I’m glad I’ve seen Göbekli Tepe but I probably wouldn’t go back.
The entire excursion was a bit of a debacle.
We struggled to locate the site to begin with with Apple Maps, Google and the rental car’s own GPS systems all failing to help.
The site only sits about 15 kilometres from Urfa but somehow we just couldn’t manage to find it.
First time around the GPS took us along some long, winding dirt road for an age before spitting us out at a sand mine.
Then we made our way back to the highway but ended up on the wrong road without an opportunity to turn around for a good 15 minutes.
30 minutes wasted there. Finally, with the help of Wikipedia we found the coordinates for Göbekli Tepe and put those directly into the car. Still, we couldn’t manage to find out how to get there, but in the end, with the help of a man on the side of the street we found it.
We paid 5 lire, or about $2.50 for a shuttle up to the site and wandered around for all of about 15 minutes.
The carvings are thought to predate the Sumerian hieroglyphics – traditionally thought to be the basis of written languages – by about 80000 years.
But while it’s a very important part of history, all the scaffolding around the excavation site made it a bit difficult to appreciate. There were amazing views from up there, but otherwise we just snapped a few photos and were on our way to Kahta.
