Getting to Georgia had provided a couple of nice opportunities for us – first, the chance to explore a former Soviet republic, rapidly modernising ( and now even flirting with admission to the EU ). The political aspect of life there was definitely  intriguing. The second benefit was that it now positioned us nicely in the very far east of Turkey, where we’d never been, and provided us the chance ( albeit with considerable driving – lucky I enjoy it ) to conveniently explore many of Turkey’s less visited  eastern treasures; man made, in some cases, natural in others !

Definitely rattled by the rather unfriendly re-entry,we at least had considerable drive time to hash it to death and then put it behind us. We love Turkey and can’t judge it by one overzealous unfriendly border official. Such things happen.  The planned route over the coming week had us swinging down the eastern edge of Turkey, beside Armenia and Iran, to take in that most biblical of sights, Mount Ararat ( of Noah and the Ark fame ), then on to Diyarbakir, quaint Mardin, foodie haven Gaziantep, and  finally legendary Mt Nemrud National Park. Admittedly this took somewhat longer than a week but I’ll wrap them all into this  edition ( sorry, it’s rather a long one ) 😊.

Apart from a rather rough stretch near the Georgian border, Turkish roads in the east were fantastic ( as they are in most of the country – highway development is proceeding at a frantic pace here ). It made driving the very long distances in this part of the county easy and not at all tiring. Snow capped Mt Ararat can be seen from many miles away and just steadily grows in size as you approach it. It has an almost Fuji-like conical shape, standing distinctly separate from anything else nearby. It can be hiked ( easily, actually ) but not when we passed – way too much snow. 

From a generally southerly direction to Dogubeyazit ( indisputably Turkey’s ugliest city ), our travels now swung west, first stop Diyarbakir, an interesting mid size city full of history that laid claim to a role in the Silk Road. This was a place we really enjoyed – a great, very central, camp spot had us in the thick of the action and allowed a full day of exploration ( including the best kebabs in Turkey so far ! ). My sister had visited a month or so ahead of us and gave us the tip ( along with Mardin ) – good call, Kaz !

Mardin, just to the south of Diyarbakir and only a few kms from Syria, was another recommendation we enjoyed. To our surprise it’s also become a bit of a meeting point for Iraq-bound overlanders and we caught up with 3 while we were there. Incredibly tempting to tag along with the “convoy” which would get us to Jordan most directly ( if not necessarily the most safely ), but in a moment of “discretion being the better part of valour”, we opted to continue west in the hopes of finding a more secure ( though considerably more costly ) shipping route to the Middle East.

Beyond Diyarbakir lay a couple of big and fairly uneventful drives – on to Gaziantep and then again to famous Mt Nemrud. The drives were grinding but the destinations well worth the effort- I’ll let the pictures below tell the story of Gaziantep and also Mt Nemrud, a bonus in the former being that we once again reunited with our young Aussie friends ( from back in Georgia ) over a couple of days and nights. Always a pleasure to share stories and trade tips with those who are out on the road.

From the top of Mount Nemrud it was a long descent back down to the plains, passing the occasional Roman ruins ( the Romans certainly roamed all over Turkey back in the day ) but otherwise non-descript scenery on the way back to Mersin and the warm waters of the Mediterranean. Just amazing how much difference there is in terms of landscape in the different parts of this enormous country. Mersin put us back to the coast and, in a sense, at decision time with regard to our next moves from Turkey. Despite his best efforts, our shipping agent, Mohamed, was not able to get us any kind of competitive pricing on a RoRo passage onwards from Turkey. We knew that was a possibility and had prepared for it so we promptly made a decision. We’d take a week off from our van travels, ferry over to Cyprus for a well deserved rest ( having logged some long driving days through Turkey and Georgia ), celebrate Lois’s birthday and decide, there and then, what to do and where to go next.

Stay tuned for a full update on that in the upcoming edition.

Till next week…

In Case You Wondered:

Q: How much time do you spend doing the blog/video clips?

A: It varies, typically 2-3 hours, but sometimes more. Hard to keep track because I write and add photos as we go along. Once we are parked for the evening, there is often quite a lot of time to sit and browse the Internet, watch movies or, in my case, bit by bit build a blog for the coming week. We don’t watch TV so that frees up a lot of time in the evenings. One could spend far more time seriously editing photos, but I limit my editing to simple cropping, which is fast and easy. If we are busy, it’s a shorter blog and there are fewer pics. While relaxing at home this past summer I had much more time so decided to compile the many questions we get asked into this extra weekly Q/A 😊. Hope you’ve enjoyed it and it has shed some light on the ins and outs of longer term international van travel.