It’s winter in Türkiye, but I’m not even a little bit cold. Earlier today, I bundled up and shivered amongst snow-covered evergreens. Now, I lie on the heated marble slab at the center of a hammam, a Turkish bathhouse, while the attendant scrubs my body with a coarse cloth, or kese, sloughing off the dead skin. The sound of hot running water echoes all around me as I am gently rinsed, then covered with silky soap bubbles and rinsed again. Seal smooth, I rise from my stony repose and the attendant leads me through peaceful hallways to a room with a massage table, where she proceeds to spend the next hour ensuring my muscles have never felt quite so relaxed. I emerge from the hammam in a daze, riding the elevator to my hotel room where I look out the window over a white expanse of mountain slopes dotted with skiers and snowboarders. This is, after all, a ski resort—but it’s unlike any other I’ve ever been to.
I grew up in a skiing family. Every winter, we’d drive a few hours from Boston to the snowy mountains awaiting in nearby Vermont or New Hampshire, car filled to the brim with gear. With that background in visiting American ski resorts, I was curious to see what ski culture looked like in Türkiye—a place I’d long associated with the markets and minarets of Istanbul, and the stone spires and caves of Cappadocia, but had thoroughly failed to imagine covered by a blanket of snow.
