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Nice Kurdish customs chap at border crossing – had to summon a broker from nearby town to sort out insurance (who short-changed me). But had chance to chat to the Kurd while waiting for the insurance guy – he didn’t think he hadn’t risen as high as he should, but he had been treated OK as a Kurdish Turkish government employee. Also an illustration of how it pays to make friends with officials at border crossings, for he only gave the car a cursory look over and didn’t spot the smuggled fuel in the jerrycans inside!
Arrived late into Gaziantep (quelle surprise!) but found a reasonable hotel. A was sick, with acute Gastro-Enteritis, so that was a day or 2 out. There was one street in Gaziantep (Kale Civan Uzum Carsi?) which seemed to have loads of ice cream cafes and we discovered very quickly that Turkey is excellent for ice cream, approaching Italian standards!
Decided to take a side trip to Sanliurfa by bus – sometimes it’s nice to let someone else do the driving and fuel in Turkey is UK prices. Unbelievable. How DO they afford it? Sanliurfa had a slightly exotic feel about it, similar to Gaz. A must for anyone coming to San is a climb up the Kale (fortress) on Damlacik Hill – the views from here are spectacular. Also took a walk down to the fishpond in Golbasi Park and was amused by the sight of a little boy falling in and then getting smacked after being hauled out.
While walking around San, we got stalked by what looked like someone with special needs. Sometimes people do want to interact with foreigners even while lacking the linguistic ability, but it’s still easy to tell that they’re normal. They will try and speak in their own language, smile, gesture etc – NOT simply follow you in silence without smiling or making any attempt to communicate. It started to get a bit uncomfortable and I ended up pointing him out to the police, although the first person they grabbed was the wrong one and I had to frantically stop them and gesture towards Mr Weirdo.
Pics of Gaziantep and Sanliurfa
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| Syria border to Gaziantep and Sanliurfa |
After Gaziantep, we headed on to Cappadocia. Here was where the famous PROBLEM happened with the car…..After being parked for 5 days in Gaziantep the car started first time and, as if tempting fate, I even remarked on this. About 50 kms down the road it started alternately missing, conking out and revving up, all with me doing nothing to the accelerator, as if there was something out of the film ‘Gremlins’ lurking under the bonnet. I have done nearly 20,000kms on Tunisian, Libyan, Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian diesel since the fuel filter was last changed in January so I thought the missing and inability to run at idle might have been a clogged fuel filter. We got to Cappadocia and I tried changing the fuel filter, sucking on all the fuel pipes and checking all the unions on the fuel lines, putting some (expensive, foul smelling American-made) fuel injector cleaner through and filling up with good quality Turkish diesel to replace the poor quality Syrian but all to no avail. Needless to say, this cast rather a shadow over the delights of Cappadocia……I have in fact been there before in 1991, but it was a shame not to see more of it. I did stay in a nice pension set in 1 of the troglodyte houses in Goreme though – it’s called Keles Cave & Pension. Because I’m so nice (and as they were too), I’ll even insert their contact details and a little map from their business card:-
So, racking my brains, we headed back to Kayseri and had a chat with the Tourist Information people – not on the basis that they could help directly, but at least translate and direct us to the best place. As it turned out, the TIC person had plenty of English-language leaflets but couldn’t speak much English. However, as always we were able to get across that there was a problem with the injection pump and that we needed it sorted. Through various people-who-knew-people, I was directed first to a Toyota main dealer but, as is the wont of main dealers for any brand of car the 16 year old YTS trainees said we needed to replace the entire injection pump – for 2000 Euros! Not surprisingly, I thought this exciting idea was a little ahead of its time and so we asked if they could point us towards a diesel specialist. This in Turkish, BTW, is ‘Pompa Tamergi’ and in this way I found Murat Dizel, a place I would never have found if I hadn’t been shown where to go on the industrial estate.
