a trip to the dark sea of the world [part I]

Days 1 and 2: Sunday July 15, 2007 and Monday July 16, 2007

My trip to the Black Sea region of Turkey with dearest Tiffin was a somewhat spontaneous thing. While at Kerkenes we had discussed traveling together after the dig, but we weren’t sure where we’d trek around. So, on July 15^th, Tiffin showed up in Ankara and we had to decide where to go. Her departure from Turkey wasn’t until the July 25^th, giving us a whopping ten days to play around with.

So many options! Beach? Yoga-hippy communities in the middle of nowhere? Black Sea? Mountains? Hot? Cold? Ruins? Gah! We barely knew where to start. Lucky for us, Tuna and Ahmet had suggested the Kackar Mountains and the Black Sea as being the best. After doing a little guidebook reading we had to agree with them as it sounded awesome. So, we decide to catch an overnight bus that evening to Erzurum.

Of course, we made the decision on the fly [around noon o’clock] and just planned to go with the flow...

sidenote #1: As I’ve traveled in Turkey I’ve realized that that is the only way to do it here—significant planning is not particularly worthwhile. It took awhile for me to accept that approach—to just get on a bus, end up in a place…with absolutely no plan—but it’s one of the best character traits I’ve evolved since being here. Admittedly, I still lapse back to my second-by-second sickeningly detailed planning ways [maybe more as a procrastination technique/way to use the backs of all those rip-off calendar pages than anything else?], but I’ve definitely mellowed out a bunch since being here. Granted, I can’t deny that having a decent guidebook is key—they are helpful for figuring out where to begin and can have useful maps/historical background—but, you can usually only trust them as far as you can chuck them. It’s best to just…go...and have one in your backpack.

Conveniently, Robert was also staying at my place when Tiffin arrived—he decided to make a quick trek out to Ani after the dig and, though I couldn’t go with him, I was able to give him a place to leave bags and restore his sanity [two 16-hour bus rides in four days takes it out of you!]. He was heading back to the U.S. the evening Tiffin came to town, so we gals went with him to the otogar that afternoon.

After dropping Robert at the HAVAS airport shuttle we went find us some bus tickets. We were planning to start our trip in Barhal, a tiny town on the eastern side of the Kackar [cach-car] Mountains. Unsurprisingly, there are no direct buses to Barhal or the next closest town, Yusufeli [yoosoofehlee; Joseph’s hand], but the man selling us our bus tickets said that he would make absolutely sure we get to Yusufeli:

“Problem yok. Merak etme!”
“There is no problem. Don’t worry!”

Well, that was a relief—I was a bit worried that my Turkish wasn’t going to cut it out East, so having the help in place would be great.

Hoorah!
We were excited. Our bus departed at 7:30 pm, so we decided to go to Kizilay and see if the backpacking store was open—I didn’t really want to drag around a duffel bag for ten days. Unfortunately, however, it was closed. Sunday. Bloody Sunday!

After that failure we went back to my apartment and packed. At that point we also decided that, although we didn’t really have a plan it might be wise to get a room reservation in advance for, at least, the first night. It would not be cool to go to the middle of nowhere and find that there was no where to sleep except outside with the bears. Not cool at all.

So, we took care of that, put together a spectacular trail mix using all my dried fruits and nuts and the kilo of dried white mulberries [yum!] that Tiffin so kindly brought from Istanbul, ate the last dregs of food in my fridge, and lumbered back to the otogar.

We arrived at the otogar with plenty of time to do a some people watching before our bus was to depart. As we were mindlessly staring at people around us, a random fellow came up to us:

“Yardimciyim!” [yardumjihyihm]
“I’m a helper!”

I was completely confused by this and immediately began to panic at the thought that we were about to embark on a trip to English-free territory I was the primary Turkish speaker…if I couldn’t figure out what this guy was talking about…well, let’s just say it was going to be a looooong and miserable ten days.

But, he seemed a kind, if not a bit too serious or sad, guy; round and meek and himself a bit confused by us. And, after he repeated it a few times I finally understood—the guy at the desk had enlisted the driver to personally help us figure out how to get to Yusufeli. We later learned that the driver lives in Yusufeli…so, unlike other yardimcis I’ve had, this guy actually did know how to get us there—how lucky were we?! Excited, and relieved by this resolution, we hopped on the bus to begin our adventure! Ooh goody!

