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Wednesday, November 6th – Goynuk
The weather system moving in yesterday evening has arrived. We wake to a steady rain and low cloud cover that hides the tops of the hills. It is cold and miserable. It cannot be much above freezing up here at 2000 ft (750m) above sea level. Although there isn’t much to see or do in this town and we have only covered 130 km over the past two days, less than what I often did in a single day alone in Europe, we aren’t going anywhere today.
I am in no rush to go anywhere so it doesn’t matter much to me as long as we move along towards India and Coen and Vincent stay with me. We pay for a second night while we are eating breakfast in our hotel. Coen is still hacking but sounding a bit better. We hang out in a small TV lounge for a couple hours playing cards, until another guest turns on a Turkish channel loudly and drives us out.
For the next couple hours I read “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac, a novel I was given in Istanbul by a backpacker who had finished with it. It seems appropriate, even if Kerouac thought the world consisted only of New York to LA. I like his writing style. Coen has gone back to bed like a lazy cat and Vincent has been occupying his time writing something.
Vincent leaves with me to do a little grocery shopping and we stop at the restaurant we ate in last night to eat another kebab dinner for lunch. Vincent buys a lunch for Coen and takes it and the groceries back to our Sleeping Beauty in the hotel. The rain has let up and the low cloud cover has risen so I leave Vincent and set about taking a few shots of the town.
I am drawn to the Suleyman Pasa Camii whose minaret towers over the town 150 m above the main street. I make my way through the steep passageways between the houses that must be a challenge for any vehicle to navigate. The people here must have great calves. It must be hard on the elderly and disabled. No doubt there was some reason for building the town here, but it wasn’t for convenience. Other than being out of the way, it doesn’t seem to have fortifications or an extremely defensible location.
The lower town falls below me rapidly as I climb. After two tries, I find the way to the Camii. It looks quite new, or at least well kept. I get a shot of the inside and then my batteries run out in my camera.
Climbing down, I have a marvelous 3-D view of the town and valley. The wet ground and dark green conifers give the scene a very somber look. If there are deciduous trees at this altitude, they have all lost their leaves by now. As I approach the main street again I can see another rain shower hitting the hillsides to the north. There is a rainbow in front of it and the sky has taken on a yellowish hue.
Coen is up and talking to Vincent when I return to our room. Coen is looking better with a day of rest. Vincent has a couple spare batteries to last me until we get to the next larger town. The three of us try out the other restaurant in town. It has exotic stuff like pasta and pizza. Yum. As we leave we can see cracks in the clouds and stars in between. The cloud cover is breaking up. PHOTO 1: lower Golnuk
PHOTO 2: a typical building in town
PHOTO 3: beginning the ascent
PHOTO 4: nearing the Camii
PHOTO 5: inside of the Camii
PHOTO 6: rainbow over the town
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