Full set of photos from Yaylalar to Borcka and Borcka to Kars
Before getting to the Georgian Valley, a remote area of Eastern Turkey famed for its old buildings and – unsurprisingly – Georgian heritage, we drove back down the mountain to Yusufeli to see a church we had missed on the way up called Barhal. It was Nuri’s favourite church in the area. “It’s not beautiful, it’s crazy beautiful,” he told us. Nuri could apply this sentence structure to any adjective. “It’s not good, it’s crazy good.” “It’s not busy, it’s crazy busy.” It turns out that he was on the money with this church which is definitely crazy beautiful. In even more spectacular mountain scenery that we had seen previously this remote church is also falling down slowly but the way it frames the sky only adds to its beauty. If we were the religious type, or even just to be reflective humanists, this would be the kind of place we’d like to be contemplative in – a soaring space with the dome of the sky for a ceiling.
We then had a long drive through what ordinarily would be a spectacular valley but it is now full of dusty roads and construction vehicles as they assemble more dams for Turkey’s hydro-electric power. We had stopped for a toilet break and Nuri gave Sarah the hurry-up saying that we had to be at a certain point on the road before it was closed for an hour while they did construction work. He then chose a very odd time to have a tea break and we ended up just missing the deadline and waiting in the sun for an hour for the road to open. Nuri! We ran out of time that day to drive up to the crazy beautiful lake near the Georgian border but we made an attempt the next day, taking in the half-submerged minaret of a drowned mosque on the way. In any event the road to the crazy beautiful lake was blocked by snow so we took some happy snaps of the snow and continued on our way. Even with all the construction work the valleys were rugged and beautiful, totally dry and rocky but towering above the road on either side.
We spent the previous evening in the town of Borcka (pronounced bore-ch-ka) where we had pide for dinner at a restaurant with Nuri’s uncle and Nuri’s friend, a hotel owner where we were not staying because as Nuri explained to everyone, “it wasn’t clean enough for us”. It was a very male Turkish evening of sitting and not saying very much. Sarah tried to get the conversation started by asking questions, as she does, but it didn’t take long for silence to resume its natural place. I was as happy as a pig in shit, eating the delicious piping hot pide, sprinkling chilli salt flakes on it, and saying nothing. Bizarrely Nuri suggested that the following day we could drive into Georgia (the border was not far away) but we demurred in favour of sticking to the schedule, avoiding the need to get visas and spend even more time with Nuri. The boys invited us to the town square for a drink which we politely declined, preferring our own quietude than sharing it with this random company.
In the end I think Nuri would have preferred it if we had stayed at the dirty hotel. Although the hotel we stayed at was reputedly newly built and a grand three stars it was already showing signs of wear. There were scuff marks on the walls, random piles of dirty laundry and abandoned glasses and room service trays bearing the evidence of people in party mode. Sure enough, at about 10pm the music kicked off downstairs sending a rumbling bass through the floor and during the night people drunkenly stumbled the corridors trying to find their rooms. I jammed my ear plugs in and didn’t sleep too badly, apart from some particularly intense yelling at some point during the night, but Sarah didn’t get a great night’s sleep and Nuri was wrecked the next morning, bemoaning the manners of his fellow guests. He had a dozen or so cups of tea and got back into driver mode without skipping a beat, but Sarah was on the edge of her seat as the day progressed knowing how tired Nuri was. There’s nothing like driving down the wrong side of the road at 150km/h with a driver who hasn’t had any sleep to enliven a road trip.
The photos from the Georgian valley will be quicker at illustrating its beauty. The gorge, castle and church were unique in their own way despite having echoes of what we had seen previously.
Another of Nuri’s habits was to tell us all about his friends. He is tenacious once he has made your acquaintance and told us how he called his Canadian friend Sharon regularly. She apparently visits with her family and friends every other year. Nuri massaged her with his 18 techniques which he learned from the best teacher in Turkey. He practices massage every now and then at his Grandfather’s village, when he’s not conducting tours or selling carpets. This village has the most medicinal water in all of Turkey. We were encouraged to contact Sharon if we were in Canada, and wondered if she lives in dread of calls from Nuri or his random ex-clients like us.
We bunkered down for the night in Kars (pronounced with a soft ‘s’) after having dinner with Nuri’s engineer friends, which was a little stilted as they didn’t speak English and we were catatonic after a long day’s drive. After all the hype about the super amazing DSI hotel in Kars that would be incredibly cheap and have the best breakfast ever, Nuri rang about it on our way into town and discovered that it was full. We really didn’t care about the hotel but it would have been nice to be spared the constant build-up to such a damp squib. At any rate we stayed at a nice new hotel which was having its grand opening the following morning. Worryingly for the future guests of the hotel, they couldn’t get the toilet in our room to stop running. I stuck a toilet brush in it to deaden the sound of the trickle somewhat and it was once again ear plugs in for a trip to the land of slumber.
Full set of photos from Yaylalar to Borcka and Borcka to Kars
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