Eating With My Feet in the Water

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  Hasankeyf, Batman, Turkey
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

We traveled to Hasankeyf, another ancient town in the region, the day after we hit Mardin. The town is by the Tigris River and it must be a quite important place in the past because it has the remains of a big bridge and a big cave city with castle on top of the cliff next to the river. But you can hardly find any foreign tourist here and the only lodging in town is a very basic motel with rooms that are barely acceptable and no A/C. In fact the whole region has very minimal number of visitors from outside the country, and in a way it is good because the people here are not yet polluted by them.

The most interesting thing we found, though, was not the ancient ruins but the restaurants by the riverside with their tables setup in the water, so that their customers can eat with their feet in the cool river water. We tried it and found out it was the best way to beat the heat. They also served good grilled fish and the owner even came up with a bottle of beer for us! This is lunch time in Ramadan – if we (and the restaurant owner) end up in hell, this must be the reason.

We spent two days there and dutifully walked all over town and the ruin of the cave city on top of the cliff. Nothing really impressive but this quiet simple town by the river was attractive in its own way, and the grilled fresh fish was nice too, but we must have drunk the last bottle of beer in the whole town when we ate our first lunch here because we walked all over the town and couldn't find any alcoholic beverage after that.

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cool eating	the river bank	view of the town	the cliff
the palace

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