Welcome to Ancient Cities!

Travel is one of the most exciting things to do in life for any person. Most travellers know solo, or couple, backpacking is the one amazing thing they will do in their life before they settle down. Some do it once, for three months or six months or a year, others are serial and professional travellers. For the latter category, like myself, the travel bug never leaves and the desire to explore the next place means it is always being planned, either in the mind as an escape from daily life, or the booking of an actual flight out of the country. My backpacking days are now over and my trusted backpack, my friend for ten years, has entered retirement and is stored safely away. It has been swapped with a suitcase with wheels and, more often than not, hotels instead of hostels.

So, I would like to share my travels that span over a decade (in digital format at least!), so that others can enjoy and learn from them. The hope is that these pages will be an invaluable tool for those who are planning on visiting some of the places listed, but also contain details for those who may be interested in photography or archaeology, or simply just have the travel bug inside them! Or maybe you just like reading about such places and enjoy photos, in which case some of these travelogues contain the most extensive set of photographs you will find anywhere on the Internet. There are nearly four hundred photos from Ephesus alone, for example. Each place may be presented in a different format – the South America section was a solo backpacking adventure while my latest trip, a two-week whirlwind tour of Turkey’s ancient cities, was purely from an archaeological and photography perspective. Therefore, while the South American adventure will read like a true travelogue, the Turkey trip will read more like a history book with photos.

The cities or towns are listed alphabetically by continent and then by country, but once you click on a particular country the places are listed in chronological order, regardless of their location. In some cases, like Peru, the relevance of this will be obvious – when one is backpacking, how you get from place A to place B is often more relevant than the places themselves.

With regards to the photography side of things, every picture is also shown in chronological order, regardless of how counter-intuitive that may seem on occasions. I may have taken a photo of a temple, for example, then turned around and taken a photo of a statue, and then turned back and taken a photo of the temple again, from a slightly different angle, maybe just a few steps forward. However inconsistent this may seem to some, that is how the photographs will be presented, and every photograph will be published even if the repetitive nature of some of them may appear illogical.

I sincerely hope you enjoy reading about these places as much as I did visiting them, and also the photography presented.

NOTE: At present, due to the length of time required to produce these travelogues, only the Turkey and Cyprus sections have any data. I will be adding to the other sections in due course. Thank you for your patience!

All photography © Stephen Maybury