Eastern Anatolian Tour - Day 1 (June 5/6)

For more photos of today's travels, see: http://www.anatolianphotos.shutterfly.com/

Saturday, June 5, at 9:00 p.m. begins the long bus ride to the far Eastern end of Turkey, a place of extraordinary starkness and poverty, but one of immense beauty. This trip, another Tempo Tur trip, will keep us on a bus for about 3,500 kilometers, which translates to 2,175 miles. Gak! Luckily for us, the tour guide is our favorite Onur Erturk, the archaeologist and graduate of Bilkent University. Although the tour narrative is always in Turkish, Onur generally sits with Larry and me at lunch or dinner to explain in English what we saw during the day or what we are about to see. This time, unlike our Southeast Anatolian tour, we also remembered to bring our tour book.

Also, unlike the last trip, the other tourists are a mix of nationalities. We are the only two Americans. There is a large extended Turkish family (who caused some issues with our tour, always late for everything, and always smoking), and a group of ten or eleven German women. The latter group, with one exception, are, or were, all married to Turks and are still living in Turkey. One woman spoke excellent English, as did several other Turks, so we always knew what was going on with this tour. (E.g., do we have fifteen or fifty minutes for this rest stop?)

Waking up Sunday morning after a typically fitful "sleep" on the overnight bus, we breakfasted at a café in Erzincan, then continued east to visit the site of a mineral water park, where children were already playing and people were already picnicking around the warm natural mineral pools in the park called Eksisu. The town itself looked newly constructed to us, with streets following a grid pattern, something we seldom see in Turkey. It turns out that the original town was entirely destroyed by earthquake in 1979, necessitating rebuilding, but in a somewhat different location and away from the prevailing fault line. Despite the lack of charm of the new town, the surrounding snow capped peaks added a dimension of beauty it was otherwise lacking.

This was not anyone’s favorite stop; the park showed signs of neglect and the town was just a small town with little visible history, but nonetheless it broke up the day’s bus ride to Erzurum, our first day’s significant destination. A second stop on the way, though, was something of a surprise.

Tercan Mama Hatun Tomb and Caravanserai

Somewhere between the mineral park and Erzurum we stopped in the town of Tercan to visit the first tomb of the tour designed in the "kumbet" style, of Central Asian design. Other Seljuk or Ottoman tombs called "turbe," that we had seen on other tours, had the tomb and an area for worship on the same level. The kumbet tombs, in contrast, have an underground chamber for the sarcophagus of the deceased, and a prayer room on a second floor slightly above ground level. Even more significant about this particular tomb is that "Mama Hatun" was a female Turkish tribal leader who ruled for ten years from 1192-1202; her real name was Firdevs. Her rule was an anomaly representing the power of some women in early Islamic society, before the extreme patriarchy, still prevalent in Turkey, took complete hold. The nearby caranvansaray was locked on this day; it was being prepared for a wedding like the one we crashed in another caravansaray near Antakya on an earlier trip.

Erzurum

This stop was a repeat for Larry, where he had delivered a lecture in mid-winter just before a heavy snowfall. Erzurum is notable for its severe winters; the altitude increases dramatically from West to East in Turkey. Now late spring, the weather was terrific, and we were able to visit some of the sites Larry had already seen, but this time with flowers rather than snow. Erzurum is also a very conservative town. The restaurant where we ate was the first I’d been in that had two separate dining rooms—one for men only, and one for families. The other room was not designated for women only, since women were always expected to be with their husbands or close male family members, or with other women doing errands, not lounging around in restaurants.

While visiting the huge Cifte Minareli Madrasah, with its open courtyard and gorgeous, elaborate stonework, we saw another tour of English speaking tourists who featured in our remaining visit to the East. In the 13th century, when this building was constructed, medreses were centers of intellectual activity, not just religious instruction, as they became more recently; this one is the largest medrese in Anatolia. The kumbet, or tomb, attached to the rear of the building was also the largest tomb of the period. Notable about the building is the exquisite carved stonework which, in some places, remained unfinished due to the interruption of Mongol raids.

Next we visited the Congress Building, where the 1919 Congress of Erzurum, convened by Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk), played a significant role in planning the War of Independence and the creation of today’s Turkish Republic.

Following this, we stepped into a Seljuk house/museum, a first on both our trips to Turkey. This large two story house was flat-topped, with windows flush with the outer walls, very different from Ottoman homes with their varying vertical planes. The lower floor was the "museum" area, decorated with copper and ceramic artifacts, mostly in the kitchen. The fireplace was huge and reflective of the architecture of the time. The biggest surprise was the ceiling in the kitchen. In the center of the otherwise flat ceiling rose a comb of interlocking wooden planks, reminding me in their design of a variation on my favorite "log cabin" quilt design, although instead of being square, the designs had multiple sides—maybe a dozen or so.

Not realizing that the upstairs was the living area of the young family who owned the building, Larry and I climbed the crooked, rickety stairs, to find a sleeping child in one of the rooms. Oops!

It has been nearly two months between the visit to Erzurum and the writing of today’s blog entry. On our itinerary two other sites are listed: the Tas Caravanserai, and Yakutiye Madrasah Museum. My pictures for the last few stops in Erzurum are confusing to me after all this time. There is obviously a citadel, with a former minaret converted to a bell tower by Russian occupiers and a view of the opposing Russian fortress. There is a beautiful mosque interior, and another building with a ceiling like the one we saw in the house. Which photos belong to which site (except for the citadel which is not actually listed on the itinerary) remains a mystery to me after all this time, reflecting not only my travel fatigue at the time, but also my faded memories since then. Sigh.

During a short period of free time at the end of the day, while Larry and I sat in an outdoor cafe drinking tea, we heard English being spoken at the table next to us. There were four people from the tour group we saw earlier. The tour was an Australian one, with kangaroo decals on their bus. Jane and David, who were on a seven week tour of the country, were particularly friendly. Before boarding our bus again, we determined that we were staying a different hotel from theirs, so we bid them "iyi yolculuklar," or "bon voyage."

Our hotel that evening was one of two five star hotels on our seven day tour. This one is a ski resort; Erzurum is a popular ski center in winter. The other hotels ranged from passable to nearly awful. But tonight, while I swim in a wonderful indoor pool, Larry uses the gym; it is too hot for either of us to consider the sauna. The dinner is great – our favorite, an open buffet -- and remains in our memory during the dinners of most of the remaining tour—meat, meat and more meat (meaning Larry ate a lot of rice and eggplant, and I ate more chicken in one week than I normally do in several months).

Despite our fatigue and the redundancy of the Erzurum visit for Larry, this was a good start to our long tour of the elusive far eastern end of Turkey, an area that was inaccessible fifteen years ago, but recently opened to tourists. We are very glad to have finally made it to this end of the country.