To Sebinkarahisar.

It was the day I had the most concern about because I hoped to get to Sebinkarahisar in Giresun province. This would be by far the trip’s longest single journey and one that, if done the most direct way, would be for quite some distance along roads with light traffic and no minibuses. However, if things went to plan, I would travel via Sincan, Bolucan, Zara and Susehri. Minibuses should have existed from Zara, half way to Sebinkarahisar, but I had first to negotiate a long section of road with no minibuses. The roads went through mountains, so the scenery would be enjoyable.

The Belediye Hotel provided guests with a buffet breakfast, but, as I had expected, it was very conventional with not one item that lifted the spirit by being unanticipated. However, the tea was very good and I ate two boiled eggs and lots of bread just in case I was stuck in the middle of nowhere without a source of food. I also had a boiled egg in my rucksack for emergency purposes liberated from a breakfast a day or two earlier.

I walked to the road for Sincan and Zara, and started flagging lifts not far from the railway station. A few cars passed, but their drivers indicated that they were turning off to the left to the large steel works just north of Divrigi. After waiting about 20 minutes, a car drew to a halt and the driver, who worked at the steel works, gave me a lift as far as he was going, a distance of about 4 or 5 kilometres. I walked about a kilometre with the railway and steel works to my left, the latter belching out noxious fumes from chimneys rising high above large mounds of grey and black spoil, then a tractor stopped and its driver gave me a lift to where the road to Ilic and Erzincan led into a pretty valley to the east. Again I had to wait about 20 minutes, then a small lorry stopped and the driver and his companion gave me a lift to where a road went to Kizbeli and Kangal to the west. The driver and his companion were Alevis. They were going to a market in a settlement west of Sincan where they would set up their stall for the day, one selling all sorts of processed foodstuffs. At one point during our time together, the driver asked his companion to confirm they had packed some raki for the night. They had. Two bottles. When I was dropped at the road junction, the driver pressed on me a big bag of crisps, which, as will soon become apparent, proved most helpful, but not for me. Once I could no longer hear the lorry, I realised that my only obvious companions were cuckoos. Their rhythmic calls filled the silence.

The steel works, Divrigi.

The journey as far as the road junction, which was just beyond the small settlement of Sincan with its jandarma post, was only 30 kilometres, but, once past the steel works, we drove through delightful upland scenery. The road meandered as it ascended and descended. The land at low levels was green and fertile, the rivers were full of water and we passed a small coal mine.

The point at which I was dropped turned out to have very little traffic going my way, so I walked about a kilometre before a car stopped. The driver gave me a lift of about 3 kilometres to a meadow close to a river overlooked by mature trees. He and a friend had set up camp for the summer to look after their many beehives which had been arranged in lines in the long grass. I declined the offer of glasses of tea because I could tell that getting to Zara was going to prove a bit of a challenge. On the dashboard of the car was a box that once contained Romeo y Julieta cigars from Cuba. Honey, cigars and a love for the fresh air in upland locations: the man had taste. He was another Alevi.

Beehives, a few kilometres north-west of Sincan.

I walked another kilometre or so, then sought shelter from the sun among some trees beside the road. Big gaps in time now existed between each passing car, so I walked another 4 or 5 kilometres while stopping every 20 minutes to rest. It was only 10.30am, but Zara was still about 65 kilometres away. However, I was high in some beautiful mountains, my water bottle was full, I had some food in my rucksack, many wild flowers prospered in the long grass, lots of trees grew along the banks of a meandering stream, and bees and butterflies provided added visual interest.

North-west of Sincan.

North-west of Sincan.

At last, a car drew to a halt and a large man with a male companion gave me a lift of about 12 kilometres even higher into the mountains. We drew to a halt where a cesme in a very exposed situation with magnificent views in every direction stood just below the road. While the stone and plaster surround of the cesme had suffered the attention of graffiti artists, the hills, snow-smudged mountains, pasture and wild flowers looked sublime. We were just south of a pass through the mountains at 1,810 metres above sea level and the driver’s companion walked across the gently inclined meadow to the east to look for mushrooms. He had been away for about ten minutes when he shouted, “I have found some. They are very big.”

