Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Thirty Three: A princess and a Shepherd

As my journey approached the last leg… the pace of experiences became faster… last day, I had been more or less traveling for the entire day... and not doing any sight seeing… Today, it was going to be the same way…

The Dogubayazit stand was close to Aslan Hotel… The stand, a small plot of land… has various platforms… and on one of the platforms, there was a board announcing minibuses for Dogubayazit… another platform had a board announcing minibuses to Akdamar… I sighed and wished that I could had caught the 11 am bus from Hassankeyf to Van… then making it to Akdamar would not have been as big a problem.

The bus to Dogu left Van… and then meandered along the edges of Lake Van… the eastern edges… