Van – City of Kurds

After being saved from missing the bus by our obliging Hotel owner, who rushed us to the other side of the dual carriageway in his own car, we head south again, leaving the snowy majesty of Ararat . The road climbs steeply out of Doğubayazıt, through fields that cling to the slowly melting spring snow. Poor houses …

Doğubayazıt and The Ishak Pasha Palace

We leave the chill crisp air and Russian architecture of Kars behind us, and take the road south, and west towards the Iranian border. Our destination is the Kurdish city of Dogubayazit, a dusty, ramshackle and impoverished place, sprawling at the foot of Mount Ararat. With not much in itself to attract travellers, Dogubayazit relies …

Ani- The City of One Thousand & One Churches

"I could worship any god in a place like this" Mert

All Aboard The Eastern Express: By Train To Kars

Finally reaching Kars in 1962, this Trans-Turkish railway originally covered the eleven hundred or so kilometers between Istanbul and the Armenian border in the far east of the country. A new high speed connection has opened in more recent years, servicing the line between Istanbul and Ankara, but the old style "slow train" still runs …