Turkey: The Map and the Territory Part 2 of 2

Mt. Ararat from Doğubeyazıt

After Ani, I hitched a ride to Doğubeyazit with a watermelon dealer. He was a nice guy who even sliced up a watermelon for us along the way. Doğubeyazit was just kilometers from the Iranian border, so as soon as you get there, you notice its military presence and no nonsense attitude from the soldiers. I got there in time to see the fading sun shimmering off of the snow-capped Mount Ararat in the closing hours of the day. The mountain was way bigger than I had imagined it would be. It just seemed to loom in the distance, so large that I was unable to quantify how big it was just by looking at it. Mount Ararat has also been a very divisive issue between Armenians and Turks. Before World War I, Mount Ararat lay within the boundaries of Armenia, but after WWI and during the final years of the Ottoman Empire, the Soviets invaded the Armenian Republic and then sliced up Armenia at the Treaty of Kars; new borders were drawn up and the enormous mountain was declared a part of present day Turkey.

I spent my time there hanging out in the city, wandering the palace of Işak Paşa and befriending some chatty military personnel on the street. While I was having lunch, I met an officer who was stationed in the town and he sneaked me on to the base to have tea and baklava with him and his fellow officers late one night. It was not long after the third or fourth tea where they willing to tell me how much of a living hell their year-long conscription into the Turkish military truly was. We talked late into the night until their shift was about to change and then, fearing punishment from anyone who had seen me on base without proper permission, they showed me the door and bid me safe travels for the rest of my trip. This was just another occasion in an ever growing list of examples of mind-bogglingly kind hospitality and altruism that I had no way of reciprocating-- a specific kind of uniqueness never to be duplicated.

Işak Paşa Palace

So right about the time that a Kurdish family dropped me off in Van, Ramadan was starting in Turkey and in other Muslim countries around the world. Ramadan is a Muslim holiday in which all Muslims abstain from food, drink, and any other *ahem* physical need during the time between sunrise and sunset. All of this is done to practice restraint in an attempt to purify and cleanse their mind, body, and soul and refocus themselves on their commitment to god. During Ramadan, Turks  get up before sunrise to break their fast and then proceed to work the entire day until they are allowed to break fast after sunset.

This was a truly interesting time to be traveling the east of Turkey.  I found that the Turks here were a lot more pious than in the Black Sea, and definitely more pious than in Istanbul. Although I was, and am not, a pious person myself, I derived a great deal of pleasure out of walking around the city and listening to the melodic, high energy clamor of people in the streets at the end of a hot day as they broke their fast amongst family and friends. Everyone was in good moods and high spirits-- excited about their month of purification.

On Akdamar Island

Van, one of the bigger cities of the east, is butted right up against a massive lake. As I traveled out to the lake, I saw the massive silhouette of a fortress sidled up against the lake; I approached and saw that others were climbing up on it and I did the same. I met a couple of beautiful Kurdish girls who were in town visiting some family and when I told them I was from California, they could not fathom a guess as to why I would come all the way out to Van if I lived in California; a question to which an answer was never understood, no matter how many times I tried to express it in my broken Turkish.

I spent my time in Van traipsing through old, ruinous buildings, sampling the delicious and special herb cheeses from Van's famous breakfast spreads, and even spent an afternoon on a Kurdish boat party that took us to and from the island of Akdamar.  A very fun experience indeed.

View of Van Lake from the fortress

Van marked about week 3 in my 5 week trip and it also marked the turn I would make back towards the West coast and to Cesme. Needing to budget my money as well as time a little better, I jumped on an overnight bus to Diyarbakkir and then on to the city of Mardin. I arrived in Mardin just a couple of days into Ramadan expecting to witness the same charming demeanor of the people in Van. Well, I guess it doesn't take too many days of this holy time for people to traverse from the pleasantries and mild-temperaments of rational people to everyone pretty much being a massive dickhead to any and everyone around them.

Atop the fortress

As you could imagine, due to the scorching heat, dehydration and Turks' debilitating nicotine addictions, tempers were running high during the day. Tensions were short, nicotine-deprived bodies were shaky, hunger was rife, and I had learned the hard way that if I could somehow go about my day with as few interactions with others as possible, I would have a better chance of not being dismembered by hungry and foul-mooded Turks.

