Istanbul in the evening

Lorraine
Flying over Istanbul as we prepared to land, the city beneath us sparkled with thousands of lights. This time, no smog, fog or layers of pollution to cloud the scene below...just a gem-encrusted landscape enticingly drawing us ever nearer.

This is the first time that I have travelled in a country where everything is foreign to me - something that was making me slightly nervous the closer we drew towards our destination. Every time I travel in India it is like a home away from home - I feel more Indian than ever and quite settled. When I visited Canada many years ago with my mum, it wasn't really a challenge either - we had family there and the language, food and culture was easily negotiated. Shanks has only travelled to Europe with his parents as a child, and although his memories are still very clear, this is his first time to Turkey as well.

The other thing that started worrying me as the wheels of the plane touched ground, was that we were landing in a foreign country without a travel guide. I realised that having a travel guide is something of a security blanket - just a quick flick of a page and you can work out where you are, where you want to go and how to get there. Landing without any information at all makes one rather nervous. On the plus side, we had, at the last minute managed to book a hotel and arrange for an airport pick-up, so after clearing immigration and customs in all of about two minutes (it actually seemed a tad too quick after India!), we were mighty pleased to see a young lady with a placard bearing our names on it. Racing through the city streets at night, wide-eyed and wonder-struck, it was funny to see the types of things that eased me into a sense of familiarity again - a BP service station that was a carbon-copy of the ones at home; Christmas trees brightly lit and decorated; a children's playground in the typical blue, red and yellow plastic common to playgrounds everywhere...

It was also a bit of a shock to the system, after having been in India for a month, to see clean streets and cars sticking to their lanes (albeit on the wrong side of the road), even if there was a complete lack of indication before switiching lanes. As we sped through the streets, we passed high rise buildings, department stores and restaurants - everything looked very modern and upmarket until we swung a few corners and found ourselves just as suddenly on narrower roads and cobbled streets. Out of the corner of our eyes, we caught sight of a beautifully lit mosque, a dimly-lit shop with loaves of fresh bread lining the windows...and then we were there, in front of our hotel, and eager to get out of the car and observe the scenes around us.

We are in a part of town called Sultanahmet - one of the older parts of Istanbul. It has a beautiful feel to it - quaint guesthouses and 'pensions' as they are called, cobbled streets, shops brimming with Turkish rugs and ceramics. We went for a wander to find a bite to eat, and came to a tiny restaurant, sheltered from the cold, where we eagerly tucked into our first plate of Turkish fare.

This morning, we rose late but managed to make it to the rooftop restaurant for breakfast, which was included with the room. A simple meal of bread, cheese, tomatoes, cucumber, egg and olives was devoured as we took in the view through the rain-spattered windows - the Marmara sea looking rough and grey, dozens of houses with crumbling tiles and flocks of pigeons and gulls swooping and swirling before us.

We are already feeling our focus change as we prepare ourselves for the momentous occasion that looms before us - our pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The cold, grey weather is somehow playing its part as we turn our thoughts to the journey that Baha'u'llah and His family and companions made during the icy winter (the coldest in living memory) from Constantinople (Istanbul) to Adrianople (Edirne). During that jouney they had to light fires next to the frozen-over springs for a couple of hours just to obtain drinking water.

The plane flight from Delhi was also quite exciting as we flew over Tehran (in Iran), where Baha'u'llah was first imprisoned before being exiled to Baghdad, then over eastern Turkey above some the towns which Baha'u'llah and His companions passed through on their exile from Baghdad to Constantinople. If only the plane was not delayed so we could have seen more of the journey in daylight!