It transpired that the acute problem was caused by a piece of metal which had broken off inside the injector pump and had then bounced around creating mischief in the rest of the pump. Whilst in there, they found a number of other chronically worn components which needed replacing and without me asking they even volunteered to test and reset the injectors themselves. Considering they knew I was ‘captive’, they could have ripped me off big time, but they didn’t. They had said they’d take the pump off the car and then dismantle it to find out the problem and that if I didn’t agree with their price they’d put everything back at no cost, but I don’t think that was a realistic proposition and they knew that as well as I did. Suffice to say that the box they gave me of all the replaced bits looks like Baby’s First Meccano Set and they’ve done a lot of work for the equivalent of £165 – when I bought the car in November, I was quoted £40 + VAT in the UK just to reset each injector, let alone the pump itself. Oddly enough they didn’t ask that much about where I’d come from or where I was going to, although the people who interpreted for me asked more questions about that. It was also impressive how they got people from neighbouring businesses to come and discuss the problems and reach a solution…..there aren’t many Landcruisers in Turkey and even fewer diesel ones, so I thought that would cause difficulty. The injector pump looked to be Toyota’s own, but I wouldn’t have known it was actually Denso which in turn is Bosch made under licence. They also needed to replace a cold starting device (a bit from which was the bit that had broken off) but couldn’t find the exact replacement so they matched up another one from a different kind of pump. So there you go!
As can be imagined, this process took some time and over a couple of days I did spend quite a bit of time at Murat Dizel. The little boy in the picture is the sweet little Ali, who I thought was the son of one of the owners or workers but in actual fact wasn’t, and had seemed to adopt Murat Dizel as a place to hang out. Anyway, he seemed to take to me and we got on well. Almost made me broody….if I had a child, I would like him/her to be like Ali.
They did a great job, for a very fair price. If ever your car develops an injection fault in Turkey, Murat Dizel of Kayseri are the people to use!! Their address is Yeni Sanayi 82. Sk. No 28, tel 0352 331 47 95, mob 0532 413 15 82
Not quite so impressed with the cambelt change I’d had done on the Landcruiser before I left the UK. When going in there to sort out the injection pump, we found the tensioner hadn’t been aligned properly so that the belt had been rubbing against the plastic cover, shaving 1 side off.
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| Kayseri and Cappadocia |
Amanda went to Istanbul for a quick side-trip to see her parents while I stayed to get car fixed. Once this was done, I did a bit of a trip around the area, heading up into the hills where I stayed at a campsite at the base of Mount Erciyes – there looked to be some sort of festival or something going on. It was bloody freezing there and I can quite believe it’s a ski resort in winter. Went into the hotel to use their internet and it turned out the owner had lived in London. Also climbed some of the way up the mountain, but had to turn back as the weather was closing in.
Next night camped at a lakeside. Asked a passing fisherman if there was any problem re getting in trouble with gamekeepers etc and he gestured it was possible, but I made sure to park well out of sight and it was fine.
Also spent a bit of time in Kayseri – had stopped outside a café and had asked for some hot water for the cafetiere. They’d given it to me, and I’d gone back to the car and sat drinking it, only to see them bringing some food out to me, as a gift. Anyway, I got talking to the chap, Oktay Balaz and his waitress, Seval Polat – really pleasant. If you’re ever in Kayseri, it’s called the Sahabiye Mahallesi, on Ahmet Pasa Cadesi no 15 (have just found the post-it note with their names on it!). Do say hello to them from me.
While A was in Istanbul, she did this lovely video of mother-cat and kitty, contentedly doing their catty things oblivious to the world on a patch of grass. I thought it was too sweet not to include!
When A came back – we stayed in Kayseri for a night or 2 before leaving. Discovered a nice fish restaurant, where A had a lengthy discussion to establish that the fish she wanted WAS trout and not white fish, which she can’t eat without being sick. Once she did, she was hooked and we went back there a number of times again, being treated really well by the staff. At another point, we were stationary in a line of traffic and arguing about something or other – can’t remember what. So I wasn’t paying attention to the traffic and suddenly a German-registered Mercedes estate in front reversed towards me. I was so distracted with arguing that I can’t remember even hooting at the car to warn it, although Amanda said I did. Crash, went the Merc into my front. Being angry anyway, I leapt out and started shouting and swearing at the drivers….the main thing going through my mind was the thought that the car behind is always the one at fault but that it’s not always easy to prove that the car behind was stationary when the car in front reversed into it. Add to that all those horror stories you hear about the foreigner always being the one at fault when there’s an accident and the locals and/or the police ganging up on the gringo who can’t speak the language BUT does have insurance and/or money.
In short, I was expecting to be done up like a kipper. But this unholy alliance of witnesses who were friends of the Mercedes driver and police who were his relatives thankfully didn’t arise, and a road-sweeper who witnessed the whole thing had the integrity to tell the police exactly what happened. The Merc guys were OK in the end and even shook hands with me, especially after I calmed down and apologised for swearing once I realised I wasn’t going to get saddled with a repair bill for an accident that wasn’t my fault. Pity their tailgate though – it got badly dented by my front jacking points and I even had to give them some Gaffer tape to hold it shut. These 2 Turkish-Germans lived in Dortmund, and it took them 35 hours of constant driving to cover the 2000KM between there and Kayseri. Puts London-Penzance into perspective.
