Joe's Trip to Turkey 2001 (Part 4 of 5)

Save This Page | Stumble It!

Joe's Trip to Turkey 2001 (Part 4 of 5)

Turkey


Van is also known as the home of the Van cats. Said felines are lovely and white. They also have one brown and one blue eye. These cats are scarce and much researched. On the way out of town we stopped off at the government's Van cat research center. I didn't notice a hell of a lot of research going on, but I did see oodles of cats, all white. The whole mess o' cats looked kinda like a flock of white leghorns. There was a large cyclone fence cage with a roof, sorta like a chicken coop. There was a whole mess of cats inside, all spaced apart, warily eyeing their fellow cats but happy to see us. We scratched their little kitty heads through the fencing for awhile and then went inside to see more of the incarcerated felines.

We were directed to wear little blue plastic shoe booties before entering. Once inside, we could not actually hold any cats though we wanted to, the keepers were too worried about us transmitting tourist germs (or whatever cat keepers worry about) to their cats. There were specific rooms for breeding cats, nursing cats and teenage cats. There were rooms where the cats could retreat to when the stress of being famous got to them. These rooms had normal couches and armchairs with nobody present to shoo them off.

You can only look at imprisoned cats for so long, so before we got catatonic, we drove onwards out of town. This is rugged, treeless country here, a place where I will not be moving to anytime soon. After too many hours of driving, we made it to Dogubayazit, a frontier town along the border with Iran. We call it "doggy biscuit". Doggy Biscuit is creepy, exciting and dangerous. Loads of Turkish Kommandos, loads of Kurds. I wouldn't want to be there after dark. The town has Kurdish refugees hanging around along with shiny black Mercedes' and BMW's that are (most likely) owned by the smugglers.

This is a town that makes its money off of smuggling, and obviously-smuggled goods in the shops are openly displayed. There are a lot of odd things too, items that obviously "fell off the back of the truck". I passed up on the chance to buy a pallet of very nice glass crystal fruit dish sets. A set of six, $2.25, made in Iran. I suppose that a quantity discount could be arranged since they had hundreds of sets. (I will be your broker) Fellow travelers were ecstatic with their good luck at being able to buy a carton of Marlboro Lights for cheap cheap. They were not so pleased when these smokes turned out to be counterfeit and "light" only in name. (I got a pack to send to our pals at Phillip Morris)

We were not there to buy smuggled goods (though I almost bought a box of 10 thermometers), we were on our way to see �shak Pasha Sayar�. Work begun on this palace in 1685 and was completed in 1784 by a Kurdish chieftain. It is, by any measure, pretty damn cool.

The tour hosts had chosen the most dodgy accommodation that they could find, the "motel" portion of a campground that is adjacent to the palace. This motel has only five rooms so I had to bunk up with my least favorite travel companion, the only schlub on the trip. We took over the whole place, save the middle room which was occupied by two prostitutes.

I retreated to the "Turkish style" (squatter) toilet next door. I was suffering from a sudden case of Turkey Tummy, the result of a poor lunch choice earlier, and had less than accurate trajectory. I hosed what I could down and watched the resulting brown water and poopettes drift underneath the door and straight into the shower just across from my stall. Embarrassed, literally and figuratively, I hosed down what I could out of the shower and made a note to wear sandals when I showered later that night.

The tour went all pear-shaped after that. After our experience near "Doggy Biscuit", nothing went right after that. A very long drive through the mountains became hours longer because a road (the only road) was closed due to construction. At 9:30 at night. Closed. Then, our hotel reservations were not honored. Well, maybe they were, we never found out because nobody would answer the door. We eventually found another hotel after midnight.

Read about all of Joe's adventures in Turkey!
Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five


Save This Page | Stumble It!