The first leg of the ride was better than I expected. We actually stopped at the Sorgun reststop, which felt somewhat strange as we weren’t continuing on to Kerkenes but, rather, we’d be blowing right through. Luckily, we got over the nostalgia bit and enjoyed a spectacular bowl of ezogelin corbasi [ehzohgayleen chorbasuh; Ezo the Bride soup, a delightfully spiced red lentil-bulgar soup]. That stop came around 10:30 pm and afterwards we fell asleep.

Overnight buses are the pits if you don’t get any sleep. This ride wasn’t too bad, but Tiffin said later that the attendant kept trying to wake me up because my feet were on a seat or something, which is totally yasak [yahsahk, prohibited!]. They are such Scrooges, those attendants!

But despite a crick in my neck and insatiable-unexplainable knee pain I was able to sleep until ~5:30 am, when I woke up to find us rumbling through a desolate and beautiful gorge that seemed to engulf us completely. Unfortunately, my camera was not easily accessible, so I have no documentation of the surroundings.

It was silent inside the bus which, combined with the gray and drizzling weather outside, provoking in me an odd warm-but-melancholy-and-somewhat-eerie feeling...but that may have just been the buzzy sleepiness talking. Whatever it was, waking up to that sight just bubbled up the excitement that always come with spontaneous travel and new environments.

And then, after 13 hours, we finally arrived in Erzurum circa 8:30 am. As we got off the bus we were immediately accosted by people screaming out destinations and trying to get us onto another bus. Pah, typical otogar behavior.

It was cold and rainy so Tiffin and I huddled together with our bags until the driver came over, telling us to follow him. He brought us to another guy and told him that we wanted to go to Yusufeli. The guy grabbed our bags and put us on a minibus. It was such a blissfully simple transition—without the driver’s help I think we would have been entirely too shell-shocked to move anywhere. Then we would have been stuck at the Erzurum otogar until the next day with nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep and it would have been super depressing and all…

Maybe an exaggeration, but the point is this: the help was more than just blandly appreciated.

The minibus to Yusufeli was slated to leave at 9 am, but we left a bit late. This prompted some [loud] grumbling from a few passengers. But, when we finally did leave, the bus was filled to the brim. Since the next bus wasn’t until 2pm, I can understand why they were willing to stand for three hours.

The variety of people and lack of places served to make the ride quite interesting and best described as a constant game of musical chairs prompted by people getting on and off. Additional entertainment came in the form of two cute, but pompous, little boys.

As we left the Big City we quickly entered into a landscape I can’t even begin to describe. It was absolutely stunning and a wholly unexpected sight. Basically, we drove along a deep river gorge spotted with wooden houses, sandwiched between clear flowing waters and fierce/awesome mountains, which provided some of the most outstanding displays of geologic structure I have ever seen. The sight was entirely overwhelming in such a good way.

Including the Kackar Moutains in our trip—especially the south-southeast side—was one of the best decisions we could have made. You see, there is a new dam project that has been passed which will entail flooding Yusufeli and the surrounding valleys. Inhabitants will be relocated higher in the moutains, but the access, views, and charm of the area will surely be devastated.

sidenote #2: A similar thing is scheduled to happen to Hasankeyf in southeast Turkey, but that has the added issue of flooding a major archaeological site.

Upon arriving in Yusufeli we were again privileged to be in the company of unnecessarily helpful people, as our driver immediately directed us to someone who would take us to Barhal—our final stop. We loaded our bags in the minibus and the driver told us that we’d be leaving around 3 pm. That gave us 3 hours to explore!

Now, Yusufeli is not very big. Granted, it’s bigger than Tiffin or I ever expected…but that’s not saying much. Nonetheless, we were shocked to see how busy and bustling it was. It was particularly crazy due to the July 22^nd elections quickly closing in. Yusufeli, being one of the bigger towns in the area, was thereby victim to incessant campaigning. Every persons' ears were being constantly bombarded by party campaign buses going back and forth along the main street, belting out obnoxious jingles and slogans at deafening decibels. And, of course, jingles being jingles, they get stuck in your head. Let’s just say I was not happy with the tune that I was humming for the rest of the day.