Van city center

I had been told in Van that there would be at least a restaurant open during the day to accommodate children, elderly people, and (and apparently) menstruating women who could not endure the hardships of the fast. Me, not needing to adhere to this, or any other of the 4 pillars of Islam, would not be fasting during the day.  But finding this elusive restaurant seemed to be more difficult than I thought. Dehydrated, tired, and incredibly hungry, I was reduced to (very creepily) waiting outside of a school, hoping that when school ended, I could follow the students and one of them would lead me to the one restaurant open in the entire city. Desperate times called for desperate and creepy measures. School was let out and the children were off into town. I thought that I was walking after them with a competent and masterful surreptitiousness but it turned out I was some creepy foreigner that they all noticed right away. Apparently I didn't look very menacing because they proceeded on unperturbed and for once, a  brilliant plan of mine worked! I walked into the culinary heaven of some greasy, dirty ev yemekleri (handmade food  served cafeteria style) surrounded by children, elderly people, and women. Whether they were menstruating or not remained to  unclear and unverifiable.   

View of Syria from Mardin

 

Once I got something to eat, I walked the gorgeous city with a new perspective. Admiring the old and narrow streets with donkey carts traveling up and down them, sitting at a restaurant drinking a tea (after  sunset of course), looking over into the massively large and flat area that was Syria, and observing other people around me breaking their fast which whisked the charm and positive attitudes back to them; eating bread, smoking cigarettes and enjoying other people's company with satiated stomachs.

Mardin

Well, now my trip was really coming to an end. I was running out of time and I still had Nemrut Mountain and Cappadocia to see before I made my way to Cesme. I took another night bus to a village on the slopes of the mountain and spent the day wandering around the hillsides and stopping off at little eateries selling their homegrown food. Nemrut Mountain is the site of a massive sanctuary and tomb for a king called Antiochus I Theos of Commagene. The Commagene kingdom was a small kingdom in present day Armenia and central Turkey and Antiochus, who reigned until 38 BC, was the most famous of this kingdom. The thing to do in Nemrut is get up before dawn, drive to the top of the mountain, hike out to the peak,  watch the sun rise over the  beautifully vast area of Central Turkey, and watch the sun glisten off the giant 30 foot sunrise facing statues of Antiochus, eagles, lions, and various Greek, Armenian, and Iranian gods of the time. Despite the over-abundance of people there, it was a morning of quiet, stillness, and peace that I remember fondly.

Crossing the Euphrates

Sunrise facing statues

Nemrut Dağı at sunrise

I had made my way several hundred kilometers and was now closing in on one of the tourism highlights in Turkey: Cappadocia. The ancient area of Cappadocia is famous as a modern day tourist destination for it's gorgeous aerial views from hot air balloons, it's wonderful trekking trails through valleys and their dry river bed valley floors as well as its geological features; namely the fairy chimneys. 

Fairy chimneys are tall, thin spires of sedimentary or volcanic rocks that have been shaped by the elements over thousands of years. The chimneys are made when softer rocks are topped with harder rocks prohibiting erosion to the lower areas. These tall and skinny rock formations often resemble totem poles or pinnacles and they are everywhere in Cappadocia. Also famous about Cappadocia is that because the rocks are so soft, early Christians in the area were able to carve several underground cities into the rocks and fairy chimneys and to this day, there still exists a vast, underground system of churches, houses, and various defense systems that protected them against invaders and religious persecution. 

Hiking through Cappidocia

Cappidocia was also a welcome respite from the rigors and conservativeness of the east. As there were more tourists here, I was able to find food and drink at all hours of the day despite it still being Ramadan. I arrived from Nemrut late in the night and completely exhausted from my day of hitch-hiking. I went to bed early, wanting to make the most of the short, 2 day stint I would be confined to before I made my way to Cesme. I was up early, bought provisions and food for a day of walking, a map, inquiries into the general direction I should be walking in, and I was off. My haste proved to be something I would be kicking myself over later in the day in the sweltering sun of an incredibly hot afternoon. 

