Dogubeyazit

Full set of photos for Dogubeyazit, Diyabit and the trip back to Erzurum

By the time we got to Dogubeyazit (pronounced with a soft ‘g’) we changed our plans slightly and were now going to travel back to Erzurum with Nuri rather than spend extra time in Dogubeyazit. After five days on the road we […]

Kars and Ani

Full set of photos for Kars, Ani and Igdir

Kars, the biggest city we had been in since Erzurum, is the setting for Orhan Pamuk’s novel titled Snow. Kar means snow in Turkish, which might just be the author’s play on words. The Turks don’t seem to think of Kars as being called Snow City […]

Georgian Valley

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 […]

Kackar mountains

Full set of photos of the trip to Yaylalar and Yaylalar itself

In the morning we drove from Yusufeli to a tiny village with a stream running through it. The previous night we told Nuri that we would like to do a bit more walking so we parked the car in the village and walked […]

Yusufeli: Doin’ the Yu

Full photo sets for Erzurum to Yusufeli and Yusufeli itself.

Our 60-something local tour guide Nuri picked us up from our hotel promising that each day of our tour would be better than the one before. He had a strange driving style. His seat was so far forward that he could have steered the car […]

Erzurum: Turkey’s freezer

Full set of photos from Trabzon to Erzurum and Erzurum itself.

We met Nuri on the corner of the main street in Erzurum near the old castle and the double broken minaret mosque. The latter are major landmarks in this, the coldest town in Turkey, which is surrounded by tall snow covered mountains. The Russians […]

Trabzon: Halva heaven

Full set of Trabzon photos

Full set of Sumela monastery photos

We weren’t expecting much from Trabzon thanks to the guidebook lowering our expectations, making it sound like a working port town full of sailors and prostitutes. For all we know they are there in big numbers but the town also has a large and […]

Samsun and Ordu: The Black Sea Coast

Here’s the full set of our photos from the Black Sea Coast

If I had followed the tourist trail strictly we should have gone to Sinop next, the start of the interesting bit of the Turkish Black Sea Coast. As it was I couldn’t find a direct bus from Safronbolu to Sinop and it seemed […]

Safranbolu: It’s Otto, man

Full set of Safranbolu photos here

The small town of Safranbolu, huddled in a valley and surrounded by snow-topped mountains, looks like it has not changed since the Ottoman empire collapsed. Unlike much of Turkey, where the pressure of population growth has seen bland concrete apartments constructed, Safronbolu has managed to retain its original charm […]

Canakkale

Full set of Cannakale, Troy and Bandirma photos are hiding behind the links

In travelling from Istanbul to Eceabat, the Gallipoli peninsula and Gockeada island we had been exclusively in the small European side of Turkey. The vast majority of the country is on the Asian side which is anything south of the Black Sea. […]