Lake Van is the largest lake in Turkey and unusual in that it has no outlet. Van was the centre of the Uruartu kingdom from 1000 BC and became one of the Armenian Kingdoms and, in Roman times, straddled the border between the Eastern Empire (with Constantinople as its centre) and the Seljuks (capital Isfahan). After the disintegration of the Seljuk Empire, it was subsumed into the Ottoman Empire, where it remained on and off until the emergence of modern Turkey. When we visited it was largely a no-go area, considered extremely dangerous and full of bandits and thieves, in part due to the fighting between the Kurds and the Turks, but also because its remoteness . It was a risky place to visit, but the only way to get into Iran.
Thursday 15th April
We rushed to the bus office next to the hotel and they gave us a ticket to Van, pushed us into a dolmuş and said it would take us to the bus station. When we got there, there was one bus going to Van of a different company to the one on our ticket and, amidst all the hassle of nasty people pushing us about saying, ‘ Sind Sie Deutsch’, ‘What is your name?’ etc, it was impossible to get it transferred in the time. When the bus had gone, we discovered that our company didn’t run a bus until eight in the evening. So we demanded a transfer which we got.
Once got, we found that this company had no direct bus until 5 pm – by this time I was frantic with fury and almost in tears. Suddenly we were put on a bus to Bingöl and told from there we could get a connection. After various problems in getting a ticket reissued all the way to Van, we eventually set off; in Bingöl we managed to buy a bun and an orange each to stave off hunger pangs, and found a bus going directly to Van almost immediately.
It was snowy all the way to Van and one pass was over 2000 m – really high and very cold. In Muş we bought nuts and wafers to keep us going. Lake Van is very beautiful, huge, surrounded by snow capped mountains. Van itself is small but thriving. On arrival we plump for the first hotel – the most expensive yet at 80 Turkish lira, but we’ve been living very cheaply so far. We were starving and rushed off to a lokanta – had liver and rice and lovely beans (ful type) and they thought we were very greedy to eat so much!
At the hotel we had a coffee and I chatted to someone in German for a while. One rather nasty thing happened on the bus from Tatvan to Van which typified the feeling the people have for each other, due to the hardness of the life here: one poor old boy was terribly sick, all over his neighbour too, so the bus stopped to let them get out and wash themselves with snow. When the innocent bystander, who had cleaned himself, got back on, the driver revved up and took off leaving the poor old man stranded high up on the mountain pass, about halfway between the two towns. Luckily he had a friend on the bus who got furious and made the driver stop and wait for the poor man, he finally tottered around the corner and got on, much shaken (and was therefore sick for the rest of the journey).
Friday 16th April
It poured all day so we could do practically nothing. However, we did walk to the station to see if we could buy our tickets (at student rate!) but he said only before the train left could we do so. We met a group of 15-odd Afghanis who are cooking delicious-smelling bean stew and we talked with them awhile until we got a dolmuş. Back at the hotel we taught two Turks gin rummy and played that for hours, all the time being plied with offers of ‘spazieren gehen’ in a car and ‘wein trinken’ in someone’s room! We escaped to lunch and, when we came back, filled in the time by playing cards.
Got to the station about 7.30, discovered three Europeans Rick, Paula and Linda, and also that the train was more-or-less indefinitely delayed – 4 am, 6 pm and so on. There happened to be a very lively nightclub upstairs and as we were pretty hungry we went up and were invited to sit at a table hosted by a Turk, with Rick and Paula. He was rather drunk and possessed the extraordinary name of Robin Hood – I was Ivanhoe! He was the most extraordinary guy, very well read in English literature, well-dressed but made sinister by visits from one of the two policeman every half hour. He made us dance (in-between the two cabarets) and finally we managed to escape – he wanted to take us to his house. Later we discovered he was the district attorney.
In the waiting room everyone was stretched out on the floor or on benches – I got a bench and J a floor, not that comfortable but OK.
Saturday 17th April
Considering I was sleeping on a bench I slept fairly well. Of course there was no train, and in the morning no one seemed to know anything. After a small breakfast (stocks were low) we decided to walk down the railway line in the direction of the ferry boat (so if the train came we could see it). Off we went, a bit bleak and windy and difficult to walk on the sleepers, but a magnificent view of the old citadel, high up on a massive rock. We soon got bored and turned back but were but were intercepted by a boy who wanted foreign coins and, in return, took us to the railway staff canteen where we drank much-needed coffees and played backgammon (I won all three but J beat a dab Turkish hand) and then a rubber of bridge which I also won.
At lunchtime we had delicious bean and meat stew, noodles and rice. Back at the station rumours of a train were prevalent, and the ferry had even been spotted – people began to appear from nowhere with masses of luggage and soon an engine and one carriage appeared, facing the direction of the ferry, so we all hopped into a compartment with a dear old Turk and a German – a ‘civilised’ one. Soon the others found an empty compartment and we remained with our friends. Twice the old man donned a proper prayer cap, spread his coat on the seat and spread out his hanky and prostrated himself before Allah – very touching. We had incessant visitors, but J and I slept end-to-end in one seat until we reached Tabriz, where we found an empty compartment and a seat each.
At the border it was snowing heavily and the formalities took 4 1/2 hours, during which the heating became stifling but no one except J and I seem to feel it, so we sweated in silence. All the Afghanis came to J to have their immigration forms filled out – none of them seem to be able to read or write, despite several of them being able to speak English or French!
Vicky's Big Adventure 