The morning was cool, the sun was barely up, and I was charged with the enthusiasm of 5 weeks culminating in being in this place. Every traveler I had met coming from this direction told me how much I was going to love it here, especially if I like hiking, so I was excited and I turned out to be anything but disappointed. I explored every valley I could get to. Every fairy chimney was a new discovery, begging to be climbed in and explored. I would sit inside this massive rock and wonder at the history of its former inhabitants; their lives, trials, tribulations, and the things that brought happiness to their lives. I explored underground cities and churches with intricate well water systems that still worked to this day. I went from valley peak to valley floor, everything being slightly different from the previous but invariably slightly different. A different fascination in everything I looked at. This place was absolutely magical. But, as it happened, the euphoria of the place (and possibly the heat) voided me of my better judgment later in the day. 

Cave Church

I was walking on this ridge line, making my way down the soft, sandy, white dunes of the area. I didn't know where I was exactly, but I knew I was making my way back in the general direction of town. As I walked along this ridge, I noticed a set of fairy chimneys on the valley floor to my right. This would be a bit of a detour but I thought it would be worth checking out because it seemed so remote down at the bottom. I assessed the area from the ridge line and saw a trail that seemed to snake down the side of this peak to the valley below. I started walking down this trail and then  realized that this trail was less a trail, and more an eroded, rain run off chute. It was doing a lot less snaking, and a lot more going straight downhill. No matter, it wasn't very steep and it was easily negotiable. The trail continued down and down, offering me absolutely no shade from the directly overhead sun beating down on me. The rain run off trail was getting incrementally more annoying too; I was having to climb over and under rocks, down sandy embankments and worst of all were these more than occasional 2 foot drop offs made higher from dried up pond beds where water, cascading over the side, would puddle up. 

Rock Castle

The further and further I made my way down the valley wall, the deeper and deeper this rain trench became and the higher and higher the drop offs were becoming. Nearing the valley floor, I approached this one drop off that had something about it that made me exude caution. It seemed to be a bit taller than normal. I inched toward the slanted drop off, deciding if it was worth going down when all of a sudden, I slipped on my ass, smashed my hip and slid off the side. Before I had a chance to register anything else, I was standing safely below the drop off on my own two feet. My heart was pumping and I was a little startled but I landed softly on the sand. I was almost there, I had to be. I had been walking for about 30 minutes now. I was hot, sweaty, and tired. I came around another corner to another drop off that, like the previous one, made me be a little bit more cautious. This time being very careful not to slip on the slant right before the drop off, I peered over the edge to see how best to get down. 

I swore aloud.

I guess it was interesting for me to think back on my feelings at this point. I remember being incredibly angry that I was going to have to turn around and go back up because this drop off was well over ten feet onto jagged rocks but I guess I should have been thinking about what would have happened to me if I slipped and fell over this ledge instead of the ledge before. I suppose anger and fatigue were clouding out everything else at that moment. 

In fact, yes, yes it was, because it was when I got back to the ledge that I had slipped off that I realized I had a bit of a problem. This ledge was taller than I thought it was when I fell off of it. I had thought it was just a couple of feet but now that my adrenaline and pulse were not racing, I could clearly see that this ledge was about an arm’s length over my head. 

I approached the problem calmly at first, seeing if I could grab onto anything on the sides to hoist myself up. Nope. The rock was so soft that whenever I tried to grab something, it fell off in my hand. I tried to run up to it and leap to a stronger looking rock above the drop off but the sand was so loose, I couldn't jump high enough to reach anything. I had a problem. 25 minutes passed and I was nothing except a lot more tired. I took out my phone to see if I had a signal but, of course, I didn't, - the trench had become too deep to get a signal here. 

"Ok, think!" I told myself. 

To stave off a major freak out and to ration any remaining energy, I stopped, tried to find a place with a marginal level of shade and take stock of the food and water I had. 

"Lots of water, that's good," I was talking aloud now, trying to keep myself calm. "If I need to, I could spend probably 3 days here. No problem." 

3 days and then what? What would having a problem mean? I saw no one all day walking around. Not one person. Did I see any foot prints on the rain run off trail? I couldn't remember. 

This was bad. 

"Ok, conserve energy. Find shade."

I was sitting with my back to the rock wall, a sheer cliff that was facing the wrong direction in relation to the sun - offering no shade. I needed to get out of the sun, it had to have been well over a hundred degrees out here and the cooler I was, the less water I would drink. 

