Before we even left The Lonely Planet guide (2005 edition) says that the cheapest hotel in town is the Otel Yeni Çınar in İstasyon Caddesi. I walked up and down İstasyon Caddesi, which leads directly to the station, until it started pouring. I ducked into a tea shop next to the mosque and two guys invited me to sit with them and drink some tea. When the rain eased up, one of them led me to the Otel Yeni Çınar. It is not on İstasyon Caddesi or on a street that parallels or intersects it. It is actually in Ayazpaşa Caddesi. In any case, it was full. But two doors away at No. 18 Ayazpaşa Caddesi is the Otel Çınar. Although the receptionist wouldn’t bargain, it was still cheaper than the Otel Yeni Çınar, with a single room with toilete/shower and real hot water for YTL20. The location adjacent to the ‘eski’ Otel Çınar and the puzzled looks I got from shopkeepers along İstasyon Caddesi suggest that the Otel Yeni Çınar has always been where it is now and that the error in the LP guide is not just a question of a failure to do new research for the 2005 update. It looks very much as if the authors have relied on something other than their own first hand observation.
That said, I found nothing to fault in the description of the various historical sites along and near Cumhuriyet Caddesi. After checking in, I set out to see some of the sights before it got too dark to take photos. From the north side, it’s a short but steepish climb up to the Kale, which provides panoramic views of Erzurum, with its hundreds of minarets, and the surrounding countryside. Before I’d descended the short distacne to Cumhuriyet Caddesi, some guys invited me for a glass of tea. Needless to say, they were not just some friendly locals, but carpet sellers. So it was too dark to take any pictures by the time I got to the main drag. But I had a look around and managed to find my way back to the hotel. In the morning, I was out and about by 4 AM and saw everything I wanted to within about an hour. There are two museums, which unfortunately don’t open until much later. I wanted to catch the 9:00 dolmuş to Yusufeli, so I don’t know whether they are worth a visit.
I’m not going to clutter this post with a lot of photos, so click the link if you want to see some more images from Erzurum.
Çifte Minareli Medrese, Erzurum
It took quite some time to locate the dolmuş garage, so I was glad I had left plenty of time for it. When I got there, a guy immediately came up to me and asked if I was going to Yusufeli and sold me a ticket for YTL15. I got quite panicky when 9:00 came and went and nothing arrived. Eventually, a large minibus made its way over from the opposite end of the depot, with one empty seat. The guy next to me has a little family business publishing books about agriculture. He speaks about as much English as I do Turkish and we managed to communicate, passing the dictionary back and forth. About halfway there, a few people got off, but they were soon replaced by another mob, and I ended up with a baby in my lap for about an hour.
As I emerged from the dolmuş in Yusufeli, a guy approached me offering a dolmuş to Barhal. I really wanted to go through to Yaylalar, but it was a Sunday and everybody said they didn’t know whether there would be a service to Yaylalar that day. A night in Yusufeli probably would not have been such a tragedy. In fact, it seemed like a nice place and I considered coming back at one stage. Anyway, I wandered around for a while, as the dolmuş was not to leave until 1430. As it turned out, I had to wait until about 1545 before it actually got moving. I wouldn’t have minded if the guy had just said it would leave at 1530 rather than leaving me sitting on the kerb waiting for him the whole time. Also, I seemed to have committed myself to staying at the Karahan Pansiyon. From the description in the LP guide, it would have been my first choice anyway, but I’d have liked to check out the competition. It virtually goes without saying that the Yaylalar dolmuş overtook us on the road.
The first night, the place was nearly empty and I got quite a nice room. Three Israeli couples and their guides were there and two young Israelis who were not associated with that group had come across the Altıparmak Range from Ayder. It seems nobody had told them the pass was closed. For obvious reasons, I was pretty tentative about talking to the Israelis, although they seemed nice enough, but I had a little rakı and broached the subject of the boycotts that various British unions have been considering in recent weeks. I was not surprised that they opposed the boycotts and seemed to think it was ok to have a Jewish ethnocracy in
Unless you plan to cross the pass to Ayder, the obvious hike from Barhal is up to Karagöl (
Altıparmak above ruined chapel
There is a bridge across the creek directly opposite the bottom of the road to the pansiyon, but the beginning of the trail is a little obscure. You need to turn right as soon as you cross the bridge, before crossing over the wall into the small field there. It is a little overgrown for fifty metres or so, but is quite clear from there on. The walk up to the chapel is steep in places and takes about 25 minutes. Barhal has a closed in feeling and the views are not spectacular, but from the chapel, you can see
View from ridge with flowers
I was making good progress on my way down when I realized I was on the wrong ridge. The one I was on was quite steep. If I had continued down it, it probably would have left me on a tributary of the creek I had crossed in the morning, probably about a kilometre from where it ran into that creek, and a kilometer downstream from the pansiyon. But I was concerned that it was showing signs of turning into a cliff. It would have been very difficult to retrace my steps up the steep slope I had descended, so I decided to traverse across to the other ridge, which was visible most of the time, and hope for the best. It took me the better part of two hours to reach the main trail, hanging onto vegetation and trying not to slip down the steep slope. Every time I stopped, big green flies would swarm around my legs. Their bite was fairly painful momentarily, but I thought nothing of it at the time, and many of them died. The next morning, I had about twenty angry looking swollen red welts on each leg, with a tiny scab in the middle of each one. They itched like crazy. I treated them with aloe vera, which relieved the itching for a while, but did not cure them. I finally found a pharmacy in
By the time I got back to the right ridge, I was exhausted, scratched up, and hungry. I had no food and had run out of water. Although I had added Oral Rehydration Salts to the water, I already had a cramp in one thigh. All in all, it was a pretty frightening experience.
