Previous post on this all day tour of Kapadokya is here..
It was very hot outside and thankfully we were visiting the biggest attraction in this area. The underground cave city of Kaymakli. Three floors down are open to visitors, the rest are still being inspected for safety. It goes down more floors.
The locals used to live underground while waring armies would cross the surface, sometimes for months. It was temporary refuge, built with a lot of safety features. You enter it through an un assuming gap in the top of what looks like an animal shelter. They would put the animals there and no one would walk past the dung into this hole.. once in, it opened up to so many chambers. 30,000 people lived here to survive. There were rooms, kitchens, labor delivery places, wine storage, water storage, all cramped for space and not easy to navigate without bumping your head but survival demanded it and they managed it within these confines. There was ventilation and temperatures were controlled. Human ingenuity at its best thousands of years ago!
Again, the pictures and videos do NOT even come close to the experience of walking through these underground dwellings. We are a resilient species, but we are also our worst enemy as a species. No other organism kills more of its own kind like we do.
Here are the photos..
and a video highlights reel..
If you go to Kapadokya (or Cappadocia) please make it a point to visit this cave city!
After the cave city tour, we got to drive a bit and get to Pidgeon valley. The whole place has the birds taking over small caves in the wall faces of the rocks. There was a jewelry store across this stop. They sell a gemstone found only in that area that changes color in sunlight. This is called Zultanite! They also mine Onyx which is local to the region. The jewelry was gorgeous and tasteful. If you take a bunch of ladies with you into a store like that.. be mentally prepared for what is to follow.
After this stop we went to the Uchisar castle, which is now a police lookout point. We can only see it from below. It is yet another cone which has been holed out into a castle! Got some photos from this place including the dunes facing it. We drove back to our hotel to see a gorgeous sunset, said bye to our fellow tourists and tourguide.
The little one was not feeling well. She wanted local cuisine and I wanted Indian food which would be safe. Was also feeling weird what with going in and out of air conditioning, caves etc. So we went to an Indian place in the village. It was a steep walk down. It was good food. Good service. San walked back up with the little one, while Jr. and me went shopping in the village for magnets and a T-shirt.
We were worried about what was to come the next day.
Started the year with an allergy attack 30 minutes before midnight and cheered in the new year with a stuffy nose and watery eyes.. my friends made up for this small inconvenience!
It was lights out after coming home.
The only cure I have for most illenesses these days in hot yoga! So it was good to start the year with Yoga and this has become a routine.
This is before class..
and after class..
You always leave the room wiped out, but happy.. "feeling like a million bucks!".. or after 13 years, adjusted for inflation "feeling like 2.3 million bucks!"
Before walking into class we all get to pick an Angel card for the year. The idea is to internalize that and see if you can change your behavior.. this years card was "Light" (my wife got Love).. so we are now love and light!.. Hopefully we don't go light on love! See, even an angel card teaches you to put your wife first!
2023 was not great, but it done. My goal for Yoga attendance is to do at least 200 classes a year which is about 4 times a week given all my travel schedules. 2023 was 218 classes.
Going to stay more positive in 2024! Blogging defiintely helps me be more positive!
Wishing you all a healthy 2024!
The 60 day Winter challenge in on at BYSJ! So if you want to challenge yourself this year, please go ahead! Will cheer for you all the way!
The original plan post seeing Northern lights was to go on a viator tour to Casper glacier to visit a naturally formed ice cave. Even by viator description, it said that this was a moderately difficult trip and only "able bodied adults" were to come for an approximate 3 mile walk on snow and ice to get to the cave.
After the previous nights experience, San decided that Alaskan standards to rest of US standards are like US system to metric system. An "able Alaskan body" was a 6 foot 2 inch plus, 250 lbs, pure muscle body with a heavy beard that could fight Commando or Rambo for at least a few minutes and live to tell the tale.. or something close to that.. We did not fit that description..In short, she bailed on me.
Now for a backstory and the title of the post.
One of my favorite songs during college days was by Franco de Vita, "Golpeando en el mismo lugar", which translates to "you get hit in the same palce again and again". We have a similar saying in Tamil "patta kaal-laye padum" which is "you get hit in the same leg again".
