Needing a rest day or two after partying hard for 5 days at the festival, we headed off to Olimpos, on the Mediterranean coast, stopping at Termessos on the way. Termessos was a Pisidian city, set high in the mountains, apparently making an income taxing passing merchants travelling between the Mediterranean and the Agean. Alexander the Great failed to take the city in 333BC, and it was apparently abandoned around 250AD.

It's quite a stunning locale. We drove up from the warmth and sun down at the seaside to just over 1000m above sea level, up near the clouds of the day, and certainly much cooler. Quite rugged peaks and cliffs surround a lot of the site, the theatre especially has a stunning backdrop with a gorge dropping away on one side and a mountain rising steeply up the other side.

The theatre was pretty cool, and well preserved. By this stage in our journey we'd abandoned plans to drive to Ephesus, so this was going to be our classical ruins highlight, and it was well worth seeing it.

Also of interest, and not something I was really expecting, was the vast fields of rock cut sarcophagii on the hillside behind the town. Huge numbers of them. All cut out of single blocks of stone. The things you did with your spare time a few thousand years ago. No mass desktop publishing over the internet for starters!

We arrived at Turkmen treehouses for the night, and booked in for two. Laundry, buffet breakfasts and dinner, calm couches and lounges to relax in and unwind. (Though a few people would later suspect the food here of giving them a stomach bug)