Hair Story

The supremely weird Avanos Hair Museum in Cappadocia, Turkey is the result of one man’s 40-year-long obsession with women’s hair from around the world.

By Raul Dias

Glaring at me with bloodshot eyes, Galip Körükçü makes it very clear that he isn’t too happy with my siesta-busting, mid-afternoon intrusion. I’m at Chez Galip, his famous pottery shop in the town of Avanos, some eight kilometres from Göreme, the historical center of Cappadocia in the heart Turkey. Avanos is well-known for its beautiful pottery, fashioned out of the red, mineral-rich clay that’s dredged from the bed of the nearby Kizilirmak River.
But that’s not what draws me to the modest little pottery shop. It’s what lies beneath, carefully hidden out of sight in its basement that has piqued my interest. The Avanos Hair Museum, a veritable ‘shrine’ dedicated to women’s hair is what the 63-year-old Galip has been painstakingly building up one lock at a time since 1979.
It’s only when I tell him that that’s also the year of my birth, does the Albert Einstein lookalike relent and allow me into his bizarre subterranean passion project. There is no entry fee for the museum, and everyone is welcome, provided they inform him in advance by telephone, he lets me know with a sardonic smile. I’m led down a flight of stone steps into a large cavernous tunnel that is entirely covered—from walls to ceiling—with pinned locks of hair in every length, texture and colour with a slip of paper affixed to each.
In the last 40 years, Galip has managed to collect an astounding 16,000 plus locks of hair that have been voluntarily left behind by women visitors from around the world. A table at the end of the tunnel even has a pair of scissors, duct tape, thumb tacks with a pen and some paper for women to write down their names and addresses on after snipping a few strands of their hair.
Galip tells me that it all started when a French lady who was learning pottery under him left behind a few strands of her hair as a sort of memento before she returned home. Hearing this story, over the years, women have been leaving behind a piece of their hair adding more heft to his rather hairy tale!
But that’s not all, every six months—at the beginning of June and December—the first visitor to the pottery shop is given the job of selecting 10 locks from the museum. These 10 ‘winners’ are then contacted by Galip and invited back to Avanos for an all-expenses paid week-long stay to learn pottery from him, if they so choose.
“So, why aren’t men invited to leave behind their hair?”, I ask him as a parting shot. He turns his stern glare upwards in the direction of my boring old buzzcut. I have my answer.   


Hair Apparent! 
Another hair museum, called Leila’s Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri, USA does things a tad differently. Established in 1986 by Leila Cohoon, a retired cosmetology teacher, the museum displays samples of hair art dating back to the 16th century. These range from wearable trinkets like neckpieces and brooches to paintings and medallions all made with strands of human hair. The practise of making art from hair reached its zenith in the Victorian era in England and France when people commissioned such art as a memento of a loved one.

(A differently edited version of this article appeared in the 2nd February 2020  issue of the Hindustan Times, India newspaper's Weekend supplement, on page III. https://www.hindustantimes.com/travel/visit-a-unique-hair-museum-and-leave-a-lock-in-turkey/story-VYEgis94khBMEaYN0LCvKP.html)

Inside Armenia’s ‘Taj Mahal’

Showing us how one man’s marble mausoleum is another’s potato cellar, Levon’s Divine Underground Museum in the Armenian village of Arinj is a true testament to love, faith and perseverance.  

By Raul Dias

The tiny Armenian village of Arinj isn’t particularly easy on the eye. Dreary-looking Soviet era apartment blocks, with their chimneys belching grey smoke every now and then, dominate the landscape. Ditto for the gnarly, winter-ready trees poking lethargically up at the sky in all their leafless gloominess.
But then, no one really makes the 20-minute drive up here from Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan for all that. Home to Armenia’s very own ‘Taj Mahal’ aka. Levon’s Divine Underground Museum, Arinj features prominently on most travellers’ checklists. And there is absolutely no need to ask for directions or rely on Google maps to get here. Once at Arinj, all the signs (quite literally!) point out to this unique attraction.
Hidden 70 meters beneath a modest-looking home, itself placed haphazardly at the end of a meandering alleyway, are a series of rough-hewn subterranean chambers, vestibules and passageways. All carved out by one man named Levon Arkelyan paying heed to the request of his wife Tosya.
And no, that request wasn’t anything remotely romantic such as a beautiful memorial needing to be built for her. All Tosya desired was a simple potato cellar so that she could stow away the tubers she had grown in her garden for the winter. That was in 1985.
Over the next 23 years, what Levon created with his own bare hands—using rudimentary tools such as simple chisel and hammer sets along with what he claimed was divine assistance from spirits—was nothing short of a marvel. Working alone, almost 24 hours a day for over two decades, Levon managed to dig through the tough basalt layer of rock and reach the softer and easy to carve through tuff stone, recognised for its blushing pink hue.
It was from the tuff that Levon’s creations started to take shape. These included the main stepped pathway leading down to six small chambers and ribbed roofed vestibules, all elaborately decorated with Doric columns, traditional Armenian carved crosses called khachkars and stunning bas-reliefs. Covering over 300 square meters and at 21 meters long as it stands today, the original plan was for it to be a virtual mini city of 74 rooms. Sadly, that was not to be.
With Levon’s sudden passing in 2008, all Tosya could do was preserve the memory of her husband by turning his labour of love, faith and perseverance into a ‘pay-as-you-please’ private museum where she and her daughters take turns to guide visitors through a space that’s truly divine.     


