Türkiye: The Pamukkale Limestone Travertines
The word “Pamukkale” means cotton-castle in Turkish. The place get’s it’s name from a series of terraced white limestone pools, technically called “travertines”. A travertine is formed when calcium carbonate is deposited along a hot spring. The flow of water often shapes the deposits in interesting ways, and here in Pamukkale, they look like (you guessed it) a cotton castle!
I had first seen this place in a Bollywood movie, I have to admit. It seemed other-worldly, and definitely worth a visit. There are tourist companies that organize all-inclusive day trips from Istanbul to Pamukkale, but they do not operate in winter. So we decided to just explore the place ourselves.
We took the first flight out of Istanbul to Denizli at 8AM. Denizli is a small airport which is closest to Pamukkale. Just outside the airport are bus operators that either take you to Pamukkale or the Denizli city center. The operators speak a little English, so it was not too difficult to get on the right bus. After an hour’s drive we reached the visitor center for the Pamukkale travertines. The place is a tiny little town, but with a lot of hotels, cafes and restaurants near the entrance. Once inside, you have to climb up a slightly steep trail to get to the travertine pools. Additionally, you need to take your shoes off, and hike barefoot (to avoid damaging the limestone formations). This explains why there are much less visitors in winter!
These travertines were formed by the high calcium content of the spring water here. As the spring water flowed, it formed these interesting terraced pools that can be used as hot tubs. The water was nice and warm, but since it was winter, we did not really dip into these, but just waded in.
If these travertine hot springs were not enough, Pamukkale also offers one more attraction. Above these pools, there lies the ruins of an ancient Phrygian city, called Hierapolis.
This city dates from the 2nd century BC, and was built here to take advantage of the hot springs (like an ancient spa retreat). There is a full Roman “theater” that looks like a gladiator arena.
There is also an interesting swimming pool which is fed via hot springs. You can swim in this pool among the Greek/Roman relics. It’s colloquially called the “Cleopatra” pool, although it may not be linked to anything from the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. The pool was actually formed much later ( 7th century AD), when an earthquake caused some of the columns to fall into a pit.
There is also a Temple of Apollo, which included shrines for other Greek gods, such as Hades/Pluto.
After spending the whole day of exploring the travertines and the ruins, we found a nice homely restaurant for a late lunch.
We returned back to Denizli airport. There was a bit of confusion on getting the bus back to the airport, as there were no designated bus stops here. However, the staff in one of the local hotels we walked into were very helpful and called the bus company to pick us up. We were back in Istanbul in the late evening, with fond memories of this place!
