s do a favour to the city that we dwell in and pedal our way through it. Try it out for yourself!

Some quick info –
1. The Sanjay Gandhi National Park (or Borivali National Park) lies in the Suburb of Borivali in Mumbai. A few mins auto rickshaw ride east from the local train station.
2. Entrance fee per person is INR 30 (less than $1).
3. The bikes are available for rent just inside the gate. Charges  INR 20 per hour(Refundable deposit of Rs. 200 needed).
4. Remember to carry a photo ID (they need it before renting the bike) and some water (you need it AFTER renting the bike). There are no shops along the route selling any water.
5. Take some friends along. Most journeys are a little easier with them around. Aren’t they?

1. Inexpensive Flight Tickets - Sri Lankan airlines is perhaps your best friend here with return airfare from Mumbai being as low as 11-12k INR (app. $200). The fares may drop even further if you fly out from some major cities in South India (Kochi, Chennai, Trivandrum & Bangalore). That may be close to airfares within India itself. Some food for thought.

2. Hassle – Free Visa process - The visa process is so hassle free, I’d rate it even better than the On-arrival ones. All you need to do is fill up a simple online form and fees and you’ll perhaps have the visa in your inbox in a few minutes/hours. Sounds incredible. Doesn’t it?

3. A favourable currency conversion - Scared of the hole the currency conversion will burn in your pocket while you are travelling abroad? Well, this one will come as a respite. The Lankan rupee has been depreciating for a while now, and though it’s a concern for the authorities there, it’s an opportunity for tourists. I mean it’s a deal clincher when you realise that the 1000 rupees being charged for a boat ride are actually equivalent to only 400 Indian rupees! You don’t get that luxury often. Do you?

4. Ideal for almost everyone - For cultural explorers (the cultural triangle in central SL) and adventure seekers ( a friend told me there are facilities for night diving as well) and for those who simply wish to relax on the beach and have a good time. ( Just sit at the Unawatuna beach and gulp down some ginger beer). Above all, they are just opening up to tourism. The sites, beaches, etc. are just perfect, with not too many tourists and yet good facilities available. (The acco can be good value for money). 

5. An ongoing Cricket World Cup and an in-form(??) Indian cricket team :)

Sunset at the Hikkaduwa beach

I started this trip without a wishlist because when I was first told to go here, I didn’t exactly expect to find backwaters like Kerala and beaches like Andamans at the same place. But the more I explored it, the more it seemed that the waters were in love with this island! They swarm it with their glorious waves at Talpe, they charm it with all their splendour at Unawatuna and they soothe it with all their tranquillity at Koggala. Oh and yes, they do treat the island with all the deliciousness that thrives within them, the seafood. Those who ate it, swear by it. (Partly for its delectability and partly for setting their mouths on fire!) Blend this perfect setting of beautiful beaches, hidden lakes and wonderful food, with a bit of Hindu and Buddhist religious lore and then add to it a dash of a superb cricketing tradition. What you get in return is a pleasant surprise called Sri Lanka.

Quite delightfully, when you hail from India, the distances in other countries seem relatively smaller, as it proved in Lanka, where Colombo to Galle is just 2.5 hrs. It’s on the first expressway in SL. And there is another road from Colombo to Galle, which goes right around the coastline of the island to the south and has some of the most amazing beaches in SL beside it. Galle, in itself, is like Kochi’s next kin, only that there actually IS a FORT in the fort area :). The architecture, the dutch style fort area cafes, the presence of foreigners, all remind so much of Kochi. The Galle cricket stadium looks small but it is right besides the fort, which means that all matches are perhaps watched by hundreds of spectators from the ramparts of the fort apart from the ones in the stadium. Quite a location, for the fort I must say. :)

Just a few minutes further from Galle is Unawatuna, which looks like a beach in South Goa, only better. The waters are far clearer and with shacks lined all around. Talpe, a few more miles ahead is even more splendid, with several hues of blue visible in the sea. The waters are shallow and conjure up some beautiful waves. No wonder the place attracts several surfers year round.

The waters near Talpe

Further ahead is the Koggala Lake which gives you a feel of the backwaters in Kerala. The lake is vast enough to bear some islands within, which can be visited on boats. We spotted some small villas on the islands and kept wondering how tranquil would staying there be. The most amazing thing about the Koggala Lake area is that a backwater lake and some fabulous  beaches are both just 5 mins away from most of the accommodations. Mirissa, the southernmost point of the island is only half an hour ahead and is known for its whale watching excursions and for another beautiful beach.

Boat Rides with Coconut water! – at Koggala Lake

Thing is, that in this part of Sri Lanka, you don’t have to look for a good beach; you just take a car along the coastal road and stop wherever you think the beach is best (you may have a tough time deciding that or you may just end up stopping after every 10 minutes, like it happened with us). Driving back, as we watch the sunset from the Hikkaduwa beach, the coastal road and our driver tell the story of a huge loss from the tsunami. Numerous houses lie derelict, abandoned just besides the sea. Several of them were never rebuilt or re-inhabited. Wonder what it takes to rebuild a country torn by a decades long war and a massive tsunami all over again.

