Bursa, Turkey

 

Our trip to Turkey had many highlights however, I am not going to give you a guide book description of where we stayed, what we ate and what we saw. Turkey has a history going back centuries and there are no dearth of palaces and natural wonders. That is why I always wanted to visit Turkey but these were not such a big deal to a little boy. My son was about seven years old when we went there. Before I started writing about Turkey, I asked him what he remembers from that trip and this is what he still remembers - Green Bursa and the huge tree under which we had our afternoon tea!

Bursa is a small town which sits in the lap of Uludag mountains. People go there in winter for skiing and winter sports. In summer, it is simply green and pretty. We went there for no reason and heard people talking about a 600 years old tree! We certainly needed to pay a visit to the grand old thing, the Buzurg.

The Buzurg Chinar tree of Bursa

The town of Bursa reminded me of old Srinagar in Kashmir. There were narrow cobbled lanes made of stones. There were deep drains on the sides of roads for the snow melt runoffs. People planted flowers in old olive oil tin cans next to the drains. One feature of Turkey I really liked was that people love gardening. We noticed many nurseries on the road sides and people were selling flowering plants even in the vegetable markets. We climbed up a steep slope and there he was, the handsome old Chinar (Plane) tree shading a huge area. The branches were so heavy that they were supported by thick iron bars.

Cobbled roads and flowers in Bursa

That tree was planted many years ago by the Ottomans during the early days of their empire. I started to day dream about what was happening in India 600 years ago. This was when the Delhi Sultanate was ruling in the Northern India. A time of great upheaval in the Mewar region and women would lay their lives in Jauhar. It made my heavy heart heave a huge sigh! Life certainly has its ups and downs.

The summer fruits and berries

It was early afternoon and our Bengali religion dictated us to have tea of the early afternoon (in fact religious Bengalis believe that tea is pious at every hour of the day). We chose to have Turkish apple tea with summer fruits and Turkish delights. I had never seen such a huge variety of fruits and berries before. They were sweet and juicy and the apple tea added an extra bit of novelty to the nosh.

Apple tea with Turkish delights