Mount Nemrut

You climb the last scree slope in darkness, headlamp catching loose stone, and reach the summit terrace just as the eastern sky turns copper. Giant stone heads lie scattered across the ground — toppled gods and kings, each two metres tall, staring sideways into the dawn with expressions that haven't changed in two thousand years. The scale is disorienting. The cold is real.

Mount Nemrut is a 2,134-metre peak in southeastern Turkey, crowned by the 1st-century BCE funerary sanctuary of Antiochus I of Commagene. The king commissioned colossal limestone statues of himself seated alongside Greek, Persian, and Anatolian gods — a syncretic pantheon reflecting Commagene's position between empires. Earthquakes toppled the heads from their bodies centuries ago, and they now sit on the ground in a surreal arrangement, each carved with individual features. The east and west terraces face sunrise and sunset respectively, and the pre-dawn climb to catch first light on the stone faces has become a rite of passage for travellers in eastern Turkey. The site, a UNESCO World Heritage listing since 1987, sits above the Atatürk Dam reservoir, which has transformed the surrounding valleys into a network of turquoise waterways.