Chamber of Secrets!
Perched majestically atop a small hill in Armenia’s Ararat plain close to the Turkish-Armenian border is the Khor Virap monastery. Literally meaning “deep dungeon” in Armenian, Khor Virap is said to be the place where Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned in an underground chamber for 14 years by Pagan King Tiridates III as part of his religious persecution campaign. It was only in 301 AD when the king was cured of dementia by Gregory, who claimed to have been aided by divine forces, that he was set free and Armenia was declared a Christian country.     

(A differently edited version of this article appeared in the 1st December 2019 issue of the Hindustan Times, India newspaper's Weekend supplement, on page III. https://www.hindustantimes.com/travel/travel-armenia-s-divine-underground-museum-is-a-legacy-of-love/story-Zok0VgI7s7IDWw1N65iRtL.html)

Bulgaria’s ‘inside story’

From ancient Roman ruins to eerie catacombs, Bulgaria’s capital of Sofia and Plovdiv—its second largest city—are brimming with subterranean wonders. Places where what lies beneath is equally fascinating as that above.

By Raul Dias  

The uniformed lady seated in front of me seems genuinely happy to see me. Her easy, generous smile far from the perfunctory, bordering-on-fake ones proffered by most immigration officers I’ve encountered thus far. She tells me that mine is the first Indian passport she’s about to stamp into Bulgaria in all her four years working at the Sofia International Airport.
“Don’t waste your money visiting any of Sofia’s museums!” she advises me almost conspiratorially, without offering any further explanation to bolster up her suggestion. “Also, don’t take a taxi into town. Your hotel is right next to Serdica, so take the direct train to the Serdika II metro station,” she adds, after casting a glance at my immigration disembarkation form and pointing me in the direction of the startlingly modern and spotlessly clean Sofia Airport metro station.

The city beneath the city
Almost as soon as I alight from the train a half hour later, I get the gravitas of the immigration officer’s seemingly innocuous (if a bit odd!) twin suggestions. Buried deep within the depths of downtown Sofia, the Serdika II metro station is truly one of the best places to start peeling back the Bulgarian capital’s onion-like layers.
One of the first things I notice about the huge, cavernous station is the acute lack of any form of commercial advertisement with nary a billboard or standee in sight. In their place are glass cabinets. The kind one would find in museums. Filled with everything from Neolithic pots and Roman urns, to even a few decapitated and chipped capitals that probably sat atop grand Doric columns once.
It is much later in the day, after checking into my hotel and getting down to some considerable research, do I realise the sway Sofia held in the ancient Roman world when it was known as Ulpia Serdica (also spelled as Serdika). Not only was it a much-coveted city after the Roman’s conquered it from the Greeks in the year 29BC, but is it said that Constantine the Great sought to transform it into the ‘Rome of the Balkans’.
Evidence of the erstwhile grandeur of Serdica is apparent not just inside the train station, but also outside its turnstiles. Quite like the underpinnings of the 14th century Bastille fortress that peek out of the Bastille Métro in Paris, the remnants of the ancient Roman city were uncovered in the 1970s with the discovery of the Western Gate of Serdica and are on display to the public, under a huge, reinforced plexiglass dome.
The next day, as I take a free walking tour around Sofia, I am told that the restoration of the Serdica ruins started in 2011 and is still very much a work in progress, as I can see. In total, the complex covers an area of approximately 9,000 square metres, and once had as many as eight streets—including the grand Decumanus Maximus main road of the Roman city. Today, all that’s remaining of downtown Serdica that have been unearthed thus far, are the ruins of an early Christian basilica, a few mineral springs and early examples of a water and sewage system—all said to date back from the 1st to the 6th century AD.