Two weeks prior to this Alaska trip, I hurt my right knee. A knee that already was cracking from a skin issue. After coming back from yoga class, I had the mat towel etc and was trying to go through a narrow gap between the car and the fridge in the garage. License plate holders are strategically placed in cars at exactly knee height. If you bang your knee sideways on the holder, you are guranteed a horrific experience for weeks. After realizing that, promptly iced the knee. While on the couch, my daughter wanted me to do something for her. Given the bandage around the knee, didn't want to fold the extended leg on the couch and in a brilliant move thought I could just step outside of it and get down. Bad ideas come in twos. Promptly banged same knee on the coffee table, just an hour after the first hit. Sometimes a picture is worth a long paragraph.. so here you go..(the gaps have already been fixed in the photos below and credit has been given to the accident causers!)
The next two weeks were spent trying to make every effort to recover, with yoga, ibuprofen, ice, triple pillows under leg, crepe bandages, etc. just so I don't screw up the Alaska experience.
I really wanted to go through that ice cave!
San saw the disappointment on my face when she cancelled the ice cave tour. To make up for it, she was checking with Viator if there was some other activity that did not involved walking on ice. There were two options. A dog sled experience where huskies pulled us on the snow for 30 minutes and we got to see the kennels, which was promptly rejected for her fear of dogs. Another trip where we got to ride a snowmobile on a frozen lake and ride into the sunset in the Arctic circle. She agreed to do that and off we went.
It was a 40 minute drive to North Pole, Alaska where we met an amazing dude, Frozen Tony! He ran what appeared to be a one man operation on a weekend as he was our receptionist, trainer, and guide.
After explaining the operation of the snowmobile and going over the warnings, he started assigning vehicles to the folks in the group. When San shook her head and said "I will be a passenger, don't ask me to drive!" and also said "Can I just drive with you?" .. Tony said "Your husband passed the test! You ride with him!" Then he realized that not all vehicles he had were two seaters. So he gave me his vehicle and said "this is mine and the controls are different but you can do this!" and went over the control differences in his vehicle. San was not exactly sure of my mobiling ability. We had 7 other folks in the group, 4 from New York and 3 from Columbia!
Fortunately we found some gear that was large for our size but still covered us. Helmets, goggles included. In spite of all this gear, the outside temperature was -5F after 4 in the evening and we were to go see the sunset at 5PM.
Tony was just amazing. He guided us and made sure we went from simple to complex terrain and gave enough time for everyone in the group to reach the next point before proceeding. After the first 15 minutes, I was gunning it and racing across the snow and ice at 40 mph. Turns out, I am a natural when it comes to flying over the snow on this thing! When you go at 40mph in -5F, the wind against your face makes it a lot more below zero and the water that drips from your nose becomes ice and you look like a mini walrus! San could not hug me as our helmets clash at that speed.. so she had to hold on to the mobile hand grip and hang on for dear life. Apparently she was screaming for me to go slow but I could not hear it, given the helmet and the wind in my face.
Tony took some great pics of us and even a video clip.
Frozen Tony even had a great Pano shot on my phone which was a pleasant surprise!
There was one tricky place where he had to make us wait and get every snowmobile through a point.. then we all got back on to return. There we got to take some pics by ourselves..
Driving towards a sunset in Alaska is an amazing experience!
A video, thanks to Tony! It was not easy to drive without gloves.. so had to ask for the phone back and keep going! My knuckles were feezing and burning without gloves!
We got back in one piece and I was clearly very happy and San was happy for me. She said I reminded her of Bond movies. She didn't know that my nickname in high school was Sundar Bond. Was happy to live up to that name after many years.
We had called a Lyft and no one showed. The rest of the group had left as they had their own cars. We had arrived in a taxi. Tony realized our issue and helped call a local North Pole taxi, who is the only guy who comes to pick up folks after sunset. We were talking to him on and off about Alaskan life for 30 minutes while waiting as he was closing shop. We got some hot cocoa during the wait!
Would strongly recommend this adventure, especially thanks to Frozen Tony of Alaska Wildlife guide! He made this whole thing an evennig to cherish and remember for a long time!
Finally we got the taxi to take us back towards Fairbanks. We were in for a treat before reaching the hotel..
