Bananas Don't Travel Well

Kurdish boyWe finally moved on to Turkey after a few days toodling around Lattakia, Syria, an extraordinarily humid port city with not much else extraordinary except a very Western atmosphere and (for the first time in Syria) a decent Internet connection. There was no public transit to the border, so we hired a taxi. Everything was going well until we'd crossed into the no-man's-land between the two countries and it emerged that the taxi driver's companion didn't have the vehicle's paperwork in order. Fortunately for us, it didn't take long to talk another cabbie into taking us the rest of the way to Antakya, but our driver was clearly pissed at losing half his fare.

Sticker shock

We only stayed in Antakya long enough to discover just how expensive Turkey really is. We'd been warned but somehow it hadn't quite sunk in. After living quite decently in Syria for $50 a day between the two of us, our first day in Turkey added up to real indigestion. On realizing the price of long-distance bus travel, we decided to cut out our first intended diversion and head straight to Malatya. The trip cost $50, took eight hours and dropped us only 350 km north of Antakya. We arrived, tired, at the otogar (long-distance bus station) at 10pm. Like most of Turkey's otogars, Malatya's is on the outskirts of town, and the cheap minibuses (called dolmuş's, which literally means "stuffed," like the vine rolls of the same name) had stopped running for the night. Then came shock number two: a metered (i.e., no ripoff) taxi into town cost $11—roughly on par with San Francisco! The purportedly cheap hotel we arrived at wanted over $25 for a room with no water or fan. We looked around and finally settled for a seedy room with smelly carpet for $18. Adding in food, we spent over $100 that day (not counting the taxi from Syria), and we hadn't even eaten dinner!

Since that first day, we've become more accustomed to the notion that Turkey just isn't the bargain it once was (we hear Istanbul is approaching a Western European cost of living), but the high cost of transportation (as well as the long distances and slow bus rides) has made us alter our plans a bit and make a more direct line toward Georgia than we'd originally planned. We've also cut out some luxuries, like having our clothes washed for us, but are still feeling the drain on our funds!

Turkey's backwaters

Let's dispel any notions about where we are: those lovely Mediterranean beaches, the markets of Istanbul, even the caves of Cappadocia are thousands of kilometers away. We are in Turkey's far east, it's remotest backwater, where the majority of the population are Kurdish and (due to largely overstated security warnings) few tourists venture. It's not that we aren't interested in the more “conventional” parts of Turkey, but the distances involved (Istanbul is over 2000 km away) and our need to step up the pace if we're going to make it to the Chinese border before the snow falls, have led us to decide that that is another trip. But since we're here, we figured we'd have a look around.

Our guidebook describes this region as the most distinctly “Asian” part of Turkey, but coming from the Middle East it feels decidedly European. The houses have peaked roofs, the language is legible to us and contains many familiar words (kambio for exchange, şarkuteri for butcher), there are far more women wearing western clothes, and even in this remote region the towns are essentially “first-world”—streets with paved sidewalks, modern supermarkets and shops, and everything is very clean. Yet fewer people speak English than in the Middle East and there seems to be tighter control over the media here, with no Western or English-language television programming at all. For us, long distances between cities and having to tighten our belts has made traveling here more challenging than before. But on the positive side we've met some great people and seen some amazing scenery. We also found a level of nuttiness in Eastern Turkey that was lacking in the Middle East.

Despite all the bad press about this region, due to conflicts between the Turkish army and the Kurdish separatist “PKK” party (dubbed a terrorist organization in the West), we have found people very friendly and welcoming and the military presence less obvious than we expected. There have been occasional police checkpoints—at the worst we underwent a very symbolic search of our bags and were advised to go to Antalya instead—but the police and weapons felt much more threatening in Egypt.

Malatya otogarWestern Turks have been somewhat mystified as to why we would come here. One evening, as we were waiting at the Malatya otogar for a night bus to Van, a smartly dressed guy who'd been sitting next to us stood up to catch his bus, then paused, turned and, in flawless private-school English asked, incredulously, “why are you here?” Afterward, we had to laugh when we realized what we'd been talkıng about, in full earshot, not realizing that he could understand us. It had been a very long day and we were at that tired-silly stage. We'd been giggling at the name of the bus company in this photo—run the words together and see if you can come up with what we did.

Socializing, stone heads, and apricots

We checked out of the smelly hotel room in Malatya and went directly to the tourist office to sign up for an overnight tour to Nemrut Daği—a mountain with big stone heads built by the Seleucid King Antiochus at the summit. We found that the tour price had gone up by $20 a head since the guidebook was written but decided to suck it up and do it.

stone headNemrut Daği was, frankly, pretty disappointing. UNESCO has labeled it a World Heritage Site and it is considered one of Turkey's premier tourist sights. Perhaps we've seen too many monuments, but we found the site to be poorly restored and presented. But the setting was nice, on top of a mountain with sweeping views, and the tour involved viewing both the sunset and the ensuing sunrise from the summit. We had a good group on our tour—three Korean girls, two Taiwanese schoolteachers, and Martina, a very cool 58-year-old woman from Vienna traveling solo.

Back in Malatya, we had a day to kill with no hotel (we were taking an onward overnight bus to save on accommodation). We spent it in the tea garden where tourist office employee Kamal signs tourists up for the Nemrut Daği tour and introduces them to local students who want to practice their English. It was a nice day of socializing with the students and other travelers, even though we were running on very little sleep, having gotten up at 4:15 to watch the sunrise.

