The last ten days have been characterised by heat, parched mountain vistas and dust clouds. We had high hopes for something cooler and greener on leaving the north eastern Turkish city of Kars – an ex-Soviet city near the Armenian border.
We boarded our millionth Turkish ‘otobus’ in the direction of the Kackar mountains. We haven’t seen sight nor sound of a train since leaving Bulgaria. The odd railway line has convinced us that they do exist, but when we last enquired about departures we were pointed to a calendar: “Wednesdays and Fridays only, sorry.” Roads, however, are generally four lanes wide and empty, so using them is tempting unless you’re on a bicycle.
We were dropped at a dusty junction on a dam construction site in a gorge. Thick dust clouds blew past as we waited in vain for a promised minibus that would take us 10km to the nearest town. When it failed to turn up, we hitched a ride in a truck and were dropped in Yusufeli, a small town soon to be drowned by the rising dam. For the moment though, a clear, slate-green river rushed down from the pine covered mountains and through the town. Claire even managed to find a plate of rice that hadn’t had miniscule bits of pasta (that she’s alergic to) helpfully added to it. Smiles all round.
The village of Barhal that we were aiming for was another 30km into the mountains, so after enquiring about town and utilising both our Turkish words (one of which is only really useful in a breakfast context), we managed to get on a minibus full of dead chickens heading in what turned out to be the right direction.
‘Karahan Pension’ where we’re staying is pretty close to everything we’ve always been looking for. It’s perched above a river up a dirt track with other-worldly sized mountains crowded around it (even the valley bottom is the height of Ben Nevis) and the views from the veranda are nuts. They even had a small supply of red wine, but we drank it all. I guess you can’t have everything all the time.
Scamps on a train 