Crypts, bones and catacombs
Giving the city its modern day, official name, I find myself at the rather somber-looking St. Sofia Church that sits in the shadow of the colossal Neo-Byzantine Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in the city’s historic center. The latter with its gilded central dome topped with a golden crucifix is so elaborate that I could even see it from the window of my plane’s seat a day earlier, as we prepared to land into Sofia.
Built in the 6th century during the time of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, St. Sofia rests not just on the foundations of four older Christian temples from the 4th century, but also on something that ties it in with ancient Serdica. With its location being a little outside the fortified gates of Serdica, it was the site of the of the city’s great necropolis.
Descending into its labyrinthine innards way below street level, I am greeted with sensations that threaten to awaken my latent claustrophobia. The catacombs here are an elaborate maze dotted with rough hewn niches laden with bones, several intricately carved masonry tombs and crypts—some still ensconcing stone sarcophagi. A series of vivid, well-preserved mosaics murals and frescos lit by dim, blue bulbs lend the catacombs an eerier cachet. 

Where Plovdiv meets Philippopolis
As Bulgaria’s second largest city, its economic hub and the current European Capital of Culture for 2019, Plovdiv in the south of the country is next on my subterranean quest list. Ever the thrifty traveller, I once again join in a free walking tour almost immediately after getting into Plovdiv’s compact city center, post a two-and-a-half-hour bus journey from Sofia’s Central Bus Station.
My guide Igor lets me know that the city was earlier named Philippopolis, after Philip II of Macedon—the father of Alexander the Great—conquered it in the 4th century BC from the Thracians. But it was the Romans that left the most indelible mark on it when Philippopolis was incorporated into the Roman Empire by Emperor Claudius in 46BC.
And it was the grand Roman stadium that was at the very center of it all, being one of the rare stadia to be built inside the walls of a fortified city. Constructed at the beginning of the 2nd century AD during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, the stadium could accommodate 30,000 spectators all at once, cheering on everything from chariot races to talent contests for criers and buglers.
Today, all that remains of the stadium is the excavated northern curved part that lies under the modern day Dzhumaya Square, surrounded by lively cafes and bars. It is believed that the larger portion of the stadium, including its quintet of arched gates still lies beneath the buildings along the main street, parts of which can even be seen in the basement of the local H&M!
Paying homage to a city that was built on the crest of seven syenite hills, I end my day trip to Plovdiv with an Aperol Spritz sundowner at the hillside Roman Theatre. Built by Emperor Domitian in the 1st century AD, for millennia it lay buried under the backyard of a local resident. Painstakingly restored in the 1970s, the theatre—with its soaring Ionic marble colonnade and triangular pediments—still stays true to its original purpose to this very day as a popular venue for staging plays and concerts, I’m told.
Unfortunately for me today, I’ll just have to make do with the sun’s disappearing act, as it gradually dissolves into the craggy horizon…   
 

(A shorter, differently edited version of this article appeared in the 21st September 2019 issue of the Mint Lounge newspaper, India on page 16 https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/features/what-lies-beneath-sofia-1568978786033.html)

What Lies Beneath

Poland’s subterranean topography is a treasure trove of cities made of salt, mysterious tunnels built by the Nazis, and even a patriotic spider-infested cave!

By Raul Dias

The sheer audacity and stupidity of the ‘journey’ I had just undertaken, was never more apparent to me than when the ancient, miner’s lift gave a terrifying little lurch and then proceeded to hurtle at top speed up to the surface of the mine, 327m above where I had spent the good part of four hours burrowing my way through the serpentine passageways of the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Wieliczka, southern Poland. It was barely four days since the November 29, 2016 tragedy that took the lives of eight miners, when a magnitude 3.4 earthquake caused rockfalls hundreds of metres below the surface at Europe’s largest copper mine—Rudna—near the town of Polkowice in the western part of the country.
Realising that adrenaline can be alarmingly addictive, I found myself craving some more subterranean action in the next few days I travelled the length and breadth of the eastern European nation. And thanks to my trusted little guidebook, I didn’t have to look too hard. Because like the old Polish saying goes, “what is most interesting is usually well and truly hidden!”
Here are a few such underground sites in Poland that can be visited all year round:

Miedzyrzecz Fortified Region
Stretching a lengthy 80km between Gorzow Wielkopolski and Zielona Gora Dodge in Poland’s western Lubuskie region, the Miedzyrzecz Fortified Region is a warren of WWII fortifications, consisting of tunnels, railway stations and halls built tens of metres underground that visitors can take a tour of. Built over four years between 1934 and 1938 on the orders Adolf Hitler, the bunkers here are reinforced with solid steel walls and are interconnected by underground corridors, forming what is believed to be the longest defensive system in the world. Miedzyrzecz is also one of Europe’s biggest hibernation sites for bats and sees over 30,000 of the winged critters homing in for the winter.

