We left Gaziantep early so we could get up to Nemrut Dagi (Mount Nimrod) today. This involved a taxi ride to the bus station, quickly on to a minibus (no time even to grab breakfast), change minibuses after 2 ½ hours for another 40 minute ride to Khata (where we were staying). We checked in to our hotel and organised another minibus to take us on a tour to the mountain. Everybody was starving at this point, so it was into the kebab shop for lunch.

The tour to the mountain took in the burial mountain of a queen, a Roman bridge and an old fort dating back to the 1st century BC. All very interesting, but we wanted to see the top of Mount Nimrod. Here Antiochus, a king of a tiny kingdom (Commagene), had built himself an enormous burial mound complete with 8ft high rock carvings of himself and other gods (he was such an ego-maniac he considered himself a god). The sight is at 2100m high and is very remote. The scenery around it is very impressive, quite stark, with great views of the Attaturk Lake (formed by a dam on the Euphrates). How the king got his people to haul themselves and the stone up the mountain is a mystery.

We could drive to within 600m of the summit and it was then a climb up to the base of the mound. At the base are 2 terraces with the heads. We went to the East one first, which looked good. We then went round to see the West one, which had the sun setting on to it - it looked amazing. We stayed there until sunset, watching the heads change colour as the sun sank. A nice end to my birthday!