Taha Ozyavuz

My passion for Mardin region has started 5 years earlier with an article in Pagasus' in-flight magazine. Finally, we've made it happen and booked our flight, also posting our tour request here on TourHQ. We were looking for an offbeat experience, listing sime highlights we would like to visit. Within our first (yet online) contact, Taha has seamlessly extended our initial list with absolute gems like Harran, Göbeklitepe and Halfeti. Within our 5-day journey we've also visited Nusaybin, Dara, Mardin, Midyat, Hasankeyf, Mount Nemrut, Ataturk Dam and Şanlıurfa.

From the very beginning at the airport and until the very end in Mardin, Taha managed to compile a very exciting, culturally and historically rich tour, in which we had a great feeling of local life. As a very knowledgeable person and a skilled storyteller, he showed us a very interesting picture of how different civilizations, nations, languages and traditions created a unique blend here in South Eastern Turkey. A great asset of this tour was getting to know with Taha's help a lot of local people: Turkish, Assyrians, Kurds, Syrians - their stories helped me understand this land better.

Taha has also covered all the logistics issues for us, including hotel bookings and driving all the way of our 1,500 km route. He knows all the places with excellent food, so definitely we enjoyed delicious lunches and dinners at a very reasonable price. Overall, he has taken a great care of us and showed great flexibility and patience with our numerous questions and requests. Also, there were many cases, when he walked the extra mile for us, which we do appreciate.

I would definitely recommend Taha to anyone who would like to explore the region, for you to also enjoy his friendliness, outstanding knowledge of places and cultures and fall in love with this place, like we happened to do.