I snuck inside the rock castle

I walked back down the trench towards the death drop, trying to find a place to sit, escape the sun, and regroup for a second. The best thing I could find was the low lying rock I could lay next to that provided me a little bit of respite from the sun.I was hoping that it would lead to a respite from the paralyzing fear of baking to a crisp and dying of dehydration in the Turkish desert before anyone found me. 

I was lying down in the dirt, trying to extract any coolness the shady patch I was occupying could emit, when I felt something dig into my back. 

"Ouch," I said out loud, annoyed that the only place that was tolerably cool was intolerably uncomfortable in this place that I could very well die in. I rolled over to see what was poking me in the back. I dug down a little and exposed the root of an old tree. This gave me an idea, but I would need to wait until after the sun had gone down a bit when I had more energy. 

I lied there until the sun had gone over my section of trench and then got up on my hands and knees and started digging in the dirt. At first, I was digging for roots but then really, I realized I was digging for anything and everything that might help. I collected tiny little branches, stones, tough clumps of dirt, and the occasional tree root that I could break off. I went back to the base of ledge and started breaking off pieces from the drop off to use as well. Once I thought I had enough, I started to pile it up at the base of the ledge with intermittent layers of sand and dirt until, when i stood on it, I was about eye level with the edge of the drop off. I threw my backpack up, then slowly pulled it back down, threw it up, then slowly pulled in back down until, when I tugged on it, it wouldn't move. I tested it with incrementally more and more weight until I was satisfied it would be load bearing. I held my breath, distributed my weight between my makeshift pedestal and my backpack,  hoisted myself up, clambered on my bloody knees and lay face down on the slope, clutching a sturdy rock with the lower part of my legs and feet hanging over the edge. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, looked back at the place I had been trapped for 4 hours and then unceremoniously turned and headed back up the hill.     

I almost died here!

"Not today," I said as I made my way back to my hostel, the shower, and a cold beer. 

I spent the next day a lot less adventurously discovering the area before whisking myself away to the beaches of Cesme. I met up with Lisya and her friends and enjoyed the last of my time and money sitting on beaches, eating and drinking hedonistically and telling them of the trip I had just took. It almost seemed surreal to be back, speaking my language and not living out of a backpack from day to day. 

At that point in my life, this had been the best trip I had ever taken. I loved every bit of it- the indescribably sublime as well as the incredibly frustrating. To anyone who later asked about the trip, it proved impossible to explain exactly how I felt at any step along the way. The feeling I felt when witnessing Turkish hospitality, the overwhelming awe-struckness of standing in front of ruined cities that had once been responsible for the formation of the modern world, or the grandeur and beauty I saw in something right before I took a picture of it. The map falls short in every banal attempt it makes to embody the territory. This uniqueness was for me and me alone no matter how many pictures I took or how well I described it.  

Anything more would just be a muddled and distorted song in the wind.

Books Read:

Gai-Jin - James Clavell

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Mehmet, My Hawk - Yaşar Kemal

The Power of the Dog - Don Winslow

Carvings in the rock churches

Doesn't really show how hot it was

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Turkey: The Map and the Territory Part 1 of 2

August 1 - September 1 2009

I had just gotten back into the city from Bursa, where I was working for a month out at a summer camp with my roommates Van and Kim. Kim was now working as an English teacher/nanny outside of Ankara, and Van and I were returning to the city, our jobs, and the sweltering summer heat. It was the last few days of July when I reported back to work at the language center. I was less than enthused at being back, having just spent an awesome month playing capture the flag, roasting marshmallows, and setting up scavenger hunts in the woods. I was now back to the cacophonous sounds of the city, and I had yet to readjust to its onslaught and maniacal chaos.

"Nick, could I see you in my office please," my boss Dierdre said, as I walked back through the door of my office, even before I got a chance to put down my bag.

“Nice to see you too,” I thought.

"Yes, Dierdre?" I asked, poking my head into her office, not fully committing myself to crossing the threshold her threshold, hoping for a short and sweet encounter. I was expecting her to hand me my schedule, tell me what classes I would be covering for, and what course material I would need to use.

"Please, close the door and have a seat." Hmmm. This didn't sound overly fantastic.

"Is there a problem?" I asked, already running over my CV in my head, expecting to have to send it out after I get let go moments from now.

