Meditations from Ankara's hidden heights

"A man's true delight is to do the things he was made for." - Marcus Aurelius. Meditations.  Above: on top of the 'Aiguilles de Mamak' so-called because of their golden granite resembling the Aiguilles de Chamonix!

Lately, due to insomnia or too much stress from the winter traffic and the scarce availability of concert tickets, I have been picking up a few too many books at night.  That's not to say I haven't been busy with other things too, though I will save those for my novel.  It would be a shame to mention them here because, as Voltaire said, the secret of being boring is to tell everything...

Somewhere in between times, I headed out to Ankara in recent days and to my pleasant surprise, was able to meet up with friends for an impromptu trip out to the notorious basalt cliffs of Huseyin Gazi.  This area keeps watch over Mamak, a vast poor district, rich only in vegetable markets and giant potholes, the last of which almost claimed our car on the drive back at dusk.

Ankara - so intellectual, so maligned; once so cultured, now declined!  Not entirely: I think some of the criticism is not justified: true, the government bureaucracies (perhaps including the Parliament), party headquarters, fortified embassies and military buildings litter the city, as do half-finished high-rise blocks which have run aground in planning permission disputes, or bankruptcies.  Shopping malls are oversupplied to a population all too keen to live wholly in them.  No thought of the outdoors there (was Marcuse an Alpinist?).  Kizilay is decaying slowly from the supplanting of its commerce; Bahcelievler has no more gardens, only rows of double-parked cars where a generation ago the kids would ride their bikes around and climb up the trees to pick cherries.

The city's inner roads are a warren of tunnels, with minute place-signs too small to see until it is far too late, which explains the high incidence of smash-ups and near misses all over town.  Driving Dikmen Caddesi, home of the venerable Murat Yildirim's Alpinist shop, is like white-water rafting in the Kackars or paragliding in Baba Dagi - your life is not in your hands once you enter the cauldron.

And what of the night-life, famous ten years ago, now surreptitiously going downhill?  A couple of beers in the No1 Newcastle Pub at the fag-end of the Besiktas-Fenerbahce derby match may restore your confidence!  But there is less theatre and cinema than there should be these days (not counting the drama from the Inonu Stadium).  Charm abides in the cafes around Argentine Caddesi (but at what price?) and when there is snow, this extends to the city centre and the parks, robed in white and less corrupted by the acrid smoke of chesnuts and fish that will billow back once the thaw liberates space for the grill-stands to return. 

As we wait for our friends to appear from the anonymity of the incoming Halk Otobuses, rucksacks and all, like Marxist guerrillas in the movie 'Z', I shiver in the cold air full of the smell of coal and exhausts.  A typical urban morning in Turkey, not unlike Kayseri perhaps, although I did not have a hangover in Kayseri.

We drive out through Kizilay under the Is Bankasi overpass and past numerous bus stops and taxi stands, and sporadic Ankara Halk Ekmek huts (though none were distributing bread).  It's fairly quiet at nine in the morning, and this reveals a more historic Ankara before our eyes, one of sad green parks, men converging outside bakkals, covered women and girls mixed with young couples rushing out to shop, students with their books, ragamuffins, beggars, simit-sellers, balloon-vendors and of course now the Mamak vegetable market which spills onions onto the roads as we pass in clouds of diesel.

A haze envelopes the city even as we leave it behind and follow the winding pock-marked roads through the last outskirts of habitation.  It is dusty, sun-drenched country we find ourselves in beyond the last hilltop; and up above, the dark brown outcrops suddenly appear against a clear blue sky.  We have done our archaeology of Ankara, now we want to climb these fierce stone relics while the day is still young.

Above and below: delightful crack climbing on a granite section with an alpine sky above us, reminiscent of the French Aiguille du Midi (but considerably shorter, unfortunately!).

No bolts here, only traditional methods apply - the ethics of Huseyin Gazi endure, like the rock, and ascents are the richer because of it.  For some notes on routes see http://www.tuncfindik.com/

I recall how Pascal once meditated that human evil emanates from the inability of man not to sit still a room (according to my friend, however, this is the precise reason why Ankara's crags do not see any crowds - because most people are staying indoors, probably in those malls).  To his credit, Pascal also noted that 'imagination decides everything'.  In climbing this is certainly true, nowhere more so than on these beautiful igneous cliffs which we climb compulsively for six hours or so, by all the classic routes, enjoying the sunshine and camaraderie high above the haze of civilisation and memory.

Wishing you all the best for Bayram...