When I returned to the pansiyon about 1430, they had assigned me to a different room, as they were expecting a group that night. From that point on, they made me feel like a pariah. I gather that this is not just Mehmet, but that all the pansiyons make their living from group bookings and bend over backwards to accommodate them. On the other hand, I didn’t feel there was a real need to ban me from the communal terrace and so forth. While I was having my dinner, the halıcı (carpet sellers) who had given me apple tea in
After dinner, I returned to the building with my new room and went up to the balcony to take down my clothesline and bring in my dry clothes. There I found a group of French people who had also been banished from the main building. With them was an American guy named Joseph who turned up late and was to sleep on the balcony. He has been working in
For all the stupid delays in deciding to make the trip and in actually getting into gear, my timing turned out to be near perfect. The passes have been closed by unseasonably late snow. The weather has been mainly cool, although obviously the sun is fierce, especially at higher elevations and exacerbated by reflection off the snow. There is plenty of water and the wildflowers are definitely at their peak.
Similarly, it was a happy coincidence that Mehmet Karahan’s ostracism put me in contact with Joseph. I was feeling as lonely and discouraged as I’d anticipated. The dolmuş to Yaylalar allegedly left at 1530, or 1600, or 1700, or 1800, depending on who you believed. I was actually considering catching the dolmuş back to Yusufeli. In the morning, however, I found that Joseph had already eaten and was about to leave for Yaylalar by foot. I told him I had considered the same thing but didn’t really fancy it on my own and would join him if he could wait 20 minutes for me to grab some breakfast. I definitely have him to thank for undertaking the two hikes we did on Wednesday and Thursday at all. Joseph said he used to work as a guide in
We walked about halfway to Yaylalar, I reckon, perhaps some 12 km, before a couple of guys in a ute picked us up. The road had been quite flat up to that point, but started climbing steeply and we got some gorgeous views from the back of the truck. We had a cup of tea and a coke in Yaylalar, but the only pansiyon seemed a bit expensive. The bed only option, which I think was in a dorm, was only YTL15, but actual rooms were up to YTL50 with meals, and the bungalows were YTL60 per night. Anyway, Joseph wanted to push on to Olgunlar and it seemed like a good idea to me. A big group of French mountaineers had just rolled in. They said they were planning to climb 3932m Kaçkar Dağı, and then go on to clımb 5137m Ağrı Dağı (Mt Ararat), the highest point in
We hadn’t gone far when some Israelis picked us up and took us to the end of the road. There are three pansiyons in a row in Olgunlar. The middle one, Kaçkar Pansiyon, looked the nicest with its wood cladding. The rooms are spacious, clean, and pine panelled, with their own shower and toilet. The teenaged kid who seemed to be running the place speaks quite serviceable English and told us that the rooms would be YTL20 per night, or 35 with full board. When we checked out, his father told us that that was supposed to be just for breakfast and dinner.
Dilber Düzü campsite from below pass
On Wednesday morning, we set out from Olgunlar (40 57.832N, 41 21.474E) at about 2050m on the trail up the valley that leads over the pass to Deniz Gölü and Kaçkar Dağı. We came to Dilber Düzü Campsite in a pleasant meadow before the trail started climbing more steeply. I stopped for lunch at about 3095m (40 48.886N, 41 10.218E), while Joseph pressed on over the pass to Deniz Gölü. On the way back, I stopped for about half an hour to talk to a Czech couple who had gone up the next valley towards
Pass to Deniz Gölü and Kaçkar Dağı
Thursday, Joseph persuaded me to cross
Anyway, the trail was pretty obvious up to the pass at 3225m (40 51.943N, 41 10.776E), which we reached just before noon, after just under five hours of walking. At that time, there was a few hundred metres of snow to cross, some of it a bit steep. A fair few people were coming the other way. Another Czech couple I spoke to said that they had taken more than six hours to get there from Yukarı Kavron, where they had spent the night in the pansiyon we had heard was there.