"Well, yes and no," she said, in her most conciliatory voice. She sat in the classic “boss about to give bad news” position: back upright and hands folded resting on her desk in front of her.

"I'm afraid our numbers are quite low this summer; we can't afford to hire you back until the end of August at which point we will resign your contr-."

I can only assume she was going to say resign my contract because before she was able to finish I was up, out of her office, running home in the blistering humidity to pack a bag before she had a chance to change her mind. My month in the mountains and the bus ride from Bursa to Istanbul had left me itching to explore this beautiful country. I had a tiny taste for it and now I wanted more. I grabbed some clothes, a sun hat, a few books and I was off to the bus station. I threw a bunch of money at Van to cover my rent for the time I would be away and I was gone - headed to the nearest bus station to consult a map, and then make a purchase.

I stood at the bus station, looking at a map of this enormous country, internally planning out a 5 week trip. I was setting mental pins down on this map, marking what I needed to see, where I needed to go, and what I would be stupid to miss. It looked something like this:

It would have to be clockwise, I thought. In my excitement, I had texted my friend Lisya on the way from work to tell her about this.  She told me that she was going to be on the Mediterranean coast in 5 weeks and I should meet her and her friends there. Ok, end in Çesme. Great. That means I would start on the Black Sea coast. Perfect. I approached the desk and booked a ticket to Samsun with a connection to Ordu. My grand Turkey loop was commencing.

Cash flow wasn't an overt concern, but I definitely didn't have the funds to not worry about my budget. I would need to seek out budget accommodations everywhere I went, cheap street food to eat, and at every possible opportunity, try to hitch-hike. I had become quite involved in the Couch Surfing community in Istanbul so I knew that when possible, I could crash with a fellow couch surfer. I sat on a bench in a park of Ordu, reading a book and people watching. It had already become apparent that life was different out on the Black Sea coast. People's accents were noticeably different, people's physical appearances were distinct, but one thing that was no different from my experience in Istanbul was the idea of hospitality.

As I sat on a bench in the center of a town reading my book, I was approached by a guy about my age. He said something to me in Turkish,to which I tried my best to respond to, but despite my attempts at discourse, he knew then I was not Turkish. We talked for a few minutes before he offered me a ride to the top of the mountain that overlooked the sea. The view was beautiful from the top and I was thankful that I didn't have to walk up the massive hill.

Atop Böztepe overlooking Ordu

I got back in the car, thinking he was going to take me back down to the city center but instead, he asked me if I was hungry. In fact, I was. He drove me in the opposite direction of the city center. We left the main road, and turned onto a small service road. At one point, he had to get out of the car to open the shoddy barbed-wire fence for us, get back in the car, drive through, then get out to put the fence back in its position. The countryside we were driving through was gorgeous colors of rolling green hills speckled with blossomed flowers in the peak of their season. Although he could speak no English, and me just minimal Turkish, we got along just fine and nowhere ever in the exchange did I ever think that what I was doing was putting me in any sort of danger. Everything felt exactly as it should have, sincere.

Apparently, the guy's family owned a hazelnut plantation in the hills outside of Ordu and tonight was one of the major harvesting days. Dozens of Georgian field workers were there, having spent a tiring day in the fields, hauling in nuts that were now set out on the ground, roasting in the sun. A massive table was set outside the house where bread, spreads and plates were being laid down. My host introduced me to his family who greeted me warmly and expressed where at the table I could sit. I could not believe the friendly, hospitable environment I had just walked into.

At dinner at the hazelnut plantation

Dinner was fantastic and a few of the Georgian workers spoke some English which made things easier. The hospitality was almost as mind blowing as the Turkish-Georgian fusion that was being served for dinner followed by lots and lots of glasses of Turkish Raki and Georgian Cha Cha.

I got in touch with a couch surfer in Giresun which was just down the road from Ordu but still on the coast. I jumped on a shuttle bus and headed further down the coast. I met my host, Çağlar, who was an English teacher at a local university. We swam in the Black Sea and spent the next couple of days hiking around the yaylalar (plateaus) of the area. As soon as the Black Sea coast ends, it seems to quickly jut into the air, forming these gorgeous, jagged cliffs and mountains glazed with mist and clouds. The hospitality was in no short supply. We went out for dinner, beers, and he introduced me to his friends he lived with. Their English was fantastic and we went out for the night. They acted as if I had grown up with them all their lives. A very pleasant experience.