The cesme between Sincan and Zara.

Demir Aydogan, the muhtar of Curek.

By now I was low on water, so I filled the bottle at the cesme, drank over half the contents and filled it again for later in the day. The water tasted very good and was naturally chilled.

The driver of the car was Demir Aydogan, the muhtar, or headman, of Curek, a village on the road between Divrigi and Sincan. He said that he and his friend had come to the cesme knowing that mushrooms grew near it at this time of year.

View from the cesme between Sincan and Zara.

Demir said he would stay with me until he was sure that I had a lift, and his way of getting a lift was very direct: he waved down passing drivers to ask them where they were going. The third vehicle, a very large lorry struggling slowly up the hill to the pass, stopped, as the two previous ones had, and the driver said he was going to Giresun via Sebinkarahisar. I could not believe my luck. Although the mountainous roads to Sebinkarahisar meant that the journey would be a slow one, I knew I would eventually get to my destination.

I thanked Demir, shook hands with the lorry driver and off we went. But off we went very slowly because the road was steeply inclined to the pass, and the lorry, although a new one with automatic gears, was heavily laden. Until we arrived at the summit, we did not once get above walking pace. I was in for a slow ride, but, where the road was level or gently inclined downwards, the lorry rattled along at about 70 kph with little difficulty.

Because Turkey is such a mountainous country and most of its large rivers run roughly from east to west, it has always been easier and faster to travel from west to east and vice versa than from north to south and vice versa. It is no accident that a majority of Turkey’s most important roads and its few railway routes incline toward the horizontal rather than the vertical, as it were. Despite massive investment in recent decades, most roads from north to south are still narrower than the ones running from west to east, and the mountain ranges that lie between the easier west to east routes have not gone away. Although travelling only as far as Sebinkarahisar and therefore missing out on yet another mighty ascent and descent from there to the Black Sea at Giresun, I was now in for a remarkable journey in the cab of a lorry high above the road. The journey confirmed just how challenging it can be to navigate a south to north route in Turkey, even in 2015 when the country’s road network had never been so good.

The scenery was not as spectacular north of the pass as south of it, but hills and mountains, even if in the distance, were always a pleasure to the eye. Moreover, because we descended almost all the way to Zara, the journey was relatively quick. The driver, Cengiz Sahin from Samsun, was a quiet man, which made a nice change from the almost constant babble of chatter that usually broke out when a foreigner was given a lift in Turkey. Of course, I wanted to give Cengiz something for kindly helping me out and saving me quite a bit of money by Turkish standards, but knew an offer of cash would be rejected, perhaps with a hint of anger because I was manifesting disregard for his hospitality. Then I remembered the big bag of crisps given to me earlier in the day. I pulled it out of my rucksack, opened it and placed it between us. Cengiz began eating the crisps immediately. Although I had some, he was still nibbling them as we drove into Sebinkarahisar a few hours later.

Just before entering Zara, we drove briefly along the very wide west to east road connecting Ankara with Yozgat, Sivas, Erzincan, Erzurum and beyond. It looked as if it had been up-graded very recently. We then drove through the centre of Zara to connect with the road to Susehri. Zara looked overwhelmingly modern, but it nestled against the next ridge of mountains through which we had to drive. Beside the road were a succession of large modern schools painted in bright colours. Zara met the middle and high school needs of lots of the surrounding settlements (most villages in Turkey had an elementary school, so children could receive their first few years of education in a safe and secure environment in which they were familiar). Most pupils and students probably boarded in Zara during the week and were taken home on Friday afternoon for the weekend. Most pupils and students were probably driven to Zara in the same minibuses early on Monday morning.

