After a walk around Erzurum this morning to see the rest of the monuments, including three early twelfth century mausoleums, we left our parking spot, lost signal on everything, and ended up in a busy market place – good start!
Once we had escaped the city, we drove through a picturesque gorge ending up at Narman, where there are some stunning red rock formations that have been eroded over centuries to give weird and wonderful shapes. (Thanks Jo Gannon!)
We had a walk around but not much in the way of paths and it was trying to rain, so we came back to the van which was absolutely covered in flies – a whole plague of them! More biblical stuff 🤣
Got on the route for Kars and drove through some stunning scenery for the rest of the afternoon. The rock colours and countryside changing on every bend. Crops of sunflowers replacing the melons we’ve seen so far. Roadside stalls with the flower heads and some enormous cabbages everywhere.
Some of the villages were very poor looking. Houses with tin roofs that were little more than shacks – God knows how they survive the bitter winters here.
Then, it all changed suddenly. The rain became really heavy, then turned to hail. The road is now full of icy slush, the sky is black, thunder, lightening, and we’re in the middle of nowhere!
The best option seemed to be to keep going slowly to the next town. As is usual there was absolutely nowhere to stop anyway. The all weather tyres kept us gripped to the road thankfully.
It cleared up a bit just before we reached Kars which doesn’t look very inspiring at the moment.
We were just levelling the van up when a local man stopped to talk as the heavens opened again. Using google translate he said ‘it’s ok to spend the night here and did we have any requests?’
I wanted to say ‘Yes, a large bottle of wine please!’ but controlled myself and thanked him for his kindness.
