Great Journey 🏍 Day 331
We drive to Hasankeyf. The sunken city.
And once again, we don't really know how to find it all. The Tigris is dammed in many places, the huge country needs electricity, lots of electricity.
These many dams always lead to controversial discussions. We had already noticed similar problems in Thailand & Laos and the Mekong in 2017.
The Ilisu Dam has been the subject of controversy for decades. On the one hand, it was about the resettlement of many people, about disregarded human rights, but on the other hand also about the great environmental destruction of the Tigris Valley. But probably the most heated and emotional argument was about the inevitable destruction of the evidence of human history, the ten-thousand-year history of the city of Hasankeyf. Further down the Tigris, in Iraq, the Unesco-run Mesopotamian Marshes will lie dry in the future. The fact that the "successor countries" Iraq and Syria are also dependent on Tigris water offers potential for dispute.
Hasankeyf is now flooded. There is nothing left to see. The oldest stone bridge of the Middle Ages: submerged. Around 6000 caves: flooded. A total of seven historical monuments are being elaborately relocated. The inhabitants had to move from their cave dwellings to the other bank of the Tigris; they now live in "new buildings" with a strange concrete charm.
We take a boat to the "old" side of Hasankeyf, trudge past ruins and learn that a kind of palace (stone ruins like on an excavation site) and also other buildings are being restored up here to attract tourists.
The whole thing seems so unreal. Sad. And while we shake our heads in bewilderment, we look for a socket to charge our smartphones. And we realise that we are also part of this consumer society. And we are at a loss. A chicken-and-egg question, isn't it?
#hasankeyf #tigris #mesopotamia 1TP6WearePartofit
1TP5livepur 1TP5livepurontheway 1TP5livepurontheway #ourism #travel #outdoorsatitsbest #ravelwithoutaplan #mototravel #motorcycletravel #traveltheworld #collectmomentsnotthings #urkey #urkey
#slowwaymayberound