I had travelled along the Zara to Susehri road once before and knew it to be scenically rewarding for most of the way. The hills, mountains, rivers, trees and wild flowers in the long grass contributed to my pleasure (some of the grass had the first hints of yellow because the ground was drying out as summer approached), as did the blue sky smudged with puffs of white cloud. Beside the rivers were trees and some of the trees had been polled.

The lorry struggled to reach the pass at 2,010 metres above sea level and, when I looked across at Cengiz, he wore a very bored expression. Driving lorries long distances in Turkey could be very dull because drivers were invariably alone and the kilometres slipped slowly by. Although they made the job easier, automatic gears risked increasing the monotony. Cengiz, who had set off from Divrigi at about 7.30am, did not expect to get to Giresun before 8.00pm at the earliest. Despite the often breathtaking scenery through which he drove, his very long working day lacked mental stimulation.

We eventually reached the summit, turned a corner and were confronted with snow-smudged mountains to the north. We began to descend into a beautiful valley, one that reminded me of the one north of the Zigana Pass on the way to Trabzon. However, the valley we now entered was much less populated, which only enhanced its appeal. About 25 kilometres from Susehri, we were surrounded by forest and mountains with patches of snow. We entered the small roadside village of Aydinlar where old stone houses had large corrugated iron roofs. As the families within them had grown in size, extra rooms had been added. Although somewhat neglected, the houses looked very interesting, not least for being located directly below steep cliffs from which rocks occasionally fell. Briefly, the lorry reached 80 kph.

We were now in a meandering canyon for a few kilometres and at one point entered a tunnel to avoid a vast barrier of rock. A fish farm beside the road had attracted some customers who had stopped in their cars.

A few kilometres before Susehri, we stopped for the first time since leaving the cesme. We pulled into a roadside tea garden with a water feature and wooden kiosks. Cengiz needed a rest for about half an hour and also wanted to recharge his phone. We had three teas each. When he went to the loo, I settled the bill. Cengiz was not best pleased because I was his “guest”.

Cengiz relaxing at the tea garden.

Before we sat down to consume our teas, Cengiz opened a storage compartment between the lorry’s wheels. Inside was a large butane gas cylinder and a puppy. The puppy had been asleep and came around slowly. Cengiz reached into a second storage compartment and poured milk into a plastic bottle from which he had cut a section so that, although the mouth remained intact and could still be secured with a screw cap, the puppy could drink from what was in effect an improvised bowl. After the puppy had drunk two portions of milk, Cengiz attached a string to its neck and tied the other end to a bar on the lorry. The puppy played in the dust and ran around as best it could while we relaxed in one of the nearby kiosks. Before we set off, Cengiz fed the puppy another portion of milk. The puppy provided Cengiz with a diversion from the tedious work routines he had to endure.

Cengiz and puppy.

Back in the lorry’s cab, Cengiz produced a packet of sunflower seeds which we shared as we made our way to Sebinkarahisar. Cengiz told me that he would eat nothing but the crisps and the sunflower seeds until arriving in Giresun much later that night.

We resumed the journey and arrived at the next large road running roughly from west to east, on this occasion one from Amasya to the large road already mentioned from Ankara to Erzurum and beyond. We by-passed Susehri and drove north-west along the road to Amasya for about 10 kilometres, then took a right turn for Sebinkarahisar. The journey was about only 35 kilometres from the junction, but so steep and winding was the road for most of the way that it took almost two hours to get to our destination. The first few kilometres were beside a reservoir that had been in existence long enough to look in parts like a natural lake, and very pretty it was. However, as we ascended into the mountains, the scenery became even more beautiful and spectacular, so much so that I thought that the section of the journey from Susehri to Sebinkarahisar was probably the day’s best. But no section of the journey was other than attractive or interesting, even when in the vicinity of the steel works near Divrigi or crossing the gently undulating farmland leading to Zara.

One of the most interesting parts of the journey from Susehri to Sebinkarahisar was where the road entered rounded hills composed of red soil which the rains easily washed into the nearby streams. The streams fed into the river at Susehri, by which time the water was very silty. Also near Susehri was a flooded area where dead trees rose out of the water. The flooding had probably been quite recent and was almost certainly due to the creation of yet another reservoir.

