Urdu poetry and Bollywood songs are filled with references to the beloved’s hair, or rather, her locks. I don’t know exactly how many poems and songs have been written about those locks and how many metaphors have been woven around them. But the story I am about to tell goes far beyond poetry. It is the story of a single lock of a woman’s hair that became a keepsake, and eventually inspired what is now a rare museum unlike anything I have ever encountered in another country.

This is the story of the small town of Avanos in Türkiye. Located in the heart of Cappadocia, Avanos is famous for its pottery, ancient handicrafts and rich cultural traditions along the banks of the Red River. But there is another aspect of the town’s fame that you might find hard to believe.

After experiencing the mesmerizing hot-air balloons and exploring the fascinating cave museums, the strangest part of my trip to Cappadocia was yet to come.

While I was out shopping, I noticed a sign that read: Hair Museum.

I stopped.

A Hair Museum?

My first thought was that perhaps it was a museum about different kinds of hair – its history, styles, or cultural significance. Then I noticed the board with "Chez Galip." For a moment, my mind wandered somewhere completely different.

Could it have something to do with Mirza Ghalib, the famous Urdu poet we grew up reading and admiring? Or perhaps Galip Dede, the famous Turkish poet?

The connection may sound amusing now, but perhaps it was not entirely random. I grew up surrounded by Bollywood songs and Urdu poetry in which zulf – the beloved’s hair – occupies a world of its own. The heroine's flowing hair could hold the hero's attention, distract him and enchant him. Urdu poetry has spent centuries praising the beloved's hair, comparing its darkness, length and curls to all kinds of beautiful and sometimes dangerous things.

Even as a child, I had heard lines and songs celebrating hair (zulf), including the imagery of the beloved's hair providing a deep, enchanting shade – zulfon ki ghani chhaon or yeh reshmi zulfein. Hair was not simply hair; in the poetry and songs I grew up with, it could be mystery, beauty, attraction and even entrapment.

So, naturally, when I saw "Galip" and "Hair Museum" together, my literary imagination made its own connection.

I went inside to inquire.

The man at the reception gave me a brief explanation and a few photographs were enough to make me realize that this was not the kind of hair museum I had imagined. It was something far stranger.

Still, curiosity won.

I bought a ticket and entered.

The man first showed me a traditional pottery wheel operated with the feet. Then I entered the museum itself.

There were strands of women's hair hanging all over two cave-like rooms.

I stood there trying to process what I was seeing.

The instructor explained that taking photographs was not allowed because the strands of hair were displayed alongside the women's names, contact numbers and other personal details. When he learned that I was from India, he showed me hair donated by some Indian women.

Then he suggested that I could also donate my hair, if I wanted.

I politely refused with a smile.

The thought of donating my zulf itself made me uncomfortable. Hair carries its own cultural associations and I could not help thinking about the beliefs I had grown up hearing about hair being misused for magic or other purposes.

Interestingly, the story of this museum, tucked away in the heart of Cappadocia, did not begin as a government project, a commercial venture, or even a planned cultural initiative. It began with a single memory.

Galip Körükçü, a renowned potter and master craftsman from Avanos, was working in his workshop when a French tourist visited him in 1979. The two became friends. When she was about to return to France, Körükçü asked her for a lock of her hair to keep it as a memory.

The woman cut a lock of her hair and gave it to him. She also wrote her name and address on a piece of paper and Galip hung the lock on the wall of his workshop.

When other women who visited the workshop heard the story behind the hair hanging on the wall, they, too, began leaving locks of their own hair. What began as one person’s personal memory slowly turned into a collective tradition.

Körükçü continued to preserve the locks, while the women began leaving their names and contact details alongside their hair.

What had once been a single person’s keepsake became, over time, a collection of memories belonging to thousands of strangers.

Thus began the journey of the Hair Museum.

The experience of visiting this hair museum was certainly bizarre. At the same time, there was something strangely fascinating about seeing hair of different colors and textures belonging to women from different parts of the world. Unusually, the collection represented human diversity.

Still, I cannot say I felt completely at ease.

Fortunately, the visit ended on a pleasant note. The instructor took me into another room where students of Körükçü had created beautiful pottery pieces from clay. After the slightly unsettling experience of the hair-filled rooms, the sight of those handmade pieces felt almost like a relief.

And there I was again, surrounded by clay, art and craftsmanship – the things I had expected to encounter in Cappadocia in the first place.

What I found was far more than the postcard-perfect image of hot-air balloons floating over valleys. Cappadocia offered me an exciting and beautiful mixture of history, adventure, wonder and, unexpectedly, a little weirdness.