The Elsewhere Diaries

So, why did I have so much time? And why was I on a boat, when I was meant to be on the vast planes of Anatolia? Van, that's why. And what is there to say about Van? On the banks of a vast salt water lake 800km east of Cappodocia and only 80km from the Iranian border, I had seen this place and thought, fantastic, sounds great, certainly not Goreme or Istanbul or, god forbid, Bodrum. Better still I was told it was the centre of old Armenian territory and in the heartland of Kurdish Turkey. And yes, the lake was astonishingly beautiful, sitting in the permanent half light haze of winter surrounded by snow cone mountains on all sides, and "Eski Van", the old city, was stuck on a huge promontory overlooking all of this. The castle, the old Mosque and the various remains were eerily beautiful but were destroyed by the Ottomans near the end of World War One  as a kind of punishment to the Armenians (who had fought with the opposing Russians). And it's what replaced it that was so dire, with a dearth of... Well just about everything. 
New Van has literally retreated from the gorgeous lakeside setting and is a planned, hastily built new town with all the charisma of Luton. Honestly, I make do, I get on with it, but after I'd wandered to the old town, walked around for a few hours and waited an hour to get a dolmus back in the dark (but only about 5 p.m) I stumbled back to a ghost town. What little had been there during the day was now packed up and it took me about 20 minutes to find somewhere to eat a very mediocre pide and then had to retreat to my dire hotel room (no showers, no heating, one footprint toilet) with a good book. Effectively I had travelled for about 16 hours, just to plan to make my escape as soon as humanely possible.
And that was it. A summarisation: Van, with all it's potential to not be, is ugly and dull, like a Turkish maiden aunt. I planned my escape, I'd take the ferry over the huge lake to Tatvan on opposite side, bed down for another night and escape. I woke up, had read that the ferry left at 12 so zipped out of the city in a taxi (we must allow ourselves some luxuries, it cost 10 lira) only to arrive at a dock in the middle of no where that was missing a ferry. After some scrabbling I found out that the ferry left precisely at 16.12 another four and a half hours of waiting. And am I glad I waited instead of trekking it back to Van to sit in some nondescript çay house, because this was the only redeeming feature of the whole failed venture: the people. As I sat around writing my last blog entry and shivering I was bought a çay, then an old man called over and chucked me two oranges he was loading onto a crate. Eventually I had been installed in the ramshackle café with the dock workers and the little Kurdish waiter, being softly interrogated as a token foreigner: "From where?" "Ingleterre", "Student?" "No, I finished" and, best of all, "What you speak? Turkish, Kurdish,   Russian, German, Farsi?" reeled off like bullets... "Arabi?" roars of laughter, "NO!" big belly laughs from all the grizzled guys once this had been translated.  I guess you start to realise how far off the beaten track you truly are when people start to take an interest in you purely because you're foreign. In Van I was a mild curiosity, by the time I'd got to Hasankeyf I was like a dog riding a camel, walking on two legs. And here was the thing, I was officially in Kurd country, the part of Turkey that has been fighting for independence since the 80s, the part that is meant to be dangerous, unstable and backwards. And they were the warmest, most hospitable, most friendly of all the people I'd met. Yes, they are fiercely proud of their heritage, a lot of them are deeply religious, poverty stricken, and so arrest me Turkey, systematically suppressed. In fact, the more you read about it the more it makes my stomach turn. There are no Kurdish language newspapers or TV channels until 2005, it is illegal to speak of Kurdistan and many, many Kurds have been internally displaced and arrested by the Government. And after all of that, they have none of the haughty indifference so many people in Istanbul have, but are genuinely warm and affectionate. So as the hospitality continued as the ferry tugged long Lake Van, I was fed and watered by the elderly Kurdish steward who was stood at one end of room like the captain of the Titanic, rigid in front of the fireplace as the ship flooded, except this one was watching football and desperately trying to explain to me why "Galataseray GOOD" and "Manchester United win, GOOD!". 

We arrived into Tatvan at what felt like the middle  of night (9 O'Clock but it was pitch black and almost as dead as the desolate, corpsly Van) and I somehow managed to hike up a hill, across some railroad tracks and catch a dolmus by following the instructions of "Follow that light!", of a giant green, illuminated minaret. A quick bed down in my luxurious 3 star hotel (which featured a shower hose over a squat toilet) and off I hopped at eight on (another) bus, this time for Hasankeyf, the jewel stuck on the side of the Tigris. After the previous days rivetting excitement even a vaguely old rock would have been interesting, so heading off to one of the oldest continually inhabited places on earth (so I'm  told, all though Byblos in Lebanon says that too...) definitely perked up my spirits. That's all for now, my fingers are sticky from eating Baklava,More soon, Gx 

Life for the last few weeks (i.e the boring part):
Back to the Gulf, it was still hot, full of sand, shopping and a lack of pavements. Lots of nice, home cooked food, a well stocked liquor cabinet and familial bickering (about benefits, Gaza, jobs prospects... the usual! We also headed off to the beach in Oman for a nights camping with some friends, which was actually fun (coolbox full of beer) except for the sore back, sand in my shoes and my extremely drunk decision to crawl into my parents tent and sleep between them like a sick toddler. With that bombshell decided I wanted to head off somewhere before Christmas with the parents.

What was a visa run to Oman became a trip, then a trip to Iran, the realisation that visas and prices were prohibitive so I basically looked at world map and found somewhere with cheap flights. Istanbul via Manama, $200, done deal. Gunned for it and bought a Lonely Planet (a commitment to actually going somewhere I feel) and then had to stock up on warm clothes after packing for the Middle East and India. My basic plan was to fly to Istanbul and make my way down to the South East and then take a train all the way back just in time for roast turkey on the beach. And that brings me up to date, sitting here drinking Efes and looking at the Hagia Sophia. It's so nice to be back on the road (yes, I've been reading Keroauc), to sit in front of a map and say I can go anywhere I want which was the main quibble with Lebanon; Syria being on one side, Israel underneath and a few coastal cities which were mostly descending into sectarian violence. So now I've gone back to the city that was the Capital of an Empire that stretched halfway into Europe and all the way back to Dubai ready to run head on into the Anatolian adventure.

So after a particularly nasty transfer in Bahrain (GC travel advice: NEVER GO) I arrived not so bright and in the early afternoon. I was too tired to function but managed to drag myself out of the hostel (which by the way is amazing) sit in Sultanahmet park and then waddle off for dinner at a restaurant that specialises in "pide", Turkish pizza, which I can safely recommend as incredible.

But today, with a bit more energy, I tried to really get to grips with Istanbul. Aside from my embarrassing speaking-in-Arabic-not-Turkish it was great. The Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque are both closed on Mondays so off I trotted to the Grand Bazaar. Seriously, not even Dubai Mall can prepare you for the sheer size of this place, it is absolutely incredible and goes on and on and on. It reminds me a lot of Fez but it feels as if the Bazaar is about the same size as the whole of Morocco. The old archways (the whole thing is covered) are beautiful and resplendent in flaking, vibrant painted patterns and add to the feel of walking into a lost city still functioning like it did in when the British were still owned by the French. Of course the pain thoroughfares have Louis Vuitton handbags and diamond encrusted teapots (wish I'd taken a photo...) but when you get off the beaten track and down some of the side alleys and into hans, the old caravanserais that used to host merchants from all over the Ottoman Empire you can still see craftspeople producing goods and selling the like they have done for time immemorial. It truly is something special, and unlike the slightly sanitised, hawker in streets of Marrakech, it has a blazing authenticity that has hopefully geared me up for exploring the rest of the Old City.