Hotel Bayram Van

... smoke aga&#305;n. The smoke then slowly beg&#305;n to d&#305;sappear too. If you have any theory on th&#305;s please let me know! <br><br>Oct 13<br>I woke up a few t&#305;mes &#305;n the morn&#305;ng to go to the to&#305;let and my worst fears are conf&#305;rmed, I have d&#305;arrhea. The good th&#305;ng was that my bus to Van &#305;s only at 2pm. So I had an early breakfast, ate as much of the local goat cheese I could muster (wh&#305;ch tasted horr&#305;ble) and ...

... area. So we didn&#8217;t go to all the places we wanted to go, and felt that we scheduled too many days in it, but it was too late to change plan at that point because we had booked tickets to fly from the city to Istanbul. Travel in area off-the-beaten-track does have its drawback. <br><br>Luckily we met a school teacher with his family vacationing here when we visited the huge and impressive 3000 years old castle on a hill top ...

... by randomly placed buildings of no particular, distinguishing, unifying style, the large intervening spaces being either a sort of weed infested wasteland, or a once haphazardly developed landscape now left largely unmaintained. I walked around that landscape for perhaps an hour and a half.<br><br>And, no Van cats to be seen.<br><br>Back in the city I went to where I had seen the cat previously, in a tea garden at the base of the Van Castle. No luck there either.<br><br ...

... sprouted in the fields and Kurdish farmers baled hay in the late afternoon sun. It felt a bit like the Turkish version of the Sound of Music. The bus followed the road around the lakeside for about another two hours. Finally the city of Van came into view, bringing the nine hour journey to end. <br><br>Van is known as the resort town of Eastern Turkey &#8211; you can swim in the lake in summer and ski in the mountains around the lake in winter (something like the ...

Traveled from Ýstanbul to Van, a small cýty ýn Turkey's southeast, on the VanGölu Express traýn. Thýs was my fýrst major trýp by traýn and I must admýt- I'm not a terrýbly býg fan of 'slow travel'. The tourýst agency ýn Ýstanbul quoted the rýde to be about 40 hours, but ýt ended up beýng more lýke 50. And for some damn reason there wasn't a food car! There were some memorable moments, such as when a group of youngsters ýn a small výllage ran wýth the traýn (really ...

... and I went to bed with a funny tummy from my malaria tablets. My tent was touched by frost the next morning and I was still feeling yuck from my pills, so I took it easy on the truck the next day while most of the group visited the strange castle in Hosap. Adam bought me some watermelon for lunch though, which did make me feel a bit better. :o)

... the border only opened at a certain time and therefore we couldnt get to the checkpoint too early as this would definitely raise a few eyebrows. Unfortunately the Turkish guys spoke very little English so we were left to guess what was happening most of the time. Fortunately, our plan worked. We went through the checkpoint successfully. The Turks didnt even have to unload all of their candy this time. Even the military guys were nice, unlike ...

... but to take a taxi to a town called Orumiyeh where I should be able to find a bus to Van (that is if the bus station is open there) which is a town in Turkey. After saying goodbye to the guys, I jumped into a taxi with a very nice and young couple from New Zealand (Miles and Fran) who were traveling the world. It was great as it cut down the cost for each of us. When we got to Orumiyeh, we were glad to see that the bus station was open. We went to visit a few ...

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... It all takes place through PKK territory, so they don't have to deal with Turkish or Iranian soldiers most of the time. If anyone thinks that the free dinner (after spending the day with him) and the offer of petrol is at all sketchy, it's really not. In eastern Turkey we've been meeting lots of very friendly Kurds. Everyone gives you free tea; I was offered free tea at a gas station while waiting for the credit ...