Van: Modern Look to the East

Armenian Church, Akdamar Island

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So I arrived into Van on the bus from Hasankeyef. The approaches around Lake Van brought me around beautiful peaks flecked with unmelted snow. My information from the hotel in Hasankeyef turned out slightly inaccurate. Instead of a 4 hour journey along which I planned to stop to see Akdamar Island, it turned out to be 8 hours, so I just headed straight for Van. The city actually had street signs and I spotted some familiar street names on the final leg of the bus route. the signs were flimsy looking attempts, looking like each one was sponsored with a company name after the street address. Better than the absence of signs that there is in the rest of the east.

The main streets here were more modern than anything I had come across in eastern Turkey. They really were full of young people scattering in all directions, and really buzzing after dark. This was I think the first I had seen of life in a city after dark since I started traveling. I went to an internet cafe and sat randomly beside a very well spoken, neat guy that teaches English. After buying me a coffee, he had a difficult question for me. Did I believe in internet love? At first I had no idea what he was talking about and was on the edge of me seat to clear out the door! But his mission to the internet, was to correspond with his internet girlfriend of two years in England. He has still to meet her. 'She's very demanding', he says almost as if they were living together. And he didn't even seem that strange!!

Armenian Church, Akdamar Island (Just Starting to Lash Rain)

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Next day, the main aim was to get to Akdamar Island about an hour from Van. I wake to find a beautiful clear sky and head to find the minibus to get me to the boat. I meet a Turkish guy when headed for the bus that is also headed for the island and end up spending the rest of the day with him. He was stationed in the town on his mandatory military service, but had only a week left. Then he was free to get back to being an engineer! Fikret was an very intelligent guy and a great source of Turkish scandal.

He had a real distrust for the Kurds, blaming them for most of the trouble in the country, dismissing their claims that they can't speak their language or practice their culture. Hard to know who to believe? Very unusually for a Muslim, both himself and his father ate pork. He actually shouldn't have been going outside the city limits during his free time, but he didn't care. That afternoon he brought me to a restaurant that is also in a part of town that is off limits for him. 'If they ask, I'm a tourist', he says. That was before teaching me how to play two ball billiards!!

As we get off the minibus going to the boat for the island, the clouds are starting to close in. The weather really does change in an instant when it wants to in the area. I got to the island, but being the only sod in the place with short sleeves, I was freezing. Being Sunday, there were lots of locals heading out for the days also. The island is famed for the Armenian church on it, dating to 921. The carvings outside are still in good condition depicting well known biblical stories. The rain really started coming down after about 20 minutes, so there was only one thing to do, flee!

I had intended heading for Dogubayzit that evening to get ready for my crossing to Iran, but being Sunday I was stranded as the buses weren't running. Departure was planned for first thing the next morning.

That evening I was on the net, and can only describe as amusing what I witnessed from the window. A fight broke out on the street below between two guys. One had a motorcycle helmet on, and the other guy was trying to get a whack at him with a pick axe! Looked like something out of Laurel And Hardy! They disappeared fairly quickly once they heard a police siren coming.