We’re sprawled under mulberry trees on a Turkish divan – a rickety platform strewn with kilim cushions and low tables – wondering how it gets better than this: gorging on freshly squeezed pomegranate juice and traditional gözleme, a Turkish crepe cooked over an open wood fire and filled with crumbly white cheese and spinach, after our walk through the “ghost village” of Kayaköy.
This tranquil tableau of crumbling homes and hearths, hillside chapels and pathways – which inspired Louis de Bernieres’s epic novel Birds Without Wings – sits among south-west Turkey’s outstanding collection of classical-era archaeological sites. But after seeing our share of 2,000-year-old temples, theatres and tottering colonnades at the likes of Patara and Xanthos, Tlos and Pinara, it’s something else to wander the sun-bleached shell of this village, abandoned amid geo-political turmoil early in the last century. There’s something of interest for all of us, whether it’s the lessons of Turkey’s recent history (the adults), the many tortoises and goats (the children) or the promise of the gözleme (the teenagers).
