[Turkey] Mardin, an ancient town on the Syrian border

Flew in for 3 days with my girlfriend, came out really happy with it.

It's technically Turkey, but barely any Turks live here. Mostly Kurds, Arabs, and Assyrians.

The town has a famous sweet — almonds in a bright blue sugar shell. The blue dye comes from a plant called Lahor, named after the city of Lahore where it originally came from along the old trade routes. When we were leaving I grabbed like 5 kilos and ended up handing it out to friends back home :)

In Mardin we found a driver who took us around for a day — out to the town of Midyat, then to Mor Gabriel monastery, and to some Roman ruins called Dara with huge underground cisterns you can climb down into.

And the landscape around it — typical post-apocalyptic wasteland, with ruins of ancient cities and monasteries scattered through it. Super atmospheric, felt like I fell into the Aladdin storybook.