Konya, Türkiye

One of reasons we came to Konya was to see the Whirling Dervishes. It’s been popularized with tourist performances in many cities in Türkiye. The Whirling Dervishes are actually an order of Sufi, a religious practice within Islam. The whirling is a form of meditation. The Whirling Dervishes were founded by the mystic poet Rumi in Konya. The Mevlana Museum that our room overlooks contains the tomb of Rumi, aka Mevlana.

There’s two different performances of the Whirling Dervishes in Konya. One is a tourist one every day at 8pm, and the other is the actual religious ceremony on Saturdays. We wanted to see the real one, after all we had planned to be in Konya on a Saturday specifically to see it. It’s very difficult to find info on the real one on the web, so we figured we’d walk down to the Mevlana Cultural Centre (where the performance is held) and find out.

First things first. Breakfast was excellent at our hotel, a big Turkish spread, including freshly-squeezed orange juice.

We then checked out the Mevlana Museum and tomb of Mevlana, across the road from our hotel. It gets lots of tour groups, mostly Turkish. We had to put on protective booties (plastic bags) over our shoes before we entered. The rooms are very ornate. We had to wait for our turn to take a pic of the tomb.

There’s a structure surrounding the square with each room giving a snippet of Sufism and the Whirling Dervishes. The rooms were originally dorm-like rooms for the dervishes, each about 10’ x 10’, with a small doorway facing the square. There’s good English descriptions. It does get crowded when a tour group files through. I managed to stay in the lull between two groups, so I wasn’t swarmed.

Then we walked down to the Mevlana Cultural Centre. The very helpful security person explained the performance was Saturday at 7pm, lasts about an hour, and we should line up at 6pm. You can’t buy tickets in advance, it’s first-come-first-served at the door.

That sorted out, we walked back towards Bedesten Çarşı (Market). It was Friday and the mosques were busy. There’s a couple mosques that we wanted to check out, but we’ll do that tomorrow. The market was lively. Lots of clothing stores. Heather bought a scarf that she can use as a head covering for mosques. There was a very busy çay (tea) and simit stall, so we ordered a tea and simit and sat on the little chairs to enjoy them.

At 1pm most of the market shut down, as it was Friday (similar to how Sundays have shorter hours in other countries).

We were still a bit peckish, so walked around to a street and found a busy restaurant with Etli Ekmek, the local take on pide (sort of a flatbread pizza). It was yummy, better than the one I had yesterday.

It looked like it might rain any minute, so called it a day. Also, it was a Friday and not much was open in the afternoon.

Later we went out for dinner at a place we looked up on Google Maps. Its specialty was lamb’s head. I tried their kelle-paça çorbasi (soup with head and foot of lamb), and Heather tried their lentil soup. Both were excellent. We also had their tavuk pirzola (grilled chicken thigh with a dry rub), although we were already full from the soups. There were lots of locals that stopped in just for the soup or the lamb’s head. It was a cool place to try.