After Cappadocia, we headed north and east to the Black Sea coast, via Susheri, Sivas (briefly) and Gumushane.
Rather than take the main road to the north coast after Kayseri, we’d been given a map in Kayseri which showed a very scenic drive through the countryside – through a place named Susheri. We camped out for the night and tried to drive to our destination the next day. The colours were amazing, with reds, ochres and greens forming stark contrasts with the vivid blues of the lakes. Shame we got hopelessly lost thanks to wrong maps, and I was so livid I burned them there and then!
The election campaign was in full swing in Turkey when we were there and, when we reached Gumushane, its streets were just as festooned with banners, posters and flags as any other. How lucky that, just after we arrived Tayyip Erdogan turned up to address a rally. Personally I always like election time, especially in a foreign country. It seems to concentrate the culture and define what the country’s about more than normal – can’t really explain it. Enthusiastic supporters welcomed us into the building they’d appropriated for the occasion, and we got a grandstand view of Tayyip’s address from a top floor although the only word of it we could understand was “Turkey”. Wonderful opportunity for people shots – just look at the one of the little girl holding the flag and gazing at me open-mouthed.
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| Cappadocia to Gumushane |
Trabzon itself wasn’t particularly wonderful, but it took on a far better aspect as we met a lecturer in English from Istanbul, who was also there for a weekend break. Ahmet was about as straight as a £9 note and great company. We had found our way to Trabzon from Gumushane and ensconced ourselves in a hotel. Then we had taken a little side trip to Sumela. This monastery, carved half-way up into an almost-sheer cliff, looks almost like a Pueblo, or a house in Cappadocia as you will see from the pictures.
It was interesting getting chatting to one woman as we were going around the monastery. We saw nothing out of the ordinary back in Trabzon, but to warn us for our safety she’d shown us a newspaper which was talking about protests there as part of the fallout following the murder of a prominent Armenian writer, Hrant Dink – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrant_Dink There was a strong Trabzon connection to his death ie the assassin was from there and it had been planned there, and this was why the protests were happening.
After seeing the delightful monastery, had stopped for some food at the café at the base of the hill. Amanda wanted a particular dish from the menu, but couldn’t remember the name of it. A man on an adjacent table, who could obviously tell we were English, interjected with the name of the dish he was eating – which was what A wanted! So we got chatting to Ahmet for some time until we headed back to Trabzon – what a pleasant surprise to find him staying at the same hotel later that evening. We did a little tour of Trabzon with Ahmet the next day and Trabzon doesn’t look so bad if you look down at it from the café next to the stadium at the top of the hill. We stayed up there for ages, enjoying tea with Ahmet from a Samovar. It was striking to see how similar this Samovar looked to the ones in Russia and Kashmir – one can be seen in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture titled ‘Trabzon.jpg’. Ahmet’s take on the election was one of concern re the creeping Islamisation in Turkey by the AKP, as if the country was going backwards.
Sorry to see him go – I remember I had to use sign language to get a taxi for him to get his flight!
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| Trabzon and Sumela |
Turkish people (and one drunk Englishman) dancing on a boat sailing along the coast at Trabzon. This one was shot by Amanda
Trabzon marked the most northerly part of our Turkey tour, although admittedly it would have been a little hard to head any further north without sinking the car in the Black Sea. The only way to head from here was south, but this time via the Turkish equivalent of a hill station. Uzungol was recommended to us in Trabzon, and formed a lovely lake resort surrounded by forested hills. Had a very civilised trout lunch, freshly caught from the adjacent fish farm. Whilst walking around the lake, it was odd to spot a right-hand drive Chrysler with what looked like a UK number plate but wasn’t, a speedo marked in mph and the sticker of a London dealer. Mystified, I had the impulse to stick a note on the car to say hello to these fellow English travelers. Later, the same car reappeared, this time with its middle-aged owners inside, so I had a chance to speak to them; it transpired they and the car were from Northern Cyprus. Aha!
