4 Days Konya City & Cooking Tour

Highlights of the 4-Day Konya City & Cooking Tour

• Mevlâna Museum — the turquoise-domed mausoleum of the poet and mystic Rumi, with its dervish lodge, Tilâvet Chamber and the Semâ-Hâne where the whirling dervishes once performed.
• Seljuk Konya — the İnce Minareli Medrese and Sırçalı Medrese, two jewels of thirteenth-century Seljuk stonework and tilework in the former capital of the Sultanate of Rum.
• Beyşehir Lake & Eşrefoğlu Mosque — Turkey's largest freshwater lake scattered with thirty-two islets, and the 1299 wooden-columned Eşrefoğlu Mosque beside it.
• Hands-on Turkish cooking class — a guided lesson in the dishes of the Konya kitchen, from etli ekmek to fırın kebabı, followed by the lunch you have prepared.
• Çatalhöyük & Eflatunpınar — the 9,000-year-old Neolithic town and the Hittite spring-shrine that frame Konya's deep layers of history.

Spend four unhurried days in Konya, the spiritual heart of Anatolia and the city most closely bound to the memory of the thirteenth-century poet Mevlâna Celâleddin Rumi. Planned in-house by Inca Tour, a TURSAB-licensed operator, and led throughout by an English-speaking guide, this scheduled group tour pairs the great monuments of the Seljuk capital with a genuine taste of its kitchen. At the Mevlâna Museum you stand before Rumi's tomb beneath the famous fluted green dome, walk through the dervish cells and the Semâ-Hâne, and learn how the Mevlevi order shaped the culture of the city. From there the day winds through the İnce Minareli Medrese and the tiled Sırçalı Medrese, and out to the historic mosques and madrasas that still define Konya's skyline.

A full day takes you west to Beyşehir Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Turkey, its surface broken by more than thirty small islets and framed by mountains. On its shore stands the Eşrefoğlu Mosque, built in 1299 and one of the finest surviving wooden-columned mosques in Anatolia, while nearby the Hittite spring-sanctuary of Eflatunpınar recalls a civilisation of the thirteenth century BCE. Between the sightseeing you slow right down for the everyday life of the city: a shopping stroll through Konya's bazaars for spices and sweets, and the chance to visit Çatalhöyük, the 9,000-year-old Neolithic settlement that is one of the oldest towns ever uncovered.

The centrepiece of the week is a hands-on cooking class. Working alongside a local chef, you learn to prepare a selection of classic Konya dishes — the thin, crisp etli ekmek flatbread, slow-baked fırın kebabı and traditional desserts — before sitting down to share the meal you have made. With three nights' hotel accommodation, daily breakfast, a private air-conditioned vehicle and a professional guide, the 4-Day Konya City & Cooking Tour is an easy, authentic introduction to Seljuk history, Mevlevi culture and the flavours of central Anatolia. Prices are per person.