As we join the expressway on our way back to Colombo, our driver lightens the mood by playing a ‘rap’ version of ‘Sawan ka mahina‘(!!), followed by a few more Indian songs. Indian songs seem fairly popular and even the roads are frequented by Bajaj & Hero motor bikes and the breakfast comprises dosai at several places. The Kiribath with dal and sambol is a delectable Lankan nuance to the rice and dal prominent breakfast dishes in South India. Most vegetarians will have an easier time around the place than in other Asian countries.

Perhaps, the India connection will never make you feel out of place here.

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Have you been to Sri Lanka lately? Write a comment with your experience if you too had a great one!

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The Bosphorus Bridge

‘Shahrukh Khan!’, exclaims the man, sporting a smile, at the sweet shop at the Ataturk Airport. As he tries to sing a Hindustani song and even though you know it’s the same age-old trick to garner every Indian’s attention, you still can’t avoid but smile back at him. Even here they watch bollywood, you think. Little do you know that during the next one week, you’ll end up humming Turkish music yourself, eating more Turkish food than you’d have eaten on a normal day back at home, drinking more Cappadocian wine than you’d have in Sula and perhaps praising more folks than you’d have abused on a regular day in Mumbai.
Indeed, Turkish delight is more than just Baklava and Lokum.

The Roman ruins at Ephesus

You don’t know where to begin. Like the several generations of Byzantines or Greeks before you, you too land up in Istanbul, the mystical cosmopolitan city that is the bridge between the east and the west, both geographically and culturally. How else do you explain the presence of oodles of salad in the same plate as a pottery kebap? Or that of Turkish rock and Tarkan’s pop music CD’s in the same shelf as the famous Sufi music ones? As you roam around more of Istanbul and Turkey, you realise it’s a tad similar to your own India, with a pot-pourri of cultures, music, food and architecture. And to your amusement, they literally sound similar as well. Chai, duniya , zameen, sabun are just few of the several words common between Hindi and Turkish.

Pigeon Valley – Goreme

Someone’s told you that the one place to go to in Turkey apart from Istanbul has to be Cappadocia. Well.. terrifically right and terribly wrong! It is indeed one of the best landscapes in Turkey with weird rock formations, and even weirder (but amazing) cave hotels to live in and a wonderful opportunity to take a hot air balloon flight at the most competitive prices in the world (a bigger price to pay for it is waking up at 5 in the morning to make it to the take off location, but totally worth it). But your next stop, Fethiye makes you realise what you’d have missed had you followed the earlier advice and stopped at Cappadocia. With a visit to the Oludeniz lagoon, that can make even the waters of Thailand look colourless, you are sure to return back with a golden (if not black!) tan. And the simple, yet tasteful Gozleme (Turkish handmade pastry), which will keep coming back to you wherever you are in Turkey, but you’ll find them really good here.

The beautiful lagoon at Oludeniz

And then, you take another scenic bus to the west, to Selcuk and Kusadasi and Ephesus(or Efes), all in the same neighbourhood but drastically different. One of them, a cute, small town, with even cuter and smaller cafes, the second, a happening beach town and the third, an excavated ancient city with majestic ruins of the Greek and Roman times ( and a beer named after itself!). Each of these, a captivating experience in its own way.

The library of Celsus at Ephesus

And by this time, you have fallen in love with Turkey!

You still end up asking WHY? The answer lies in the loads of pottery kebaps (they’ll bring steaming hot Turkish stew – vegetables, chicken, etc. in a pot, and crack it open right in front of you) or doners that you or your friends have gobbled up in the last one week, the Gozlemes that have so reminded you of the aloo and paneer parathas back home, the bottles of Ayran that have been gulped down every day (and no, it’s not alcohol.. just a refreshingly richer version of India’s chhaas), the Raki – the aniseed flavoured drink that changes its colour the moment you mix chilled water in it and the baklava( a honey or syrup sweetened pastry filled with nuts), halva, lokum (confectionary with small cubes dusted with sugar or coconut), sekarpara, kemalpasa (something like a gulabjamun), name it and you have it sweets – that taste as awesome as they sound :), the Turkish Maras icecream that just doesn’t melt – and comes with its own fanfare of bells, sounds and mischief – it’s a task to get it from the ice cream seller ( Try it, and you’ll know why I say this)- but deliciously worth the effort :). To your delight, even the buses you travel in serve you free cold drinks, snacks, coffee and even ice cream (in our bus, the man came back for another serving and we happily obliged).

The answer lies in the sizzling Turkish music (sometimes live) that has accompanied each of your drinks, your breakfasts, lunches and dinners. It lies in the amazing scenery that you have witnessed alongside all your bus journeys. But most pleasantly, it lies in the amiability of the people you met along the way, in the conversations with little kids who are as gripped by Fenerbahçe’s football as by their fathers’ booming hotels, in the honesty and the warmth that greets you everywhere you go in the countryside, the help that’s coming your way even before you have asked for it. It makes you believe that for once, you did the right thing by not taking a direct taxi but three different buses to reach your village cave hotel from a small town airport. Only then you realise how the helpfulness of the countryfolk makes the phrase ‘language barrier’ lose all its meaning here. Quite frankly, it seems difficult to get lost in turkey. You’ll always find someone to tell you the right way :).

If you ever go to Turkey – remember to learn one word before you go- ‘Teşekkür Ederim’.
It’s Turkish for Thank You. You may end up using it far too many times.
Because, Turkish Delight is indeed more than just Baklava and Lokum!