Someone local had used the reservoir to open a large fish farm. Flocks of sheep and goats grazed the nearby pasture. They were protected by a shepherd and at least one large dog. Later, snow-smudged mountains lay in the distance, but hills and undulating farmland dominated the views closer to the road. Fields mingled with pasture, the latter generously littered with wild flowers, and large and small birds prospered in the fertile conditions where food of many kinds must have been plentiful. There were lots of trees, streams carrying red silt and villages in very pretty surroundings.

Between Susehri and Sebinkarahisar.

It was about 4.00pm as we approached the outskirts of Sebinkarahisar and I could not believe what I saw ahead. The relatively small town was surrounded by hills and mountains, and two of the most prominent peaks overlooked it from the west and the east. The mountain to the east was crowned with the extensive remains of the citadel, a citadel which must have been very large when intact. Part of the old town nestled directly below the citadel on the slope facing to the west and looked very attractive even from a distance. The modern town, which united with the old one with a mixture of houses and small apartment blocks, lay along the road between Susehri and Giresun and spread every which way in the manner typical of Turkish settlements subject to rapid population growth. But from the more open south end of the town in particular, people could easily escape from Sebinkarahisar to enter undulating countryside with small settlements surrounded by fertile farmland. I was in for a treat and decided immediately to stay for two nights.

Cengiz stopped the lorry on the main street near the town centre. We shook hands and I offered to buy him some more crisps, but he laughed and said he still had some left in the packet in the cab. Rarely had I felt more grateful for a lift through Turkey’s mountains, so I asked for his address so I could send a few photos to remind him of our time together. I might have got to Sebinkarahisar more quickly by trying to flag lifts in cars from Zara onwards, but, by going so slowly along the roads, my affection for the mountains was enhanced. Once home where I could examine the photos taken when away, the ones of the day’s road trip inspired a desire to return, particularly to spend more time between Susehri and Sebinkarahisar.

Divrigi (part one).

After unpacking a few things and freshening up, I left the hotel for what amounted to a walk of four hours around Divrigi. My first destination was a ruined church below the citadel. I could see it from my balcony.

View from a bedroom balcony, Belediye Hotel, Divrigi.

Sinclair describes the church as Armenian and dates it to the late 19th century. It has:

Three aisles and three apses, of which the central one is wider. Along the n. and s. walls, shallow blind arcades of three wide arches each. From the triple engaged pillars supporting these rise ribs… The arcades running westward from the walls between the apses would have mirrored these arcades.

There is a door in the first arch from the e. on the n. side. Opposite it in the s. wall is the entrance to what seems to be a large chamber. Windows in the other two southerly blind arches: beneath the windows are tall brackets. No light is let into the chamber behind the s. wall except from the church’s interior: but this may be because the hillside has slipped and covers any windows there are. Slippage has also obscured the window of the s. apse.

The Armenian church, Divrigi.

The day of my visit, the grass around and in the church was long and littered with wild flowers. The church looked pretty, despite being in a ruined state, but it was only when I visited some of Divrigi’s other survivals from the past and noticed that they had benefitted from restoration, some of it recent, that it dawned on me again that monuments of Armenian derivation were subject to neglect of a criminal kind.

The Armenian church with the Belediye Hotel in the background, Divrigi.

I next ascended the hill above the church to examine the citadel, which, taken as a whole, was excellent, even though some parts of the fortifications had suffered from over-zealous restoration in recent years. No one else was on the summit the same time as me. Many patches of ground near or within the fortifications were covered with long grass and wild flowers, which only enhanced my pleasure, although some of the paths leading across the site were therefore hard to follow.

The citadel, Divrigi.