Although Malatya was a Silk Road town, there isn't a lot to see today. Its current claim to fame is as the apricot capital of Turkey, and apricots are in season. Kamal put us in touch with a very determined girl with ambitions to be an ambassador, who took us and a French/Belgian couple on a tour of the apricot market. The apricots we bought were the sweetest I've ever tasted.

Armenian churches and cat overlords

lake VanWe spent a few days around beautiful Lake Van. The lake is ringed with volcanic mountains, and due to its remote location (and PKK activity in the region) its blue waters are largely unspoilt. We based ourselves in the pleasant town of Van, ruled by a white cat with one blue and one brown eye. Or so it seemed as we rolled into town, having slept only 4 hours in the last 48. At the junction coming into town was a large statue of a white cat, looking like something out of a Japanese animé film. We then started noticing the shop signs with photographs of white cats, all with one blue eye, superimposed on various scenes in megolithic proportions, and then the shops selling white cat paraphernalia. It all added up to one thing: the town of Van must have a white cat overlord.

David and GoliathAfter some much needed sleep, we went on an outing to Akdamar island, known for its Armenian church (abandoned since the 1915 genocide). On the way, we met Nick from Minnesota, who we later swapped books with. The church was small but very beautifully proportioned. Its outside walls were covered in stone carvings depicting scenes from the Old Testament, all in excellent condition. The inside of the church was covered in frescos, though not so well preserved. The island itself was lovely and there were several families there to picnic and swim. We stuck our feet in the water, and wished we had brought our swimsuits.

Back in Van, we met a Turkish woman on summer vacation from graduate school in London. She was able to solve the white cat mystery for us. “Van is famous for its special breed of cat. They are all white, with one blue eye, and they are strong cats, and very loyal,” she informed us.

We are still scratching our heads trying to figure out how the word “loyal” would apply to a cat.

Kidnapped!

our kidnappersWe moved on from Van to a small town on the north side of the lake called Adilcevaz. We had intended to check out some old tombs in the area but our plans were quickly changed for us on the dolmuş into town. A few miles prior, the other passengers had all gotten off, leaving just us and the driver. He didn't speak more than five words of English, but was pretty good at pantomime, and made it clear he wanted us to come visit his family at his orchard. We'd had a few other offers over the last few months and for various reasons not taken them up, so as we had the time and he seemed a likeable chap we agreed. At any rate, we weren't too sure we had a choice.

His name was Cahit Uluğ, and his orchard was a lovely place, with apricot, crab apple and sour cherry trees, a view over Lake Van in front and a large volcano behind. Apricots are, as I mentioned, in season, and I can now say that I don't need to eat another one for a long time. We spent the afternoon and evening with him and his wife, teenage daughter, and sulky five-year-old son. They fed us tea, shared their dinner with us (sour goat milk soup and chicken with rice) and we helped them pit apricots and lay them on a rooftop to dry in the sun. It was very nice, but we had all of ten words between us, and although you can say a surprising amount with that, it grew a bit tiring. As evening drew on, we were anxious to get going but his teenage son had driven off in the dolmuş with our backpacks still inside. So there were a few hours of waiting during which we weren't entirely sure if we'd be forced to stay there or not. But he finally showed up and they drove us into town to check into a hotel.

drying apricotsThe next day, they insisted on having us over again for a barbecue. This time we had chicken wings, rice and grilled eggplants, peppers and tomatoes with garlic. It was tasty, but something didn't sit well and we've been paying for it ever since. The teenage girl, Esengül, was very sweet and kept asking us to take pictures of her. We have since had them printed and mailed them to her. Their hospitality was really sweet, but we were happy to move on.

Call to prayer

tiled minaretBecause of our rather explosive digestion, we decided to go straight on to Erzurum, the largest town in the northeast, and check into a nicer hotel with a private, clean bathroom. We have been here three days getting our strength back. We had hoped to spend some time in the Kaçkar mountains on the Black Sea coast, but are now running short of time (we have fixed dates for our Turkmenistan visas) so we are saving them for some future trip to Turkey.

Erzurum has been a garrison town since Roman times, and was a stop on the Silk Road, but like most of Turkey's eastern towns has lost most of its old buildings to earthquakes. There are nonetheless a handful of Seljuk mosques and medrassas still standing. These are the first Central-Asian influenced buildings we've seen, with blue tiles on the minarets and depictions of animals—rare in Islamic art (Islam views representations of animals and people as idolatry, which is blasphemous).

Here, at our last stop in the Middle East, we really heard the call to prayer for the first time. Of course, we've heard it every day since landing in Cairo, but it has been jumbled with all sorts of noises. It has also been different in every place. In Egypt, it was a mad cacophony, as each mosque went off at the same time. In Jordan, it was synchronized, with the various mosques taking up the call together. In Syria, the grand mosques would lead with the smaller ones following suit. Here in Erzurum, lying awake at night, we heard the pre-dawn call to prayer, a single voice from a single mosque, in Turkish rather than Arabic, that echoed across the valley in which Erzurum is situated. It was a hauntingly beautiful end to this portion of our journey.

A new phase

Tomorrow we embark on the next phase of our journey with two and a half weeks in the Caucasus. We had originally planned to travel the more obvious Silk Route through Iran, but as Canadians we cannot obtain visas (Canadian-Iranian relations soured a couple of years ago over the detention and killing of a journalist). Instead, we will visit Georgia, Armenia (if we have time), and Azerbaijan on our way to Central Asia.

From here on, as we move through the former Soviet Union, we expect the traveling to get more difficult. There will be fewer tourists, greater language barriers, crappier hotels, and more difficult access to information. Stay tuned to find out how we fare!