At the same time writers also wrestle with more personal dilemmas, including the worry that they might damage a place by drawing too much attention to it. Dispatched to write a book with the off-putting title of “The Good Tourist in Turkey,” I visited the Ihlara Gorge in western Cappadocia for the first time in 1992. People had started to wake up to the fact that tourism was not an unmitigated blessing, and suddenly sustainable tourism was the buzzword. The trouble was that no one was quite sure what sustainable tourism would look like, least of all me.
Floating around in the ether was some half-digested notion that it might involve dispersing tourists over a wider area so that their sheer numbers wouldn't overwhelm the most popular destinations, and it was in pursuit of places that were not quite so well known that I arrived in Ihlara that early summer day with a traveling companion in tow.
Actually, traveling companion was a rather generous way to describe L, who had attached himself to me earlier in the trip and then clung on for dear life. Given that I resented his presence but could find no way of shaking him off, it would be fair to say that our relationship was a tempestuous one. However, on that particular morning we had set out in good humor, planning to walk the entire 16 kilometers of the valley.
Things started to unravel almost from the outset. The gorge was unimaginably beautiful, its sides rising sharply up on either side of a stream that wound its way gently along the bottom. The birds were in full throat, and as we walked in the meadows villagers from Belisırma paused to press plums upon us. Then we sat down to eat a picnic lunch and L started to tell me about his years as a guide.
“I never thought about the environment until I started guiding Germans,” he said as he unwrapped the salami and blithely tossed the packaging into the river.
“What are you doing?” I snarled.
“Oh, sorry, I forgot,” he replied and fished it out again.
It was all downhill from there. I remember a flock of sheep panting in the sun and a group of villagers who stared in bewilderment as we went at each other hammer and tongs. Yet even as I was instructing him to walk behind me and not to say another word to me I was reflecting that Ihlara was as close to paradise on earth as most of us would ever get, and yet here we were, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, introducing the serpent of aggression on a whim.
Afterwards I fretted over what to say about Ihlara, opting finally to downplay its unrivaled beauty for fear of attracting the crowds. Nowadays, of course, it's one of the major drawcards of Cappadocia. I never did see or speak to L again.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