Needless to say, three hours was a long time to waste in Yusufeli. It had been rainy and freezing since we had arrived in Erzurum—weather I was entirely unprepared for after the heat wave in Ankara—and I couldn’t feel a good part of my body. So, we found a little tea garden where we indulged in our first cup of Black Sea tea, shared a karasik tost [kahrahshik toast; mixed melted cheese and meat sandwich], and people watched—i.e. identified tourists and guessed nationalities. There were a surprising number of them, mostly German, we supposed.

At some point, a young fellow came up to us and started speaking Turkish very quickly. I couldn’t understand him and he eventually figured out that English would be a more effective approach with us. So, he went on to explain to us that he (somehow) heard we were heading to Barhal and that he was a guide, happy and ready to provide us tours around the mountains!!

Oy vey. It’s one thing to have it happen in Istanbul, it’s another thing when this kind of stuff is happening in serious middle-of-nowhere land. But, we took his card and told him that if we decided to take a guided trek we’d be sure to call. And we were sincere.

Eventually he left and we decided to walk around a bit. Again, not many places to go, but we crossed the bridge over the furiously tumbling Barhal Cayi [chay; river, or tea!] and moseyed along the other side. We got back to the van with 45 minutes left to spare and we stocked up on cucumbers, tomatoes, and the ever necessary gum. Back at the minibus durak [deurahk; stop] we couldn’t seem to find our bus. Amongst all the incessant noise and screaming campaign trucks we finally found our driver, who said the bus was moved around the corner.

We decided that there was really no way to waste any more time in Yusufeli, so we just waited by the bus. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, our crazy potential guide guy showed up and started talking to us. It eventually came out that he really really wanted to recommend this [according to him] super great pension—Barhal Pension [owned, by pure chance, by his great friend!]—but we already had a place to stay.

That didn't deter him, however, and he went on to talk about his history as a rafting and trekking guide—a whopping nine years—and all the different people he met along the way. Most of the tourists that come to the Kackar Mountains, he said, are Israeli. Continuing to ramble, he began to recount a bad experience he had the previous year with an Israeli woman:

He was guiding a rafting trip down the Coruh River. It was a rough day and the rapids were at riskier-than-usual levels. There was an Israeli woman on the trip who was acting like a know-it-all—she’d rafted in Nepal, so she knew what to do. At some point in the trip, the woman fell into the water and didn’t listen to the guide’s instructions. She called for him to help, claiming that he had told her not to swim. He argued with her, saying they were in calm water and she could swim to the boat. She refused and, eventually, he jumped in to get her. They entered a rapidy section and she panicked, grabbing onto the guide and thrusting him underwater:

“I was sure I was going to die in that moment. I saw my life flashing before my eyes.”

Eventually, he caught her attention…by grabbing her breast. Offended, she let go and he came back up to the surface. They got back to the boat, but:

“She didn’t even thank me for saving her. She just said ‘where are my sunglasses? You lost my sunglasses!'.”

I guess the experience ended up jading his opinion of Israelis and, though he doesn’t refuse to guide them, he’s not exactly what you’d call kind in talking about them.

Tiffin and I didn’t really know how to respond, it was an uncomfortable situation. Much to our relief, the guy left and we decided it would be best to get in the van and close the door. We were quite happy when the driver came over and finally started up the engine.

We started the trek to Barhal with five passengers. It was a windy and poorly paved road, but the scenery was from a different world…liiiiike, Heaven?

Our first stop was the village of Sarigol 1 [sahreuhgeul; yellow lake], where we dropped a guy off. We then turned around and headed into the depths of an intense forest. Tiffin and I had been sure that we had been on the route to our pension and we were getting excited about how remote and beautiful it was. The forest was so dense and thick, filled with hidden homes, gates of bundled sticks, wild grapevines, and small plots of bright yellow sunflowers that glowed brightly against the damp forest greens. Throughout our trip that day, the colors had just been so vivid, intensified by the wet weather and dreary flat sky.

The road was a mess, but even back in these depths of nowhere we came upon DHP and CHP campaign flags strewn amongst the trees. Campaigning like this, managing to inch its way into every corner of the country—and let me assure you, this was a corner—made it clear that the upcoming election was really no joke.

Passing half-an-hour along this forest- and flag-filled nearly non-existent road, Tiffin and I were ready to be done with transportation already. You can imagine our dismay when we finally stopped, picked up three women and an old man, then turned around and headed back down the impossible road to Sarigol 1. There, we picked up the chap we had left before and a few more people.

