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Turkey is a vast country and there’s more to see than this corner known as the Bodrum Peninsula, so I’m starting a Postcard series to showcase other destinations in different parts of Turkey. We’re continuing the series with a selection of guest posts from memoir author Jacky Donovan.

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Man enjoys…but destroys

I’m staying in the small town of Pamukkale (which translates as Cotton Castle), one of Turkey’s most popular tourist destinations which attracts thousands of visitors daily, nearly all pouring in for a few hours on day trips.

I decided to spend a few nights here so that I could see it as tourist-free as possible first thing in the morning. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site which encompasses travertines (a sedimentary rock deposited by mineral water from the hot springs. Calcium carbonate is deposited by the water as a soft gel which eventually crystallizes into travertines), and Hierapolis, the ruins of an ancient Greek city.

At the end of the 2nd century B.C. the dynasty of the Attalids, the kings of Pergamon, established the thermal spa of Hierapolis. The ruins of the baths, temples and other Greek monuments can be seen at the site. Unesco

If you look at the pics on Google, the travertines tend to be sparklingly, pristinely white and the pools of water within them a stunning turquoise blue. You may have been here in the past and seen exactly that.

Unfortunately the site has apparently changed hugely even in recent years. Tourists used to be able to wander everywhere, often in shoes, making the place dirty; hotels and cafes had sprung up over the ruins and the natural flow of the water was rerouted for their use, leaving many pools dry. You could even ride a motorbike over the terraces!

Thankfully, a degree of sense kicked in, and these establishments were destroyed and replaced with more in town. You now need to walk the travertines in bare feet, and many of the pools are no longer accessible.

Reviews I’ve read indicate the place is much worse now than even a few years ago. ☹ I’m glad I’ve come, but along with the positives are a load of negatives. It’s still a must-see if you’ve not seen travertines before, but it didn’t excite me like I thought it would.

POSITIVES

1. The terrace of my hotel looks directly over the travertines.
2. I don’t think I’ve seen travertines before, so it’s a first for me.
3. I was first into the Hierapolis site this morning so had the place to myself. Busloads of tourists were starting to arrive as I left a few hours later.
4. Occasionally there are good prices to be had. I just had a gigantic breakfast, heaps of which I left, for ₤2 ($2.63), including 3 glasses of tea.
5. My camera makes the pools look bluer than they were to the naked eye. (Not sure if that’s a positive or negative!)

NEGATIVES

1. Quite apart from being grubbier than I thought, the travertines are very slippery (and worse today as it poured last night), rough to walk on and prone to making people slip and fall over. I took an alternative route so that I could see everything I wanted without removing my shoes or slip, and was glad I did when I saw one girl paying a guide to hold her hand as she walked up the travertines, and another woman go splat and cut her leg.
2. The town itself is very much a tourist town rather than feeling like a place which locals live in and tourists visit. It’s rather unattractive and the one place in my travels here so far that looks as if it’s been severely hit by COVID. There are several Chinese restaurants, many of them closed as the usual hordes of Chinese tourists are unable to visit.
3. I usually have a policy of not going into a restaurant if a PR person is trying to lure me in. I’d starve and die of dehydration if I did that here as even the tiny shops selling snacks and water have one.
4. Several places, including taxi drivers and shops, are keen to rip you off way more than in other places I’ve been in Turkey so far.
5. My camera makes the pools look bluer than they were to the naked eye. (Not sure if that’s a positive or negative!)

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About Jacky Donovan

Jacky currently spends her time between backpacking the world and her home in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. She’s an author of an erotic and humorous personal memoir, “Smart as a Whip”, and also writes books about heroic pets. Her latest books, “Simon Ships Out” and “Smoky” — the memoirs of the world’s first celebrity cat and dog respectively — are Amazon No.1 bestsellers. Visit Jacky’s Amazon Author page for more information about her books.

Getting to Pamukkale from Bodrum

It takes just under four hours to get from Bodrum to Pamukkale by car.

Your other options are to take a public coach/bus to Sarayköy or Denzli and take local transport or a taxi to Pamukkale. Visit the Bodrum Otogar where all of the Turkey bus companies have their ticket offices and check the current times and prices. One of the bus companies of the same name, Pamukkale, runs multiple services each day to Denzli (18 km from Pamukkale). Price of a one-way ticket is 65TL (as at Sept 2020).

Alternatively, visit one of the travel agents in town to arrange a day trip tour to Pamukkale, which will include an early start and a trip to a carpet shop along the way!

Read what Tom Brosnahan has to say about Pamukkale (Hierapolis)