Against his better judgment, but having little choice given the paucity of men willing to undertake a grueling, mid-winter Anatolian journey (it was late-November), the intrepid Childs reluctantly employed Mehmet, who was “decidedly ... not the sort of man I wanted.” Childs’ doubts were confirmed on the road, where Mehmet proved to possess “the proverbial temper of a red-haired man, and the peevishness of an invalid.” In order to get the journey over as quickly as possible, Mehmet constantly urged his British employer to ride, whereas the annoyed Childs’ was set on walking across Anatolia.During the first day’s journey from Sivas, Childs claimed to have been attacked by sheepdogs no less than “a dozen times in the day” and wrote with feeling, “There never was a foreign traveller in Turkey who did not long to shoot dogs.” En route to Kayseri he passed through Sultan Han, once one of the largest caravanserais on the old Silk Route through Anatolia. Still relatively intact, it is much visited today by tourists heading to Cappadocia, but Childs wrote, “This fine old building has now become a quarry for the mean village which has grown up around it.”
Unimpressive Kayseri
In Kayseri he employed a new driver, a tough Muslim called Ighsan, “a handsome old man, with sharp, clean-cut features, prominent forehead, and hawk-like glance.” Ighsan was to prove invaluable to Childs immediately, enabling him to visit parts of a town that “has the name of being the most fanatical city in Asia Minor, a city of Turkish stalwarts, who believe that everything was better three hundred years ago than it is now, and do their best to delay the progress of decadence. … The city also has the reputation of looking ill-naturedly upon giaours [non-Muslims].” Despite visiting the bustling bazaar, the city walls and even the town’s impressive Selcuk mosque, he was unimpressed by Kayseri and noted: “Apart from the favouring and ever-present majesty of Argaeus [3,916-meter Mt. Erciyes]. Kaiseriyeh is a dull city, with nothing of beauty in itself or its site. It is ill-built, and has neither greenery not water.” But Kayseri, now a booming “Anatolian Tiger” with an impressive historic heart, was (and remains) the gateway to the bizarrely beautiful landscape of Cappadocia -- Childs’ next destination.
Fairy chimneys, Göreme
Impressed by what he saw on reaching this remote and fabled land, Childs noted, “Over an area measuring perhaps fifty miles or more in each direction, the cliffs and rocks are bored with strongholds and villages, still swarming with people who live of choice in the old way.” Then, of course, the rock-cut dwellings were inhabited by a mix of Muslim Turks and a (since-departed) community of Greek-speaking Christians. Today many have been converted to boutique hotels serving tourists from all over the globe. His first stop, reached after “crossing the stream by a ford and stepping stones” was a place he charmingly refers to as “Urgub of the Holes” -- modern Ürgüp. The next morning dawned bright, cold and clear, and Childs made his way to the marketplace, which “with its bright colours and camels in sunlight, looked warm and Eastern in spite of skating weather.” Childs now headed for the village of Göreme. The freestanding, tapering pillars of rock (or fairy chimneys, as they are known locally) for which the valley is so famous he described as having “doorways at ground-level, and openings as windows higher up” and “rose abruptly from the level bottom of the valley, like so many great bottles.” Childs and Ighsan reached the village of Ortahisar by way of Uçhisar, Nevşehir and Nar, and soon found themselves, like so many people who wander through the region’s bafflingly complex network of valleys even today “lost … completely.” Although Childs was amazed by Ortahisar’s lofty citadel-rock, his guide was underwhelmed by the villagers lounging around its feet “it scarcely needed Ighsan’s contemptuous monosyllable of ‘Rum’ (Greek) to confirm their race.”
The Mevlana Museum, Konya
The pair now turned south, with Childs full of enthusiasm despite the fact that “the sky was overcast and threatening, the wind bitterly cold. … Snow, you would say, and much of it, was close at hand.” The route ahead, through the Toros range and down to the Mediterranean, was “the finest portion of the journey, the part to which I had looked forward with the greatest anticipation.” It was Dec. 17 as they approached the legendary Cilician Gates, the cleft in the Toros which has permitted trade between Anatolia and the Mediterranean since time immemorial. As they approached Bozanti (modern Pozanti) they heard the muffled roar of explosions -- it was the Germans blasting cuttings and tunnels for the grandiose Berlin-Baghdad railway. They reached the railhead at the village of Tosan Ali, where they boarded in a café “filled with a roaring crowd of Greek and Italian workmen engaged on the railway” and Childs slept “well enough among the sacks of potatoes and garlic and tins of kerosene.”