Sinclair describes the citadel in great detail, but I will quote only a paragraph so that something of its majesty is conveyed:

The citadel has two lines of wall to the w., where the slope was gradual and parts of the medieval town must have lain. To the n., where the site comes to a point, it is delimited by cliffs, and the cliffs of the e. side drop to the river. To the s. a trough crosses the ridge from e. to w. The wall here was built above the n. side of the trough, on the low cliffs descending to its floor.

At one of the highest points in the citadel was the 12th century Citadel Camii. Although the exterior of the mosque was plain, internally there was much to admire. Sadly, the doors leading inside were locked. I had to content myself with sublime views of the meandering river far below and of the railway leading to Erzincan via Ilic and Kemah. The river was a tributary of the Euphrates.

View from the citadel, Divrigi.

View from the citadel, Divrigi.

One of the most surprising things about the citadel was that many sandbags had been arranged to provide soldiers protection from in-coming fire. Here were fortifications that had recently seen military action, just as they would have seen military action on many occasions in the past. The sandbags had to be in place to help repel attacks by members of the PKK, so they must have been assembled some years earlier before the ceasefire was declared. I was surprised to see evidence of the war in Divrigi because I had not realised that PKK activity had been as far north as this. Then I remembered that a few years earlier I had been warned about PKK activity in and around Kemah, which was east and just a little north of Divrigi. The sandbags suddenly made perfect sense.

Ulu Camii and the Hospital, Divrigi.

Ulu Camii and the Hospital, Divrigi.

Ulu Camii and the Hospital, Divrigi.

I walked down to Ulu Camii and the Hospital to admire two of the most remarkable buildings of Muslim origin anywhere in Turkey, so much so that they now constituted a world heritage site, and deservedly so. I will not describe them in detail because of their international fame. Information about both can easily be acquired electronically or in book form. It was well over 20 years since I had last seen them. They took my breath away all over again.

In many respects, Ulu Camii and the Hospital are quite plain internally and externally, but, once your eyes closely examine the portals, you are confronted with intricately carved stone of such interest and eccentricity that you linger in admiration for far longer than would normally be the case, even when engaging with architecture of the highest quality.

Ulu Camii, Divrigi.

Ulu Camii, Divrigi.

The Hospital, Divrigi.

The mosque and hospital were designed as a single long rectangle on a platform on a hillside overlooking the town. Work began on both in 1228. From the middle of the roof rose the spire-like pyramid that covered the mihrab dome and, near it, the cap of the tomb in the hospital. In the hospital in particular there was a simple monumentality to everything that survived, so much so that, although almost 800 years old, it appeared quite modern.

But the mosque and hospital had been declared a world heritage site largely because of their three portals. As Sinclair indicates, the hospital portal consists:

of two pointed arches of rotund cross-section… many parallel torus mouldings follow the curve of each arch and the vertical drop to the base. The supports for the two arches merge with buttresses coming forward from the walls… Of the two arches only the outer is carved in a comprehensive manner, and that only on the three outer courses of the curve.

Look closely and you will identify many different decorative elements including squares, octagons, medallions, leaves and tendril tracery. Flamboyance was the order of the day.

The Hospital portal, Divrigi.

The Hospital portal, Divrigi.

The Hospital portal, Divrigi.

Of the west portal of the mosque, Sinclair writes that:

The nature of its decorative patterns, their disposition and some features of the basic design such as the use of free-standing pillars beneath the inner arch are unique within the world of Selcuk and contemporary Syrian architecture. They are not only unique, but far distanced from anything else within that world. They belong instead in the world of Armenian manuscript decoration.

West portal, Ulu Camii, Divrigi.

 As for the north portal of the mosque, Sinclair notes that:

The front face is designed as a rectangle into which is put a splayed arch of Gothic shape… The carving… imitates stucco. The large elements in the thickest of the decorative lines give the whole portal a fleshy, prolix and jungle-like appearance. Each band or course is carved with great originality and skill, but the successive parts were not thought of in concert with one another. The lack of harmony is accentuated by the circumstance that almost the whole of the portal’s front face is covered, that is to say practically no blank space is left which might have relieved the crush of juxtaposed and discordant elements.

