Before we came here we did some research on what sites to see around the city. One place of interest we came across was a sacred turtle pond. Legend has it that in the 13th century a saint turned a group of sinners into turtles to live eternally in this pond instead of in hell (my very loose interpretation of the story). An interesting note on these turtles is that they were thought to be totally extinct but then 150-300 turtles were discovered in this pond. The black softshell turtles are classified now as extinct in the wild. The manmade pond is part of a shrine in the city. We had the opportunity on the Saturday of Easter weekend to take a ride out to this shrine to see the turtles. We only visited for an hour but there were many sites to behold.
The Hazrat Sultan Bayazid Bastami shrine.
You can feed the turtles bananas by hand. We did not for fear of falling in!
The crowd of people coming to see the turtles.
A picture by the turtle pond.
We were allowed to go up the stairs to the temple but we had to take our shoes off first.
This is the women's side.
A candle vigil. While we were standing here a man came and blew out all the candles and incense that was burning. Don't know what that was all about...
This is a tree with ribbons wrapped around it.
There are many poor people who come to the temple.
Nearby is a very poor community.
Beggar children walked with us as we visited the grounds.
Many of the beggars have physical ailments.
The shrine was under construction at the time of our visit.
The head can be used to carry many things.
A rare site...a female construction worker.
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