We broke up our bus ride to Konya with a short pit stop about 90 km out of town at a very well preserved caravanserai called Sultanhani. The road from Goreme to Konya is part of a well-traveled historic trading road (the Silk Road) and the Seljuks built a string of trading posts and rest stops called caraverserai in the 1200’s. It was a pretty awesome stop when I think about it – just like most things around here. Canada is just so young!

We pulled into Konya at about 3:30, and did the usual. Find our place, drop our packs and explore. Our hotel was a centrally-located, cheap, cheerful, and spotless place called Ulusan Otel. The best thing about it was Ali – who was super friendly! Plus, at 70 lira, it was a bargain!

We headed to the Mevlana Museum, home of the Whirling Dervishes. There are only ceremonies on Saturdays so we were out of luck for that, but the museum has a great exhibit. And, it was free for some unknown reason!

On the way there I got to experience a bit of "real" Turkey -- the Turkey that Mark remembers, with the carpet sellers being super friendly and inviting you up for tea. We managed to hold off Nazif the carpet seller, at least for the short term, but Mark had to swear a solemn promise that we would return that evening.

Despite being PACKED, the museum was interesting. The tomb of Rumi, the mystic philosopher and founder of the dervish order, is inside and is splendid and grand. There are also tombs of other notable dervishes, all of which have slightly smaller but just about as ornate sarcophagi. They are covered in a beautifully embroidered fabric and are topped with a tall felt “hat” with a turban at the base. The number of wraps of the turban indicates the importance of the individual.

We headed for the exterior rooms which housed “a day in the life of a dervish” exhibits. It’s a rough go, at least as tough as that of a monk, I think. There was a particularly good room which showed the dervish’s practice board (looks a lot like a large Bosu board, but square) and some dervish mannequins in full spin.

On our way back to our hotel, we stopped at a grocery store in search of beer to have in our room. None to be found unfortunately, but we did run into Nazif the carpet seller. He offered to buy us ice cream (which we declined for fear of feeling indebted to him) but since we promised to stop at his shop on the way home, we followed him over there.

He didn’t do any hard sell, and was a skillful salesman, but once he realized that we really meant it when we said we don’t actually like Turkish carpets enough to want to buy one, we moved from business to pleasure. We got to talking about other subjects, and as a trio, left the shop and headed for a very pleasant tea garden for tea. We talked about many things and were with him a couple of hours in total. He also invited us for dinner, which we politely declined. We took our leave, and ventured out to find our own dinner and soon after we called it a night.