North portal, Ulu Camii, Divrigi.

North Portal, Ulu Camii, Divrigi.

North portal, Ulu Camii, Divrigi.

The summary description of the north portal above suggests that Sinclair is not altogether happy with the final outcome of much labour over an extended period of time. However, in common with the two other portals, I found it astonishing. In many ways it looks quite bizarre and is intentionally extravagant and over-the-top, but no one can accuse it of not having ambition or lacking a playful sense of imagination.

I admired the mosque and hospital even more on my second than my first encounter with them, although on close inspection I noticed some damage to the stonework, some of it inflicted by idiots who had left behind their names carved into the portals. Moreover, although far more people visited Divrigi than 20 or so years earlier to see the world heritage site, they came to admire buildings that expressed humankind’s capacity to build, build rather than burn, burn, so it was enjoyable to mix with the small number of foreign and the much larger number of Turkish tourists, the latter who had travelled hundreds of miles from large urban centres, most of which lacked monuments of similar quality.

But what was perhaps the most remarkable thing of all? As with the citadel, admission to Ulu Camii and the Hospital was free. After seeing scores of important monuments by the end of the trip, an admission fee was required at only one of them, the Syriac Orthodox church in Diyarbakir. However, when I went to the church, one of my companions at the time paid for me. Now think how different things were in most European nation states, the UK included, when people visited notable monuments. This was another aspect of Turkey that often brought tears to my eyes.

One of the portals, Ulu Camii and the Hospital, Divrigi.

One of the portals, Ulu Camii and the Hospital, Divrigi.

To Divrigi.

For half an hour before breakfast, I went for a walk through what remained of the old pazar, examined an 18th century mosque and the old han that was now a hotel (it looked as if no guests were staying in the hotel) and continued along a road that slowly descended a hill. The road led past some old timber-framed houses. When I arrived at a second mosque with a nearby cesme from which a lot of water flowed, I walked no further out of town, but examined the ruins of a hamam and an old house. I then took a road and a footpath that led westward. I passed more old houses, one of which was made overwhelmingly with stone and had recently been restored, perhaps by the Belediye in an attempt to help attract tourists to Arapgir. I then took another right turn along a road I had walked the day before and was back at the hotel.

Arapgir.

Part of the old pazar, Arapgir.

An old hamam, Arapgir.

Breakfast in the Arapgir Nazar was served on the top floor in a large room from where there were excellent views of the town centre and the surrounding countryside. Breakfast was not a buffet; staff brought a plate with a mixture of things to eat, but you could not have anything more than what was on the plate and in the basket containing bread. Water and lots of tea completed the meal. Although the food on the plate was very conventional, it was nicely presented, almost as if guests were eating in someone’s home. Two women worked in the kitchen, which explained why the food was presented in such an attractive manner.

Arapgir.

Arapgir.

Arapgir.

I had hoped to say goodbye to the couple who had looked after me so well the day before, but they were not around. Instead, I settled the bill with the female receptionist and asked her to thank the owner and his daughter for their kindness. I walked into the middle of the town, from where I had to ascend the road leading to the one to Keban and Malatya. I had walked about 100 metres when I turned to flag a lift. A van stopped with two men inside. Because the men were going to Malatya, they gave me a lift to the point where the road from Arapgir joined the main road. I had to go in the opposite direction toward Divrigi.

20 minutes after arriving at the junction, the driver of the fourth northbound motor vehicle stopped to offer me a lift. He drove a small open-topped lorry. Two cows were in the back and on the cab floor was a large plastic bag with two hens with their legs tied together.

I was driven about 20 kilometres through beautiful upland scenery. At first, the road navigated around the south-west end of the valley sheltering Eskisehir, but it ascended as it did so with a series of hairpin bends. For some of the way, the road was in a valley with a meandering stream that tumbled over rocks, then we arrived on a rocky stretch of relatively level upland far above the valley of the Arapgir Cayi. There were no trees. By now, we were among mountains rather than hills and the views were spectacular. Poles beside the road confirmed that snow was a major problem during winter and early spring. In fact, in some very exposed places, fences had been erected to hold back drifting snow from the road. I was reminded of parts of Wyoming.

