Camel Wrestling
I have always been a sucker for camels so when neighbour Peter came back from Ayvacık market on Friday and said that he had seen seven of them, I was instantly interested. I had been to the same market a couple of hours later and not seen one. Well, the startling news was that there was to be Deve Güreşi or Camel Wrestling in Ezine on Sunday starting at 11am.
Ezine is a pretty unremarkable town provincial in the extreme on the way to Çanakkale and ultimately Bandırma where we were bound anyway to catch our return fast ferry that day. Its claim to fame is that it is a centre of production of its own type of beyaz peynir or white cheese. We have explored the cheese shops and been to the market there on a Monday. But we were ignorant as to where camel wrestling could possibly be held. Not that we had much of an idea as to what an ideal venue would constitute anyway.
We closed up our house in Assos and set out at about 1pm. Luckily Peter was ahead of us and phoned us with instructions. We went through the mediocre part of Ezine and emerged the other side to a pretty landscape of rolling green hills. Then we saw parked cars and our first camels!
A few more paces took us to the top of the hill and what an extraordinary sight met our eyes. I doubt that I have ever witnessed a more colourful or vibrant spectacle in my life. There in a natural contour of the hillside shaped like an amphitheatre were hundreds and hundreds of spectators.
Then the drums started. Turkish drums are deep and resonant. You hear them in Ramazan, for example, when the drummers go round the streets to wake everybody up for sahur or the meal before sunrise. I love the sound. Here, they reminded me of the drums before going into battle which in a way they were. The reassuring thing about camel wrestling is that the fight is not till the death but just till one or the other beast is pushed over or out of the arena.
Many of the men had little tables with rakı
and snacks. In particular they were relishing the sucuk that was on sale there. This is a special sausage made from beef and camel meat and heavily spiced.
I could hardly bear to tear myself away from this riveting scene but we had a three hour journey ahead of us to Bandırma so with great reluctance we dragged ourselves away. An unforgettable experience.
Claudia,
Beautiful pictures! This weekend we were on Istiklal and my kids were having a look in a book store. There was a childrens book about Turkey listing various facts. One of them was that camel wrestling was a popular sport in Turkey. We all had a good laugh considering we had never so much as heard of camel wrestling. Demeki varmis!
Wish I'd been there!
Your life is full of colour and such excitement. Camel wrestling…I had never heard of it and must say the camels (and guys) look fantastic.
Mark is all set to come and visit you in Assos thhis year…inshallah! He also asked if he has your permission to download your photo of all the evil eyes from day one..he would like to paint them.
We have more snow in the air.
Warm wishes
Heike xx
PS: Your lovely card arrived today 🙂
Thanks for your comments! Yes, it was a really amazing day. Apparently camels were introduced to Anatolia after the Ottoman Conquest of Syria and Egypt in 1517 so this sport has ancient origins, I would imagine.
Heike, tell Mark he's welcome to come and so are you! And of course he can download that photo…
xxxx
Exciting stuff!! Bloody hell! I bet your lifelong love of camels is because of that book "Cecil the Camel" !! 🙂
It looks as though your camel wrestling venue as much more suited to the purpose than ours was! 🙂 Beautiful setting. AND we had to pay 20 lira (10 each) to get in – proceeds going towards the building of a new village school so I shan't complain too much…