(www.bunkry.pl)

Wieliczka Salt Mine
Sitting 327m underground, the Wieliczka Salt Mine—located in the town of Wieliczka in southern Poland—has been a tourist attraction since the 15th century, when touring the salt-bearing realm used to be reserved to the elite. To be granted admission, you needed the consent of the king, which was only granted to a fortunate few. Forming an impressive maze composed of 2,391 chambers and 245km of galleries, excavated on nine levels, today, one can take the Tourists’ Route to visit the vast chambers (like the one dedicated to Copernicus) hewed out in solid rock salt, the underground lake, and salt figures among other saline wonders found here. Or one can choose to undertake the arduous 3km Pilgrims’ Route that finishes at the Chapel of St. Kinga, made entirely out of salt, as is the mural copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper and the statue of Poland’s ‘homeboy’ Pope John Paul II.

(www.wieliczka-saltmine.com)

Krzemionki Opatowskie Flint Mine
Straight out of the stone age with a decidedly Flintstones-eque vibe to it—with everything from a wax model of a well-endowed cave man to a recreated Jurassic Period dinosaur on full display—the underground Neolithic Krzemionki Opatowskie Flint Mine is located eight kilometers north-east of Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski in central Poland. The popular Tourist Route that is 465m long, descending 11.5m at the deepest point, takes you through the Neolithic pillar-chamber mining pits, with connecting sections excavated in limestone rock that pass inside the natural striped flint-bearing bank. All this seen through special inspection windows.   

(www.krzemionki.pl)

Chelm’s Chalk Tunnels
Running under Poland’s industrial city of Chelm in the east of the country, at a depth of 27m at the lowest of its five levels, only 2km of the actual 15km of the meandering chalk tunnels are navigable by visitors today. Hewn out by hand in the Middle Ages, when chalk was a much prized commodity, the network of passages were sealed off when the mining of chalk was discontinued in the 19^th Century. Only to be restored to its current form in 1985. The 50 minutes tunnel tour offered, runs through three underground complexes of passageways—in the area of the Church of the Holy Apostles, and under the Old City Market Square and Przechodnia Street. En route, if you’re lucky, you may even encounter the benevolent Bieluch, the resident ghost who is said to sometimes appear as visitors pass through the galleries.

(www.urzad.chelm.pl)

Ojcow National Park Caves
Prima facie, the fecund Ojcow National Park 16km north of Krakow may seem like any other suburban green lung, the kind that sees picnicking families descend en masse for a weekend of ‘wilderness’. But its bowels hold forth secrets and myths that reveal themselves only to the curious. As many as 400 caves lie ensconced here, scattered around the rather diminutive (21 sq km) park with the Ciemna and Zbójecka caves being amongst the biggest. But it is the Łokietka Grotto that draws in the most number of visitors thanks to its ‘guardian’, a rather patriotic spider, who, according to legend, helped preserve the royal bloodline line of the Piast Dynasty.

(www.ojcow.pl)

Krakow’s Underground Museum Rynek
With its pyramid-like, blue-lit plexiglass roof jutting out of the ground as the only indicator of what lies beneath, Krakow’s Underground Museum Rynek sits buried 5m below the city’s bustling Main Square. Replete with its own ‘be-skeletoned’ shallow graves, burned out old mud houses and even a horse stable, the museum that opened in 2010, is the actual location of the ancient Krakow city center. Recreating 13^th Century Krakow by means of holograms and a rather derelict fog machine, the museum’s main exhibit called In the footsteps of Krakow’s European identity takes you on an audio-visual journey back in time when the city of Krakow—the then capital of Poland—was plundered by Mongol invaders on March 22, 1241 in the infamous Tartar Raid.

(www.mhk.pl)

(A shorter, edited version of this article appeared in the 14th January 2017 issue of the Mint Lounge newspaper, India http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/pN8AvyUYyrZPHjcDo1h04K/Foot-notes-The-ground-above-your-head.html)