The easy thing to do after Uzungol would have been to get to Erzerum by main road, but we decided to do it the hard way and take a little dirt track through the hills. Here’s roughly what it looked like but with lots of added mist and tall trees either side of the road! (this video not made by me):-
After, we went on to Erzerum to get our Iranian visas. Obtaining these is a procedure guaranteed to raise the blood pressure, to say the least. Announce yourself at the intercom at the door, then be kept waiting for 30 minutes in a waiting room when there’s nobody ahead of you, only to have the person who’s supposed to be serving you say “we haven’t had any authorisation code from Teheran ” and then walk away without another word. It wasn’t even personal, for we witnessed a pair of Polish travelers getting exactly the same treatment. I would love to see how long that prick would last in for eg a Housing Benefit office in Catford. It put me in mind of this BBC story
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6277172.stm
If you’re into cheese and honey, the next stop on the itinerary is the place for you. Kars was actually part of Russia for a time, and this can be seen in the architecture. Kars is OK by itself, but the main attraction is the ruins at Ani 45 kms away.
On the way to Ani, we stopped at Subatan and saw a monument which we’d been told was ‘to the Armenian massacre’. Ah, that’s nice, we thought– Turkey coming to terms with its past etc etc. Unbelievably, the monument proved not to be to the Armenians massacred by the Turks, but to Turks massacred by Armenians! http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6280545
This derelict city was on the original Silk Route and the river gorge running around it actually forms the border with Armenia….it was strange to look across at the quarry on the other side and see people working there 200 metres away – yet they were in a different country. Contiguous land borders are a bit of an alien concept to people from mainland Britain.
I am afraid to say we, or rather I, did something a bit stupid on the way to Ani – we saw a hill and on impulse Amanda suggested we climbed it – I on the other hand decided to DRIVE up it! So off we went, but the perspective altered as we got higher and the bloody hill got steeper. Turning around would have risked rolling the vehicle, going back down in reverse isn’t too clever either and so I backed myself into a corner by having to keep going straight until we got to the top and the ground levelled out enough for me to turn around and go back down straight…the 4×4 training course I did in February obviously didn’t sink in as much as it should have done, but some bits did. I started to get quite worried as the hill steepened and the car grounded a couple of times on some rocks. Luckily we crested a ridge about 200 m from the top and this gave us a reasonably flat patch of ground about 3 m wide to turn around on – am glad we found this ridge, as the hill was getting still steeper and more rocky at this point and I am not sure the vehicle would have made it that much further. Turning around was a challenge in itself and if Amanda is to be believed I came damn close to rolling the vehicle even as I was manouevring – it certainly felt close!
As if to put icing on the cake, I also got bitten by a tick while attempting this challenging manouevre and had to go to hospital to get a blood test….I know the advice is not to try to remove these things by yourself but I went ahead and dug at it with my fingernail anyway because I was distracted with the car and basically panicked. This was not a clever thing to do, as this means bits of the tick may have been left inside and in turn can cause serious infection. Thus, I’ve also had to experience the delights of the (not bad at all) Turkish health service to have repeated blood tests to check there’s no infection – at the time of writing, I think I’m OK.
Do NOT stay in the Buyuk Anadolu Otel, on Halitpasa Cadesi No 180 in Kars. In this hotel / pension, as with lots of such places in countries like Turkey, there is a little boy working as a porter/cleaner/general factotum. Quite often they come into the room as part of their cleaning duties. So far so good. But – while we were away at Ani, this little sh1t decided, when he came into our room, not just to clean it but also to rifle through A’s underwear and toiletry bag, even trying out the shampoo. He didn’t steal anything but not surprisingly A felt somewhat violated by this and I don’t blame her. It was a classic example of how monetary compensation wasn’t enough, for the hotel owner offered to waive the bill so readily it didn’t feel like it had dealt with the root problem. A local tour guide even had to come and translate for us and apparently the hotel owner had taken the boy in as an orphan, so felt obligated to him. But from the steady gaze he gave me as we were leaving, I don’t think he was that much of a waif and I wish I’d slapped the arrogant glare off his face.
Pics of Kars and Ani
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| Trabzon to Kars and Ani |
Dogubeyazit (Dog Biscuit to most people) was next. It’s about 40 kms from the northern of the 2 Turkish/Iranian borders but it’s best as a stopping off point for Iran and for Mount Ararat which fills the horizon to the north east. We would have gone there the same day, but after we’d seen the (stunning, both in terms of setting and architecturally) Ishak Pasha Palace it started raining and seeing Mount Ararat in the rain wouldn’t have done it justice, so we decided to kick back and spend Friday afternoon not doing much apart from drinking and emailing in the hotel. On Saturday, we got up early and had a look at a so-called Meteor Crater ie a practical joke, played by the Turkish tourist board on visitors, and then ‘did’ Mt Ararat (or at least the foothills!) before heading south towards Van.
