I had managed to sprain both my ankles, not easy to do I can assure you, and it requires an expertly timed trip and a twisting fall into a roadside drain. Something a stuntman would be proud of. Unfortunately, I'm no stuntman and the pain meant I could barely walk, and could only just drive. I needed to rest up. Not far away was Halfeti, a place I had heard mentioned as being a beautiful destination on the River Euphrates.

I have travelled to many historic sites, but until recently I had never even heard of the colossal statues of Mount Nemrut in Southern Turkey. It was on a trip to Cappadocia that I picked up an old copy of the Lonely Planet in a cave hotel which had one of the weathered heads on its cover. Since then I have been planning to visit.

What do you get when you mix fresh newly picked green pistachio nuts, syrup and layers and layers gossamer- thin pastry? Baklava, the wonderful sticky sweet pastry that it is almost impossible to say no to, and Gaziantep, in far southern Turkey, is the world capital of this dessert.

I was toying with the idea of going to a Turkish bath. It was a 'Must Do' according to all the advertising boards outside the travel agents lining the streets. It was just that something about the idea of lying on a slab being pummeled by a big bloke did  not attract me, maybe if it were a lady working on me I might have changed my mind, but that would be far too unseemly for Turkey's fairly conservative morals.

Ephesus was the largest city in Roman Asia, and second only to Rome in size with a population at its peak of over 400,000 people. It had all the amenities of a major city, parliament, theatre, library, public baths, housing,  many temples and a flourishing sea port. A number of calamities caused its decline and eventual abandonment, starting with being attacked by Goths, a huge earthquake causing many buildings to collapse, another sacking this time by Arab forces, and finally the silting up of its harbour, which economically ruined the city.

In a restored Silk Road Caravanserai near Urgup, the Sufi religious ceremony of the Whirling Dervishes is performed weekly. It is a separate order within the Sunni faith of Islam and although once practised throughout the middle east, it is now limited to small groups in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Indonesia.

Discovered by chance in 1963 when a homeowner, renovating his cellar, broke through an earth wall and discovered a passageway, Derinkuyu is a huge subterranean city in the Cappadocia region.The region has many of these cities which were built in the seventh century and used to hide from marauding armies, particularly the Romans who had a tendency to raid the Anatolia region to procure slaves.

Slow cooked lamb kebabs

I was lost. And now I could go no further. The path I was following had suddenly stopped at a huge fissure, with a thirty metre sheer drop and no obvious means to cross it. There was no way to climb down, and if I did get down there I might not be able to get back up again. There was nothing for it, I would have to return back and retrace the steps of my two hour journey to this point. As I was reluctantly making up my mind to return, a man in a faded cap with a small herd of goats appeared behind me. He looked at me with slight interest, probably as few tourists wandered into this valley, and then walked up to me.

View from an abandoned Cave house looking towards Pink Valley

The Basillica Cistern

Istanbul is a city that has managed to preserve its history well, despite being a pivotal battle ground between the Roman and Ottoman empires, being fought over, ransacked, and changing hands several times. With a population today of 19 million, only slightly less than that of the whole of Australia, it is a frenetic place that rewards wandering around on foot, or by ferry to avoid the constant traffic jams. Invest in a Istanbul Card to allow easy and cheap travel on ferries, trams, buses and trains, and then go exploring.