Carpets and the Valley of Love

Day 13, (April 12, 2013) of our OAT's Turkey's Sacred lands and Ancient Civilizations Tour. We visit the "Valley of Love", see carpets made. (Separate post--our visit to Göreme Open Air Museum to see stone churches.)

Carpet Cooperative

We went to a carpet cooperative and shool. The cooperative works to teach women carpet making and then sets up graduates of the school so they are able to make carpets from home. Carpets are then sold by the cooperative.

There are many salaries to be paid--salesmen, office personnel, etc--so you may not be getting rock bottom prices on carpets, but you know what you are getting. 

We got a tour of the carpet-making process which was very interesting. There was no obligation to buy nor were the salesmen pushy or aggressive.

Turkish carpets generally have double knots

Getting silk from the silk worm cocoons

Indigo blue dye is yellow until oxided in air

Beautiful Carpets

"Shawl" pattern

The Valley of Love  

Our guide didn't tell us that Baglidere Valley is also called "Love Valley". Even if she had, I wouldn't have been prepared for what we saw.

We saw a Roller pigeon. I had never seen or heard of such a bird, but there it was. It performed an uncountable number of backward flips and tumbles while flying.

Pictured is the Oriental Roller breed of fancy pigeon. (Image from Wikimedia). I have seen pigeons colored like this in Turkey. Perhaps our Roller (above) is an Oriental Roller, but I couldn't tell--it never stopped moving!

small vineyard in front

Uschisar

We stopped for tea and bathroom break near Ushisar Castle. This pigeon, with feathers on it's legs, was contemplating flying into our bus' open door! And then doing a few somersaults, maybe.

There was a dovecote--a shelter with nest holes for domesticated pigeons--at our stopping place. Pigeons were continually going in and out.

Refreshed, we started out hike in Pigeon Valley--you can follow along on the post,"Churches, Castles and Pigeons".