We slowed down when the driver indicated that he was turning left to take a dirt road leading to a village hidden from view in the folds of the hills and mountains. I thanked him for the lift provided, which had got me almost a third of the way to my destination. Moreover, I was now very high up, the visibility was excellent, the views were sublime and the air was invigorating.

On the road to Divrigi.

I had already seen some tents belonging to semi-nomadic families who looked after flocks of sheep and goats on the upland pasture. At two places some distance from the road, people had gathered around lorries to unload mattresses and bedclothes required for the four or five months that lay ahead. I had also seen a road leading 14 kilometres to Yesilyayla, a name which means “green highland pasture”. What could have been a better destination for the day had Divrigi not been on the agenda? At the end of the road I would probably have found a village spread across the pasture, but in all likelihood it would have been a village inhabited only during the summer months when people moved into the mountains so their sheep and goats could fatten on the grass that had not been eaten since the previous autumn.

A flock of sheep, on the road to Divrigi.

A camp for semi-nomadic families, on the road to Divrigi.

Motor vehicles along the road were now so infrequent that I began to walk. Most of my walk for the next 3 or 4 kilometres was level or slightly downhill, but, as bad luck would have it, I had to negotiate a stretch of road being up-graded, which meant it was in a very shabby state and subject to large motor vehicles tearing up or laying the surface. However, I had some company of sorts and the road works did little to mar my enjoyment of the scenery. It was planned that the road would be re-routed through a tunnel about half a kilometre long. Two workmen explained that the route of the current road meant that it often closed during winter because of deep snow, but the tunnel would ensure this happened far less often.

On the road to Divrigi.

I arrived at a point near where more tents for semi-nomadic families were being assembled and, because the views were so delightful, I stopped to wait for a lift. The man in the second car to approach me drew to a halt and took me all the way to Divrigi where he had to pick up food supplies for workmen digging the tunnel.

The road for the last 35 or so kilometres to Divrigi was not as beautiful as the stretch as far as where the road works began, but I could not complain because mountains were always in view and the plain to the south and west of Divrigi was fertile. Moreover, my luck with lifts meant that I was in Divrigi far earlier than I had expected. Because no minibuses ran between Arapgir and Divrigi, and because I knew the road would not carry much traffic, I had expected to arrive in my destination about midday. However, I was in the town centre where the weekly market was in full swing before 11.00am. I had ahead of me almost a full day.

Research before leaving the UK had revealed that Divrigi now had at least two hotels, but I wanted to stay at the Belediye Hotel because I had assumed it would be in the town centre and inexpensive, the latter because of subsidies deriving from the Town Council. I first went to the offices of the Belediye thinking the hotel might occupy a floor in the same building or be nearby, but when I arrived and asked staff about it, they said it was a kilometre away. I prepared to undertake the walk, but a female employee said I had to wait because a lift would be provided. Three men in uniform ushered me to a car in the Belediye car park and kindly drove me to the hotel.

Divrigi’s Belediye Hotel was on the northern edge of town with the railway station and its attendant facilities nearby and a deep valley with a meandering river even closer. Immediately south of the hotel was the vast buttress of rock on which stood the ruins of the large citadel. The hotel had seen better days and parts of it looked shabby, but the rooms were spacious and benefitted from en suite facilities. I had a room facing the citadel and, in common with all the south-facing rooms, a spacious balcony that I sat on when I had the opportunity. There was a bar and a restaurant, and many people came to drink beer and eat food on the wide patio facing the citadel in the evenings. The overnight cost, which included breakfast, was 60TL, which, given that Divrigi proved the trip’s most popular place for tourists other than Diyarbakir, was very reasonable.

The railway station, Divrigi.