Tours to Mt. Nemrut From Cappadocia

Day 1: 

Nemrut Tours From Cappadocia

08:00am Travel Agent picked me up from my hotel and departed from Goreme for Nemrut Tour from Cappadocia.
  
After passing Kayseri city, we visited the 13th century Seljuk Caravanserai "Karatayhan", and then in Pinarbasi for a short tea break. Then we droved to Tekir for Lunch. The trout kaba was pretty tasty.

After stopping for the best ice cream I ever had in my life, we drove to Adiyaman and checked in to our hotel. This was the best hotel I stayed during my trip so far. I felt totally spoiled by taking top dollars to have everything taken care of by the tour agency. 

Day 2: Mount Nemrut 

We departed from the hotel at 3:30 am in the morning and headed up to the ruins on Mt. Nemrut for the sunrise. My fingers were frozen after walking about twenty five minutes to the summit of the Mt. Nemrut. We watched the beautiful sunrise between the colossal size statues and heads of the kings and Gods. Our guide provided information about the Commagene Kingdom and the statues. Before driving back to the hotel for breakfast, we visited the ruins of the Arsemia Roman bridge of Cendereand Tumulus Tomb of Karakus.

After breakfast, we drove toward Sanliurfa and visited the Ataturk Dam, which is the biggest dam in Middle east. 

After lunch we visited Abraham's Cave and the Pools of Holy Carp surrounding the cave. We then walked around the oriental covered bazaar, before checking-in to our hotel in Sanliurfa and had our dinner here.

Cave of Abraham. Urfa is supposedly the birthplace of Abraham (called Ibrahim in Arabic, he was an important prophet) and henceforth an important Islamic place of pilgrimage. Around the site of the cave are a number of mosques built around a park with water features. One of these mosques, the Halil-ur-Rahman has a pool (called the Balikligöl) occupied by a rather large number of holy fish. It is said that anyone who catches one of these will go blind. That said the story behind the pool is quite interesting: The pool is at a site where Nemrut (there's a legend claiming him to be the builder of the tower of Babel) wanted to burn Abraham as a sacrifice. God however intervened and turned the pyre into water and the coals into fish, thus saving Abraham.

Urfa has many excellent old buildings and plenty of connections with the Old Testament and Islamic tradition. The general atmosphere and feel of the city is absolutelyMiddle Eastern, with all those traditional yellow stone, arched architecture, people (ladies and gentlemen alike) in Middle-East dresses, and so on.

Instead of visiting ’Harran’ a village of Spellbinding Mud-Brick "beehive" houses that is too close to Syria, we visited an arch logical site, Gobekli Tepe. Famed as the oldest temple in the world, Gobekli Tepe has changed the way that archaeologists look at history. Its exisitence pre-dates farming and settlements, and so it proves that man had religion before he even lived in a village or a town. Dated to 9000 BCE.

Day 3: Leaving the tour 

 After breakfast, the group departed from Sanliurfa to Birecik, which is known for its bald-ibis (Kelaynak) birds, while I was dropped at the bus terminal for my 11:30 am bus to Hardin. My east Turkey solo journey starts.