Sigh…now it was cramped.

Twisting, turning, stopping, dropping-off, picking up,…more musical chairs and Hot Potato with Baby,…two hours later we finally get to Barhal. The van stopped and, thinking we had arrived at our destination, Tiffin and I got out.

“No! 15 kilometers further!,” chuckled our dear driver.

Ok, back in.

As we waited to get moving again, one of the ladies in back started to talk to us. She had traveled from Istanbul, her sister came from Antalya, but they were both originally from Sarigol 1. They agreed that it was awfully cold. Really, it was the middle of July and I was in desperate need of some long-underwear!

Tiffin and I couldn’t imagine that people actually lived there during the winter! We had considered rafting down the Coruh River, but then we looked at the furious rapids flowing next to the van and noticed the pure aqua-tinted crystal clearness—tell-tale sign of frigid water sourced from the Kackar Dag glacier. Then Tiffin put her hand in to confirm…and that's when we decided against the rafting.

But, I digress.

So, we got back in the car and headed up the hill some more. Again we stopped and I wasn’t sure if it was our stop. I asked, the driver laughed, and said:

“No, we’re waiting for a friend.”

Always chuckling at us, that man was...

We then proceeded to wait around in “town” for [at least] another half-hour. Finally, we started up again, packed to the brim with people once more. And then we arrived at our pension—Karahan Pension—and, with painful unfurling of curled up legs alongside audible sighs of relief, we descended from the van.

The driver gave us our bags then headed off. We looked at the sign. 100 meters thataway. OK!

Orrrr not so OK. We turned our heads in the direction the arrow pointed and our jaws dropped. There in front of us was a steep rocky slope with no significant trail marked. Goodness gracious! The last bit just can’t be easy can it?!

Slowly we started. All of a sudden, a group of three kids popped up behind us, including a very blond-very thin-very not Turkish looking-very spunky girl. The girl was quite intimidating and, it seemed, had definitely been raised in the mountains/was the ring leader. Nonetheless, there was something quite different about her that just didn’t fit in with the surroundings.

They offered to help with our bags and I stupidly said “no, we can do it,” forgetting that we were at nearly 3000 meters altitude, tired, and attempting to cross over slippery rocks with heavy bags. She shrugged and we trundled clumsily forward, almost dead by the time we reached the top. My lungs hurt for at least another hour after.

It seemed rather remarkable to us that the owners and workers at the pension could carry things up the slippery hill all the time. And then we found out about the pulley system...yeah, at the bottom of the slope there was a motorized pulley that you could put luggage or supplies onto and it's pulled up to the house. Cool...but that information cometh a bit too late!

At the top we talked to the owner’s son, Abu Bekir, and sorted things out. I had made a reservation the night before, but some things seemed a bit confused. It was particularly awkward because the other kids were surrounding us and there was some confusion over what language to speak. After five minutes of complete misunderstanding amongst us all, we decided to speak Turkish and settled things.

He brought us to our room which was…cozy. The bathroom was right next to us, but a treacherous set of wooden stairs needed to be braved to reach it. Really, the whole place was not made for nighttime walking. The view from our window was nice--looking right into the vegetable garden, we could see the family picking ingredients for dinner.

It was about 6pm at that point [we managed to just barely miss the 24 hours of travel mark!] and after settling in and layering up, Tiffin and I took a walk up the road. It was beautiful but cold and after a short while we came back. Abu Bekir brought some tea up and I warmed myself under the bedcovers until dinner was served at 7:30.

Dinner was wonderful—all homemade and hearty. The meal consisted of soup and salad, dolma, kofte and potatoes, pasta, and karpuz [carpooz; watermelon]! The soup was my personal favorite, primarily because of it’s physical temperature—hot!—but the flavor was great, too.

On our walk we had passed a number of people walking in the opposite direction who, we discovered at dinner, were all staying at our pension. There was an intense French family and a group of Israelis. Apparently, there was quite a large group of Israelis staying there, but they all kept Kosher so they cooked their own food somewhere else.

After dinner, Abu Bekir asked for our passports, so we traipsed back to the room to get them, nearly dying on some slippery rocks. Then it was off to bed, an early night because we were cold and super sleepy.

All in all, it was a great start to the trip. We couldn't have asked for transportation and transitions to be any easier. The first day was a real show of that famous Turkish hospitality.