Voyages in Kebabland: Part IV

Amasya --> Trabzon and Sumela Monastery --> Kars and Ani --> Dogubeyazit

Hi again everyone. It's been a very long time since I sat down and wrote about my travels so here goes with finishing my travel in Turkey (for the time being - I'll be back).

After Amasya, famed for its apples (and I can say that they are indeed tasty) I headed to the northern port town of Trabzon, which looks like port towns do: large and dirty albeit with a half-decent old town. However, there is one hidden treasure for Ataturk fans (ie all Turks): Ataturk's house where he scratched his head while writing down the recipe for modern Turkey is in the hills above Trabzon. It's a healthy and bracing 5km walk from the city centre (and eys, my legs hurt afterwards).

The other secret treasure near Trabzon is Sumela Monastery, about 45 km south of the city. Some monks, clearly shunning the glamour and limelight of the big city, chose a cold, misty valley instead and built their monastery ... on top of the steep valley slopes. At least they had an eye for the views. The van driver who took us there stopped at the bottom of the valley leaving an exhausting 30 minute climb. I can say that it was worth the effort.

Trabzon finished I took an overnight bus to Kars, setting of Orhan Pamuk's book 'Snow' (apparently kar is Turkish for snow so Orhan was having a good time with names). I met the local tour guide, Celal, who does guided tours to Ani at the local bus office and asked him about the book. Apparently Orhan (who was already famous by the time he started writing Snow) visited Kars twice as he was writing the book - locals assumed that he was going to name-check Kars in one of his journals and looked forward to reading what he had to say ... except that he wrote about a military coup taking place during the midst of social friction over women's rights to wear headscarves (and Muslim fundamentalism generally). Apparently locals weren't pleased about this but, said Celal, if he wrote about the town in question (where headscarves and Muslim fundamentalism are all the rage) "he would be killed". Sounds like a good reason to change the setting.

This digression aside, I rolled into outer Kars on a bleak, cloudly day and was wondering why I had bothered coming: it looked like a foul, rural dump. Celal helped me find a cheap hotel and I arranged a tour with him to Ani, the ancient Armenian capital (about 1000 years old, or thereabouts), conveniently situated right against the modern Turkish-Armenian border (complete with lookout towers and Russian army base - Russia still looks after Armenia's borders), but on the Turkish side. The landscape is low, rolling bown hills with the odd small village chucked in. At Ani itself, the site is unfortunately a series of low walls although there are some whole and partial churches, mosques and temples still standing with a mish-mash of Turkish, Armenian and Georgian styles.

Back to Kars, the weather had cleared and lo! Kars is actually not such a shabby place. Notably there is a fair amount of Armenian style architecture and the sun shining makes a difference!

To the last stop in Turkey before diverting through Iran and the Caucausus was Dogubeyazit, effectively a Turkish garrison town. The journey from Kars to Dogubeyazit (shortened to D from now on, to save my fingers) was spectacular for its scenery (even in foul weather) and notable for its military presence. Interestingly, when I met locals in D, they often introduced themselves as Kurdish which may explain the large military base, complete with rows of battle tanks just up the road from the town centre.

The tourist drawcards in D are Mount Ararat, which dominates the town, and Ishak Pasha palace which sits over the old silk road. As I had arrived just before Beyram (a Muslim holiday) I had some time to kill to started walking up to Ishak Pasha palace, several kilometres away up a large hill. It was hard work so I was delighted when a well-dressed chap driving a Carrera offered me a lift after stopping to photograph Mt Ararat. It turns out that he was a Swiss Serbian doing a whirlwind tour of Turkey and did me a big favour by giving me a lift back down the hill.

So, with Beyram over and Turkey soon to be finished (for now), I caught a dolmuş to the Iran border, but not before having a local offer to change my Turkish lira to rials at the laughable rate of 10,000 rials to 1 lira (I was offered 70,000 rial to 1 lira by the moneychangers at the Iran border): I told him to "don't be silly" and he left quietly. As it happens, there were some Iranian students with me on that dolmuş and, with Iranian hospitality as it is, they would accompany me to Tabriz. I'll do the next post soon ... promise. Cya, Stephen.