Gertrude Bell was one of Britain’s most extraordinary women – an explorer in the late 19th and early 20th century, a great linguist, an archaeologist, a writer, a mountaineer ... Between the first and second world wars she was better known than Lawrence of Arabia, yet today few people are aware of her. She’s best known for her travels in Syria and Iraq – but she travelled extensively in Turkey, too, and I’ve been following in her footsteps there.
I stumbled upon Gertrude by chance – I saw an entry she’d written in a prominent Ottoman archaeologist’s guestbook at an exhibition in Istanbul. It inspired me to read her diaries and letters, which I found at Newcastle University. It turned out she’d travelled the length and breadth of Turkey. I got a map and marked everything I could identify and set off to retrace her journey.
Ephesus was almost as popular at the end of the 19th century as it is now. I followed Gertrude up on to the walls that run around the site – nobody goes there but you get a bird’s eye view. Do it with caution, the first part is straightforward, but stop where the walls have fallen down. I didn’t and had to phone to be rescued!
I’ll never forget visiting Şanlıurfa, (also known as Urfa) in the south-east, during Ramadan. Only more adventurous travellers go there today. It was July and 47C: everyone was fasting and life came to a halt. I visited a mosque Gertrude had been to which had a stream running through it. Boys were swimming at one end, men with trouser legs rolled up were sitting at the other end – probably a scene played out for centuries. One of the problems I’ve faced researching my book on Bell’s travels is that a lot of places in eastern and south-eastern Turkey are off-limits at the moment.
Gertrude wrote a book about churches and monasteries in the Tur Abdin region, in the south-east. It’s still full of incredible Syrian Orthodox churches, most of them newly restored. It’s hilly and very pretty; it reminds me of the Cotswolds. In a perfect world it would be a place for eco-tourism, but it’s blighted by the nearby conflicts so few people go there. Gertrude was astounded that nobody knew anything about the churches – and nothing has really changed.
Istanbul is an incredible city, bustling and chaotic. Like Gertrude, I stayed at the Pera Palace, a historic hotel that has been running in the same spot since it opened in 1892. It belongs to the Jumeirah group now and has been newly restored and is very beautiful. I went to buy Turkish delight at Haci Bekir, a shop she went to near Sirkeci station. Staff there told me Gertrude would have bought rose water flavour, the fashion back then. This was a magical moment for me.
TE Lawrence was one of the archaeologists at Karkamış, a site that spans the border with Syria, and Gertrude visited him there. It’s mostly off limits, but I went to the dig hut where a group of archaeologists were staying last year. Incredibly, the Italians were still working there, even though Isis was only a mile away. Although the British were excavating here between 1911-1914, the site was abandoned because of the war, so archaeologists are now discovering things for the second time. I saw things TE Lawrence had dug up himself – there’s a good chance he’d have shown them to Gertrude when she visited.
Where Gertrude travelled was often dictated by trains – and when the railway line ran out she would ride huge distances on horseback. To avoid the heat of summer she would travel earlier in the year when mud was a huge problem. Her diaries are filled with descriptions of horrendous mud – she describes seeing a camel with only its head and hump showing because it had been sucked into the mud. In that sense travel has got a whole lot easier – Turkey has an incredible network of good roads and trains.
Turkey is huge and has a seemingly limitless number of forgotten historical places. There are still many I have not visited, even though I’ve been writing about the country for 25 years. People are generally very welcoming – I’ve had some wonderful taxi drivers who have been as excited as I was to discover new places. In some areas there are so few tourists that I was as much of a curiosity as Gertrude must have been.
I live in a cave house in Göreme, Cappadocia. It’s an amazing place known for its “fairy chimney” landscape. When I first came here in 1998, most people lived in caves – but now they’ve all been turned into boutique hotels. Life has changed so much with the money made from running cave hotels and selling hot-air balloon rides, every morning in summer we have about 100 balloons taking off. People live in modern houses and have washing machines and dishwashers; their old way of life has vanished forever.
One challenge I’ve still to face is climbing Mount Hasan, one of the inactive volcanoes on the edge of Cappadocia. It’s 3,000 metres, so a proper mountain – Gertrude did it, but then she had climbed in the Alps and was an experienced mountaineer. I’m not sure I’ll succeed, but I’m willing to give it a go.
• Pat Yale is the author of expat guide A Handbook for Living in Turkey and runs turkeyfromtheinside.com. Her blog is at followingmissbell.wordpress.com