Hiking with my host Çağlar in the plateaus

I had one more stop along the Black Sea before I went inland, and that was in Trabzon. One of the things to see on the Black Sea is the beautiful Sumeli Monastery, an old Greek Orthodox monastery dating back to 380 AD which is settled on a ledge of a cliff that is nearly 4,000 feet up in the mountains. After a forty minute slog up the mountain, the view from the top was incredible. Perched on the edge of the cliff, the monastery has been protected by the mountain and elements, but unfortunately, not from the people of Turkey. A lot of the ornate and delicate frescoes had been vandalized by people throughout the years, leaving most of them unrecognizable and in dire need of restoration. It was a sad thing to witness actually.

In Giresun, I mentioned that I wanted to do some hiking so Çağlar told me about the Kaçkar Mountains. I decided to take a detour to Aydın, a village in the mountains more populated with hiking trails and picturesque views. There were a few villages up in the mountains of the Kaçkar that were predominantly populated with Laz people who are a small ethnic minority of people that are speckled throughout the Black Sea of Turkey and the Caucus mountains of Georgia.

Inside Sümeli Monastery

As I made my way into the mountains, everything seemed and felt different:  the clothing that was worn, the dialect of Turkish that was spoken, the way headscarves were donned and the greetings that were given. This was obviously a special and separate enclave of the country, tucked away in a gorgeously secluded valley of a massive mountain range. I found a place to stay for the night, got some street food for dinner, and consulted a map at the center of town to see where I could go the next morning. It had been raining heavily so I would have to walk the few kilometers up the service road instead of hitching a ride. No problem, I thought. The trails will be less crowded with people.   

Last stop before the trail in the Kaçkar mountains

I spent the next day all by myself, hiking through the gorgeous mountains of the Kaçkar above Aydın. I saw next to no one the whole day and I was in awe of the stillness that was on offer from this place. I visited lakes, rivers, and waterfalls, and walked on ambiguously marked trails that sometimes lead to nowhere. In the early afternoon, I fell asleep on the grass to be woken up hours later by the sound of Laz sheep hearders playing instruments with each other. I peeked over the rocks I was sleeping under, sheltering myself from the wind to see a group of men singing, drinking tea, and eating bread.

Hiking the Kaçkar

They didn't know I was there, perched just on the other side of the  rock outcropping, so I just sat and listened to their eloquently simple music and watched as they laughed and (I assume) joked with one another. This was a side of Turkey that I hadn't even known about, let alone experienced before and I felt honored and special to be a part of it. I could not understand a word of what they said but I could tell that they were happy. They were simple people, tasked with simple jobs and at the moment that was being put on hold to enjoy the simple ambiance of the mountains, the whistling wind, and the company they kept. And there I sat, listening to their shared joviality and song, taking a break from their job for a few moments to create music for no one else to hear  but us, because as soon as the music was played, sent out into the world as sound, the wind would pick it up, hurl it through the valley and cause its dissipation. Never to be replicated or heard by anyone else again. Its uniqueness would only be shared by  us for the rest of our lives. 

Getting down and around the Kaçkar proved to be more of a laborious and arduous journey than I had thought. I had asked how long it would take and was told that it would only be a few hours trip to my destination of Yusefeli but 8 hours in, I gave up on any notion that we had to be almost there. The horrible journey took us around and down the backside of the Kaçkar, making it impossible to read on the horrendously slow and turn-y bus ride. With nothing to look at besides the side of the mountain the road was cut into, hours passed without any recollection of how they were spent until the bus attendant was standing in front of me, conveying that it was now time for me to get off. I had arrived at Yusefeli. Fantastic.

The day had turned into night as I stepped off the bus with my bag. I was anxious to see why Yusefeli had been so highly recommended to me from everyone I met when I realized that instead of a beautiful town butted up against tall mountains and a river, I was in a dirt parking lot with one street lamp, weakly flickering, but still providing enough light to attract the bugs and moths to its light. I turned around to ask the bus driver but in classic movie scene fashion, the bus drove away and I was left coughing on the dust it had kicked up. Not fantastic.

