All along the watchtower

 

Erzurum might be nowhere, especially out of season, but it afforded us a rest. The hotel laid on a sumptuous evening meal and an even better breakfast. Now is our last full day in Turkey and we have a nice gentle ride to Kars. It's still averaging an altitude of over 1800m, but nowhere near as cold as yesterday. The rivers are all carrying yesterday's precipitation. 

Everybody has been really nice with us  - apart from one stroppy shop keeper in Istanbul to whom we didn't respond quickly enough to his, 'Hi where are you from greeting'. And being ripped off on lunch yesterday but even the ripping off would not have been enough to buy a pint of beer in London, so does it really matter? We have the impression that the Turks are worried about their tourism and the effect that recent terrorist activity has had on it. We also wonder whether people are put off by the political situation. There doesn't seem to be that many tourists about. Otherwise everyone we have met has been super friendly and we have drawn the attention of most people in the villages we have passed through.

We rode through a super canyon and today we have passed from sheep scenery to cow scenery.

 

Having arrived in Kars which wasn't very far, we went out to see the ruined medieval city of Ani on the border with Armenia.  It was a staging post for the Silk Road as there was a bridge across the canyon there. Apparently it was the city of 1,001 churches, but everything is ruined now. From the tourist panels it was not clear why it had been destroyed  - we also think there was a large Armenian history to the place too - but that wasn't mentioned. Armenia was present though as we could see the watchtowers. The whole place was wonderfully eerie with hardly anybody there at all - the coach parking was empty. It must be an archaeologists dream - but they seemed to be missing too, maybe they were working in road construction now.