Joseph on snowfield just below Çaymakçur Pass
On the other side of the pass, there is less snow, but parts are much steeper. After descending to the lake that I believe must be Kara Deniz Gölü, you have to climb back up on the opposite side of another, smaller lake about 150m up tight switchbacks for about 20 minutes to the campsite at Büyük Deniz Gölü (2922m; 40 52.416N, 41 09.832E).
Kara Deniz Gölü
From there, you can see Yukarı Kavron (2258m; 40 52.995N, 41 07.834E) about 4km away and 700m below. The descent was mostly gradual and we arrived at about 1700, just in time to watch the dolmuş to Ayder leaving. We stopped at a bar by the side of the creek, the first place you come to over the bridge, where I was terribly disappointed to learn that they had no cold soft drinks. But I got Joseph a beer, which I think they chill in the creek, while I went off to see if I could find a cold coke at one of the other two establishments. I checked the nearest one, when I noticed another van seemed about to depart, and there’s only one road – the one to Ayder. But they told me it was full. So Joseph and I walked up to the pansiyon, which they said was also full. The guy at the first bar said he’d take us to Ayder in his jeep for YTL50 and we just laughed, as the dolmuş fare was only 7. We met a couple of young Israeli kids who said they’d just come from the Kaçkar Dağı summit, so there must be a trail from there, as well.
Anyway, we holed up in the second bar, Pub Lic, for about an hour waiting for the weather to cool a bit before we reluctantly set off down the road. We’d already put in a good nine hours of walking and didn’t much fancy another 8km or more on the road. We managed to flag a ride to Aşağı Kavron, about 2km down the road. Just before we got there, we passed two guys who had been following us on the trail down from Büyük Deniz Gölü. They soon overtook us again. We walked quite some distance. Indeed, I was pretty sure that we had covered the 8km, when we came upon a köfte shop, where we stopped and had a coolish drink. Joseph had a köfte, as well. The köfteci told us it was another 5km to Ayder, but I didn’t believe her. The other two guys were already there and left before us. We walked a little further and got another lift, all the way into Ayder. I tried to get them to stop for the other guys when we passed them, but they didn’t. The first two places we came to in Ayder were already full, but the third had a free room. There was, predictably, a big group of Israelis staying there, as well.
Photos from the Kaçkar hikes. The map at the top of this post is probably from the out of print 1989 Lonely Planet Trekking in Turkey. I have only seen a photocopy of this one map, but if you are planning a trek in the Kaçkars, it may be worth tracking down a secondhand copy of the book, as this map is better than any of the others I’ve found online or in the current or 2005 LP guidebooks. Presumably, there would be good information on treks in other parts of
We spent Friday relaxing in Ayder. We went to the
Ayder waterfallI had hoped to finish Amitav Ghosh’s huge Glass palace before leaving Olgunlar, so Joseph would have to carry it over the pass. But I still had some eighty pages left to read. I considered tearing them out, but decided I’d rather pass the book on intact, which I did after finishing it on Friday.
Friday night we went out and had some tost for dinner, then sat around in a bar for some time, where Joseph drank some beer and I had some rakı. He was going to hang in Ayder for another day, as I think whatever I had caught up with him. Then he was going to catch the dolmuş to Avusör, which leaves Ayder at 9:00, and cross the Altıparmak range via Karagöl back to Barhal. I have since heard from him and he was caught in a whiteout in a steep snowfield before reaching the pass and had to retreat to Ayder.
I caught the 9 AM dolmuş to Pazar, the nearest point on the
Eventually, I arrived in Adıyaman. When I got off in Adıyaman, there was this young Slovenian couple. The old guy who had been sitting in front of me and seemed quite interested in my phone told us to follow him to get the dolmuş to Kahta, the nearest place to Mt Nemrut. The driver approached us with a tour deal that we couldn’t refuse after checking the prices in the old LP guide. When we got to Kahta, it turned out the dolmuş and the tour were associated with a hotel, as well, and YTL15 for a single with its own bathroom and hot water sounded good to me, although the bed turned out not to be terrifically comfortable.
Giant head on Western Terace, Mt Nemrut, at sunset
On our tour of Mt Nemrut, apart from Nina and Jako, there was John, a young Korean guy, and Peter and Rick from the Netherlands. Peter was on his way to China for a course. Our driver, Hüseyin, and his sidekick spoke virtually no English and I found myself having to interpret for the others, quite a feat considering how much Turkish I know. The next day, I caught the 7:00 dolmuş back to Adıyaman, connected with another going to Malatya, and boarded the 4 Eylül Mavi Ekspres for Ankara about 1500, arriving about 7:30 the next morning.
