Işhan

At the suggestion of the guide from yesterday's tour two of us stopped on the way to Yusufeli today to see the Georgan Church of the Mother of God in the small village of İşhan.

Getting up to the church was quite interesting. Our bus dropped us on the side of the road in roughly the middle of nowhere, the tea shop where we had been told we could leave our backpacks was out of business, and İşhan is a steep 6 km hike up from the main road so carrying them was out of the question. After a while we decided to just lock the packs to a power-line pole in the middle of a field and set off up the hill. It was all worth it as the church was absolutely spectacular.



I think I have a combined rafting & kyaking trip arranged for tomorrow but need to finalize things when I get back to my guesthouse. Yusufeli itself is quite a nice little town nestled in a mountain valley on the banks of a tributary of the Çoruh river. If the trip falls through tomorrow may even stick around for a day or two if necessary.

Kars & Ani

Anyway, I decided to leave Doğubayazıt yesterday after all. Kars (where I am now) is supposed to be just a town you stay in as a base to visit the old Armenian capital city of Ani however it is actually a pretty nice town in and of itself. These first few photos are from sites in Kars.



There is no public transport to Ani I hired a van and driver for the day along with several other backpackers. On the way to Ani we stopped to see a couple other old Armenian churches. The first was mostly a ruin and none of my pictures were worth posting but the second church was quite nice.



Then it was on to Ani where we spent some 3 hours walking around taking it all in.



Tomorrow I am off to Yusufeli where I will hopefully be able to do some Kayaking on the Çoruh river.

Doğubayazıt

Dogubayazıt is great, although there really isn't too much to see other than the İshak Paşa palace. So, most of my photos from here are this one site.



I'm not sure yet whether I will be leaving tomorrow or sticking around for another day. Whenever I do leave my next stop will be Kars to visit the former Armenian city of Ani.

Two castles and a church.

Here are some photos from Van and some of the surrounding sites. First up is Van Kale (Van Castle).



Next is the Hoşap castle at Güzelsu, a small town about 60 km outside Van. I thought it was much better than the larger Van castle and well worth the trip even though it's currently closed for restoration.



Finally (saving the best for last) are a few photos from the Armeneian Church of the Holy Cross on Akdamar island. I didn't actually manage to stop there on the way to Van yesterday but instead took a trip back there today.



Tomorrow I'm heading to Doğubayazıt (good luck pronouncing that) near the Iranian border. I plan to spend a few days just relaxing there.

The other Nemrut Mountain.

Rather than going all the way to Van yesterday I decided to stop in Tatvan on the western shore of Van Gölü (Lake Van) to see some of the surrounding area.

This morning I got up and took a trip up Nemrut Mountain. This is not the same Nemrut Mountain with the heads that I visited last week. There are actually two Nemrut Mountains in this region of Turkey. This one is the remains of a huge volcano. The caldera is something like 48 km in circumference and contains 5 separate lakes.



This afternoon I took another side trip to the nearbye town of Ahlat to see the Seljuk cemetary and tombs.



Tomorrow I'm going to continue on to Van, most likely stopping on the way to go see the Armenian church on Akdamar island.

Diyarbakır, Hasankeyf & Mardin

I'm very glad I decided to spend some time in Diyarbakır. It turned out to be a very picturesque town and was the first place in Turkey that felt more like being in Asia than Europe. I kind of wish I'd stayed another day but did manage to see a good chunk of the town in the afternoon I had there. Interesting factoid: The ancient Diyarbakir city wall is 6 km in length which supposedly makes it the second longest wall in the world after the (considerably longer) Great Wall of China



Yesterday I came a couple hours further east to the amazing little town of Hasankeyf perched on the banks of the Tigris river.



Finally, here are a few photos from Mardin. The Lonely Planet raves about this town so I took a day trip to see it today. Not sure it was actually worth 5 hours round-trip on the bus to get there but it gave me an excuse to stick around Hasankeyf for another night.



Tomorrow I'm going to head to Van in far eastern Turkey. I think I can catch a bus from the nearbye town of Batman (!) otherwise I'll have to backtrack back to Diyarbakır which I will make an already long day even worse.