An Update from John Morton in Turkey

John Morton and Leigh Taylor-Young Morton are on a scouting trip in Turkey in preparation for the Traveler Tour in 2020. Here’s an update that John sent recently from their trip.

At the moment, we are aboard the plane in Van, Turkey on an AnadoluJet Flight to Ankara, the capital of Turkey. We have a good chance at being with the local meridians, meaning, not lagging due to much of our consciousness still transversing the jet streams.

Just to give you an idea, on Monday we arrived at our hotel about 7pm from our 13 hour flight to Istanbul having crossed 10 time zones internationally. We met our hosts Farit and Ali, as well as local MSIAer Bianca Rothschild, in the lobby for an 8pm dinner.

We started our next day about 9:30am for a day of touring lots and lots of Istanbul sites in consideration of our 2020 group visit to Turkey. Given our 2:30am wake up call, in consideration of our 5:35am flight to Van, we chose to use our jet lag to retire for the evening about 7pm without supper, which proved to be a wise choice.

Van is located inside of a dormant volcano cauldron surrounded by snow-capped mountains at an altitude close to 7,000 feet, including an alkaline water lake about 7 times the size of Lake Geneva, where we were with the group last September for the Heaven on Earth tour. Upon arriving about 7:30am, we were right on time for one of the most sumptuous breakfasts of our life, actually famously known as the Van breakfast – a 25-course meal served family style with gourmet, very fresh and local selections.

Then we headed to Cavustepe, still inside the cauldron, to visit the Urantian Castle. The Urantians were related to the Persians and utilized their knowledge, including the ancient cuneiform texts brought to the world by the Anunnaki culture around 8-900 B.C. We met Malmet who calls himself the last Urantian. He gave us a personal tour of the site with amazing stone masonry the likes of which I have seen in Peru and Bolivia. Reportedly, the king’s golden throne is in the British Museum. Like Om Seti in Abydos temple in Egypt, he has dedicated his life as a guardian and interpreter of this site, including his ability to read and speak the language set down some 2800 years ago. At 79 years, he related that he is about to retire at the insistence of his 5 children and wife and is in the final stages with his book. He has lectured in many locations including 5 times in Los Angeles. A remarkable experience.

–