Looking for all the world like Mount Fuji, here’s Mt Ararat
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| Ani to Lake Van via Mt Ararat and Dogubeyazit |
And so on to Lake Van, and the end of our time in Turkey. We decided to take the long way around Lake Van and drove around the north shore before looping back towards the east at Tatvan.
We approached Lake Van from the north, and headed anti-clockwise around its shore ie we headed west as far as Tatvan with a quick detour up Mt Nemrut (not to be confused with Nemrut Dagi), then looped back towards the east around the south shore and Akdamar Island, before reaching Van itself. Glad we decided to take the long way around Lake Van, for the drive is stupendously scenic. First stop on reaching Van was Ercis where we also spent the night…..I remember we had a bit of trouble finding a place. One pension we stopped to look at had no shower/bathing facilities, which was a bit of a problem. There was a chap in his mid-50s who seemed to take to us and welcomed the chance for a chat with a new face…..he was some sort of surveyor for the local council and he’d split from his wife so was staying there….I felt for him. But the view from the little ‘beach’ at Ercis the next morning was stunning, with the lovely blue water and white sand – it could have been the Maldives, couldn’t it? Continuing west around the north shore of Lake Van you reach some quite interesting Seljuk tombs at a little village called Van Ahlat. Check out the fair haired girl…she IS Turkish, but the party of Germans also looking around the site were all photographing her for obvious reasons.
Also glad we did the detour up into the hills around Mt Nemrut, with lovely paddling ponds (and water snakes). Stopped to do a climb up Mt Nemrut, feeling my vitality rushing back with every step thanks to the views from up there.
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| Lake Van and around, then to Iran border |
Van is a pleasant enough city, with just enough of a frontier feel to it – of course, it’s not really like a frontier city any more. Unfortunately I in particular was feeling a bit ill and so we didn’t see that much of Van. Van is of course famous for its Van Cats and we even went to see the Cat House at the university.
Leaving Turkey was a little interesting. We were going to go to Hakkari, but the Iranian visa which we’d got by this time was dated to start on a specific day and this day was drawing ever closer. So straight to Yukshekova, the nearest town to Sero, Turkey’s southern border crossing into the Islamic Republic of Iran and the nearest we got to Hakkari was a military checkpoint, where I was mildly cheeky to the (obviously not very intelligent) soldier. Him – what make is this car? Me ‘Toyota – like it says on the front’.
In Yukshekova – a REAL frontier town – there was indeed an odd feel to the place, of being too far away from Ankara to matter. Weird people staring at the car in the street – and I mean staring, not just standard curiosity at a foreign vehicle – that I can cope with. So the hotel people we were staying with kindly offered us the use of the garage of a friend of a friend. For once it actually felt like it was necessary, so I was quite grateful.
Took us 2 attempts and 2 days to get out through Turkish customs because ‘the computers were down’. WHY couldn’t they just write down our details on paper, let us go and then input them into the system when it was back up again? Classic example of how you need to be able to speak the same language as the people you’re dealing with to have a proper argument. It really irritated, the way they genuinely seemed not to understand why we were annoyed. I had a good mind to just make a run for it through the border crossing, but didn’t as I wasn’t sure what powers the Turks had to stop us / come after us / make sure the Iranians didn’t let us in or something.
Where we are at the moment is fairly high above sea level so it’s not too warm, but poor Amanda is dreading having to sheet up when we cross the border – can’t say I blame her.
I was always keen to see Eastern Turkey and experience its wildness and I haven’t been disappointed. Rather odd that both of us seemed to get stomach upsets in Turkey, which isn’t that dirty a country at all. It happened to me again in Van – I suspect the creamy cheese and cooked cured meat.
The people too have been lovely, and just as nice as I remember them from 1991. A maintains that Turkey is a racist country. About this I am not sure. If I am completely honest and perhaps looking for evidence, the Murat Dizel people, who had been very keen for me to bring Amanda to meet them when she got back, were polite but maybe a little less over-effusive than I thought they would be when they met her. But Ali was perfectly OK, and so were the café people when they met her. I also don’t remember A complaining about anything that happened in Istanbul when she was with her parents, yet there definitely have been skinhead incidents there. If I keep talking about ‘Café people’ and ‘restaurant people’ rather than referring to them by name, and don’t have any pictures of them, it is because a lot of memories disappeared when my notebook and camera with 700 pictures on it went missing later in the trip.