It was 11pm and I was on the side of a deserted highway with absolutely no idea where I was, where I needed to go, or how I was going to get there. I could, however, ascertain that the reason my back hurt so much could probably be attributed to the bus ride. So not all was unknown I suppose.

The dust settled and when my eyes adjusted I could make out that I was at a junction in the road and that there was a building on the other side of the street with a group of men, sitting down, bent over canes and playing backgammon. I approached the elderly gentlemen with a big smile and a warm greeting which was returned with confusion and guarded wariness. By this point, I had become well versed in conversing with people on seldom-used communicative platforms where hand signals, broken Turkish, and the occasional guttural noise were used to show my interest in doing something, purchasing items, or in this case, finding out where the hell I was and how the hell I could get to Yusefeli. When all was said and done I was able to deduce that I was about 40kms west of the village and that no buses would be continuing on in the direction I needed until tomorrow. My query regarding my predicament to the older gentlemen was met with shrugs, talk amongst themselves, and then finally a few of them waved their thumbs at me and said, "Oto stop."

Yüsefeli

Now, I wasn't totally opposed to hitchhiking, but my ideal setting for my inaugural hitchhiking attempt was not the scenario that was manifesting before me. I left the men and walked in the direction of where they said Yusefeli was. More of this junction was now becoming visible. Not only did it consist of a dirt parking lot with a flickering lamp, old men hunched over a backgammon board and flipping prayer beads,  there was also some sort of gas station-garbage heap joint venture, stray dogs gnawing on indiscernible bones, and an old burnt-out car on blocks. It bore a striking resemblance to several opening scenes of Stephen King novels I had read over the years.

Well, given my desire to be anywhere else besides where I was at the time, I decided to start walking down the road instead of waiting in front of the gas station for cars to drive by. Surprisingly enough, only about 15 minutes had passed before I was picked up in the windy canyon I was walking in. I was picked up by 2 younger guys who were obviously very excited at the novelty of picking up a foreign traveler who could put a couple of words of Turkish together to talk about Turkish cuisine, pop stars, and  living in Istanbul. 

My hitching post in the daylight

Yusefeli was a very quaint town, jutted up against the steep sides of the Kaçkar mountains and split in 2 by a fast rushing river running through the town. The town was beautiful and everything about it and its inhabitants had a relaxed vibe to it: friendly, hospitable, and scenic. I wish I could have stayed longer. But since the hitch-hiking was easy enough, I was off the same way I got there. I hitch-hiked back to the junction and then proceeded to wait there for 6 hours for the only bus of the day to drive by on its way to the eastern border town of Kars. I bided my time exchanging words and tea with a structural engineer who was in the area to help with a construction of a dam and a bunch of kids who were playing soccer in the parking lot. My bus came and I was off to Kars and the ancient city of Ani. 

I got in touch with a Turkish ornithologist who took in couch surfers in the summer months because his staff were all out of town. I walked around a sleepy Kars, posted up in the park to read my book, and found the bus station that would take me out to Ani the next morning. Ani had been one of my mentally dropped pins on the map in the Istanbul bus station. I had long heard about its eerie mystic and picturesque backdrop. It literally lay on the other end of the country from Istanbul. I could not go any further east and not cross into Armenia.

Ruined church in Ani

Ani was once the capital of the medieval Armenia kingdom that dated back to as early as 960 AD. The city was located in a strategically defensive valley right at the present day border between the two countries. It straddled a strong running river and various important trade routes through the region. At the height of the city, the population was said to be as high as 200,000 people.

I arrived with a couple other tourists early in the morning to find the site absolutely deserted. We had the entire expanse all to ourselves, to wander where we would with no one around. Ani had been described to me as an "eerie" and "unsettling" place  before and it wasn't until I was there that I truly understood what they were talking about. The massive city was left in complete disrepair with just a few crumbling monuments left standing to tell the city's story. Palace walls crumbled into the river, half of the church was completely missing, and stones were left overturned on the ground, amassing grass and dirt all around them. A few squared off areas of foundation were visible, denoting where luxuriously grand buildings had once stood but they required large stretches of the imagination to envision the true grandeur that the city had once retained. Ani had been a desolate ghost town for 3 centuries and what few artifacts were left spoke of the poor state and high tensions of Turkish and Armenian relations. The feeble few upright buildings and monuments left attested to this sad and eerie truth.


To Be Continued...

 

       

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