Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Thirty One: The first snowflakes

The next day… I didn’t realize would be the most eventful day of my Turkish sojourn.

I wake up early morning… went out for a walk before the break of dawn… walked for kilometers together along the river side… it was a time… when I was alone on the roads of Hasankeyf, besides river Tigris… it was a time to relish the virgin beauty of this place, which is likely to drown in a decade’s time. The sound of the river resonated within me… I had witnessed the Kurdish heartland… and today, when I leave this place for Van… my next stop… I would have closed a chapter of this journey.

When it was around 7 am… I reached the gates of citadel… it was lonely out there too… there were some closed shops selling knick-knacks… but nothing else… and therein I had another close encounter with the deadly Turkish dogs… a dog literally pounced at me… and I had to use the old trick of using my camera as a way to deter him… it went on well, yet again…

At around 7:30 a person came from nearby shop and opened the gates of Hasankeyf citadel… it was an arduous climb up the citadel… and I was alone…

Citadel comprises empty quarters… underground cellars… there was an eerie quality to the desolateness of the citadel… it was hard imagining that a few hundred years ago life thrived in this ramparts.

Atop the citadel… I could see some most scintillating views of the Hasankeyf town… the meanders of river Tigris… and the orange-hued hills all around. The beauty of the place was ethereal… and enchanting.

While coming back, I saw Selim and his wife coming up the citadel… I stopped to have final words with them… Selim took a few pictures of me with the backdrop of citadel… and then it was time to bid farewell. We promised that we would meet again… some day.

It was already 10 am… and I did not want to miss the 11 am bus… I had a quick breakfast at a local restaurant… packed up my bag… leaving some of my old clothes behind to be distributed to the poor, and paid my bills. The hotel manager told me that the bus would come any time now… and if it has seats, which it mostly has, I can stop it with a wave of my hand…

I realized that Hasankeyf is very poorly connected to the rest of the world… there is this one long-route bus to Van… and a couple of buses to Mardin and Batman… the closest towns of any significance. If I were to miss this bus… my only bet was going to Batman and trying to find another bus to Van.

The bus came… and didn’t stop despite my frantic waves… indicating that it had a full occupancy… I was stranded… the hotel owner told me that now my best chance was to catch a 12 noon bus to Batman and find a connecting bus to Van. And I did exactly that… the journey was full of discoveries.

I took the next bus to Batman… and reached Batman… the drive was scenic but my mind was pre-occupied with the chances of getting a bus to Van.

That bus took me to a small bus stand, where I could see a number of minibuses… I wondered that if any one of them could take me to Van… Van, after all, was still a couple of hundred kilometers from this place. I enquired… and found out that a few buses can take me to a place called Ziyaret… and from there I can find buses to Van. I took a minibus to Ziyaret and reached the place… where I was directed to a hotel, whose manager gave me a ticket for a bus to Van… at 4 pm.

This was a off the beaten track… from Batman to Ziyaret, a small non-descript town. What made Ziyaret special was a number of minibuses with Azeri sign plates…

In the north-east of Turkey lie Armenia and Azerbaijan… which have a bloody history… Azerbaijan and Armenia had been part of USSR, and when they gained freedom… they fought a bloody battle for Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia also shares a tense history with Turkey… and therefore Azerbaijan became a close friend of Turkey.

Azerbaijan is divided in two parts the main Azerbaijan and a Naxcivan enclave… Naxcivan enclave gives Azerbaijan a small land contact with Turkey… while the land between the two Azeri parts give Armenia a small contact with Iran… the arrangements serves both the land-locked countries well.

Naxcivan enclave, cut from the rest of Azerbaijan and its vibrant Baku city, derives its lifeline from Turkey… hundreds of Azeri vehicles ply on Turkish roads… providing civil supplies to the Naxcivan enclave… they use different routes… the one that goes through Ziyaret is mainly used for Haj vehicles… thus I could see a stream of Azeri vehicles returning from Haj… overland through Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

At 4 pm, I boarded the bus to Van… the bus took an extremely scenic route… along a meandering stream… to Bitlis… and then a hilly road from Bitlis to Tatvan… snaking along the Lake Van… to reach Van.

It was raining heavily along the route… and therefore the bus moved very slowly… Turkish government is building some massive tunnels connecting Van with Kurdish heartland, near Bitlis… These tunnels would connect Kurdish heartland to Van, a significant military station… and would provide logistics to Turkish army- if they wanted to move into Kurdish areas at a quick pace.

I saw these tunnels… still being constructed… they were massive… and being constructed in very inhospitable terrain.

When I reached Bitlis… it started snowing… the bus stopped for a while… I got down…and touched the falling snowflakes for the first time in my life.

Believe it or not… this pondering vagabond was seeing the snow fall for the very first time in his life.