Taken From All About My Hat The Hippy Trail 1972
The group ate breakfast and with John now driving, set off for the next place.
It was some hours before we reached Pamukkale Hierapolis. Mike was reading a book and said:
“This place is named after Hiera, the wife of Telephos, founder of Pergamun, in mythology.
“Here there are spectacular vast white scallop-shaped basins of water which looks like ice and frozen waterfalls, on the side of the cliffs.
“Also thermal pools with water passing through at the rate of four hundred litres a second.
“It's been used since Roman times.”
"Let's go take a look,” said Al.
“Yes, maybe we can swim in the mineral pools, that'll be cool” said Keith.
So my group headed up the hill, stopping to look at these beautiful pools of water in their white basins. Higher up the hill we could see a hotel!
“I bet the warm pools are in there!” said Mike, pointing to the hotel.
“We'll have to sneak in, man,” said Keith. The party blatantly walked into the hotel grounds and headed for the pool. Tere was nobody else to be seen anyway.
The sign on the front gate read ’Hotel guests only’. I suppose we were guests then.
So that's what we did. It was more of a blatant stroll than a sneak and we were inside the hotel grounds sitting besides a pool of steaming water where we could see what looked like broken statues at the bottom. “Look,” said Marion, “I bet they're Roman. I’m going in for a swim.”
Marion jumped in. “It's lovely and warm, warmer in here than out there,” she said. Keith followed her into the pool but Al, John and Mike sat on the side watching.
That evening the group drove just outside of the town and stopped to camp by the side of the road. A few joints and they were all asleep. About the only time I left Al's head was when he was sleeping.
It was in the smaller towns and villages that we passed through that I began to notice how differently the people were dressed compared to those in Thessaloniki, although I saw few women there.
Marion was dressed very differently to most of the women I had seen and very different to the women in Turkey. She, like many European and American girls I had seen at the Pudding Shop in Istanbul, wore trousers that they called jeans, but in Greece many of the women wore black skirts and tops and were covered to their feet. Now, in Turkey, all the women wore black and it seemed that the more remote the village was, the more they covered themselves up. The men too, dressed very differently to the men I had seen in Greece, and many of the children wore little more than rags, often bare-footed. It was obvious that Turkey, outside of the big cities, was populated by people poorer than in Greece.
I had gleamed from conversation, that most Turkish people were members of a religion called Islam, which was quite strict on daily prayers – they had to pray five times a day – on dress code and on diet; they did not eat pork or pig products, believing it to be unclean. I did not see the lads or Marion eat much meat at all, and I knew that Al was a vegetarian.
The topics of conversation that I had witnessed in Greece were mostly football, weather or politics. The lads and Marion did not seem interested in either football or politics, hey seemed more interested in travel, music and laughter.
Whenever we stopped in a small village we were almost immediately surrounded by people, especially children, that just stood and smiled, staring at us as if in disbelief. To tell the truth I felt that they would each have liked to have had me on their head. The people were friendly enough, usually bringing somebody to us, such as the village schoolteacher who spoke English.
In one such village we were invited to play seven-a-side football, a game that seemed to be about kicking the ball around and trying to get it into a net that was guarded by a goalkeeper. Whilst the five in my party was joined by two local lads, on one side, the other team consisted of four young men, one old man and two children. They won.
Keith read from his travel guide:
“Efus, also called Ephesus, is an ancient Greek City now part of Turkey,” read Keith.
“Later it was a major Roman city on the west coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era. In the Roman period, Efus had a population of more than 250,000 in the 1st century BC, which also made it one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean world.”
“The city was famed for the Temple of Artemis, completed around 550 BC, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Emperor Constantine the First rebuilt much of the city and erected new public baths. Following the Edict of Thessaloniki from emperor Theodosius the First, the temple was destroyed in 401 AD by a mob led by St. John Chrysostom. The town was partially destroyed by an earthquake in 614 AD. The city's importance as a commercial centre declined as the harbour was slowly silted up by the Cayster River.
“Efus was one of the seven churches of Asia that are cited in the Book of Revelation. The Gospel of John may have been written here. The city was the site of several 5th century Christian Councils of Efus. It is also the site of a large gladiators' graveyard.
“Today's archaeological site lies about two miles south-west of the town of Selçuk, in the Selçuk district of Izmir Province, Turkey. The ruins of Efus are a favourite international and local tourist attraction.”
“Sounds fascinating,” said John, “let's go there!”
“Oh yes, let's”, said Marion enthusiastically.
“It also said that they think it is where Cleopatra had her sister Arsinoe killed and she may be buried there,” said Keith.
So, this time John driving, they packed the van and set off southwards.
Upon arrival, we drove directly to the ruins. It was quite a large area, by the looks of it, and would take some time looking around.
After walking down what looked like a wide street, called the ‘Street of Heroes’ with broken columns and statues on either side, grass growing through the cracks on the road, we arrived at the amphitheatre, which was quite well preserved with intact seating tiered in a semi-circle. The lads went down to the bottom area where the performers must have entertained many spectators.
John and Al started to shout lines from poems and then perform a spontaneous play as if they were ancient Greeks. I don't know what it all meant but from what I picked up from Al's head, neither did he but I sensed they were having fun.
It only lasted about ten minutes before they started swinging their arms as if fighting with swords, and John fell to the ground as it hurt. Al also fell to the ground and the two of them were rolling round, laughing!
Suddenly there was clapping and shouts of “Encore!”,not from Keith and Mike but from a small crowd of what looked like tourists that had entered and were seated at the top row. I don't know whether they thought it was some sort of scheduled entertainment but they had seemingly enjoyed it.
Al felt a little embarrassed, I sensed that, but all ended in good humour.
We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out amongst the ruins, not knowing what was what. Keith said he was surprised there were no locals standing round looking to earn baksheesh by showing tourists around. It was a pleasant day and I sensed great relaxation in Al. I was happy to be on his head!
That night the party slept under the stars and then we knew that it was time for Marion to start heading back to her own country – England. She was to fly to Istanbul and then go home by train. That was when I first learnt that people could fly, although I never knew how. It was only later that I realised they needed a machine called an aeroplane to enable them to fly and it took oil to fuel it. I had never even heard about flight before that, except with birds of course. We were all sad to see Marion leave. Although I had never been on her head, I had felt I knew and liked her.
RIP John Sullivan 1972
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