Through Konya
Before heading through the Cilician Gates, Childs took the newly constructed railway north and west to Konya, admitting “wandering afoot was very fine, but so also, I thought, was this change into a luxurious railway carriage.” Impressed by the stations he passed, he described them as “massive structures, built on a scale indicating unlimited faith in the future.” On arrival in Konya, he stayed at the Hotel de la Gare (part of which is now, unusually for conservative Konya, a licensed restaurant) right next to the station. Konya today is a booming city, famed for its whirling dervishes and Selcuk architecture, but Childs described it as “mean and depressing.” After a few days exploring the city, where he noted the “various Moslem theological colleges attended by thousands of students,” he returned, again by rail, to the waiting Ighsan.
Bad weather struck as the pair toiled up toward the Cilician Gates, and they spent three nights in a “mean iron shed, … old flat-roofed khan -- like a cattle-shelter with walls of loose stones.” Then, the sun came out to reveal the snow-covered mountains in all their glory, and Childs wrote romantically, “It was something to be here, going free upon this wild road of Cyrus and Alexander, something to know that in a day’s march I should drop to the Mediterranean coast, which imagination now made doubly sunny and glamorous.” But heavy snow forced Childs and Ighsan to overnight yet again, nearer the top of the pass.
A general view of Kayseri
Luckily the next morning was more promising and Childs “stepped out of the khan into a scene of dazzling white snow under bright sunlight and clear blue sky.” At first all went well, as they followed a track blazed through the snow by previous parties, but before long “continuous strings of laden camels … miles of caravans -- perhaps a whole week’s traffic crowding into a few hours” clogged the trail. Ighsan and Childs were forced to the side by the camel trains, which had been held up by storms on the south side of the pass, and now “floundered in deep snow, whose frozen crust would carry a man, but broke under a loaded beast.” Finally, they reached the top “an open, saucer-shaped space a mile or so across” where “precipices and rock and snow and scattered pines rose for thousands of feet on either hand.” Childs was fortunate to have passed through the Cilician Gates before the pass was scarred by the fast-encroaching railway.
It was a relief to be on the warmer side of the Toros Mountains and then down on the Cilician Plain (today’s Çukurova), where the road wound through “wide unenclosed fields of cotton and young wheat, and here and there maize and tobacco.” Unfortunately the un-metaled road proved tortuous as “every dip in the road held two feet of liquid mud.” Childs wrote despairingly about the final hours of their long trek to Tarsus, “We plodded on, squelching and floundering and splashing in darkness.” Tarsus is not quite by the sea, and Childs took a side trip to Mersin so he could write truthfully in his journal that he had “now tramped from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.” He then made his way east to Adana, noting as he did so the “long lines of bullock-carts, camels and horses loaded with cotton, which is the chief crop of the plain.”
In Adana, he paid off Ighsan, who hid his gold coins “in three small balls of dough … tied cunningly into different parts of his clothing.” Robbers had been an ever-present threat on the journey from Kayseri and Ighsan had no attention of clinking coins announcing his newly gotten wealth. Childs had formed a genuine bond with his traveling companion of some 10 weeks and wrote: “I felt for him … the affectionate respect that one might have for a friend. He had all the admirable Turkish qualities. … He was faithful in all things; not only brave but self-sacrificing too; and his word was a pledge; and often when I observed his patience and dignity and even good-temper, I felt that I had more to learn from him than he from me.”
Childs now headed eastward again, accompanied by the British consul from Adana, who was eager to see the work in progress on the Berlin-Baghdad railway east of the town. It was glorious weather for traveling, and with a couple of servants in tow, the catering arrangements were a notch up from Childs’ previous experiences. “On the stone well-head as table was spread a spotless table-cloth, set with table-napkins, polished silver, and bright glass. Roast quails, salad and wine were merely the surprises of this wayside meal.” No wonder Childs was to write at Bahçe, a small town beyond Osmaniye where the consul bade him farewell, “The hundred miles from Adana to Baghche had been the gayest stage of my journey; nor could I hope for anything so good to follow.”
In spite of his travel weariness, Childs still found time to visit Maraş, Gaziantep, Aleppo (Haleb, in Syria) before wending his way back to the Mediterranean coast at Alexandretta (now Iskenderun). Writing up his journal with the benefit of hindsight (the book was not published until 1917), Childs regretted that Imperial Britain had taken little interest in “Asiatic Turkey in the days before the war.” Given that he wrote the account of his epic, 15-month journey against the backdrop of World War I, it is hardly surprising that toward its conclusion, Childs focuses more on politics than the sheer joy of being on the road. Nevertheless, “Across Asia Minor on Foot” remains one of the most engaging and informative travel books about late-Ottoman Anatolia.
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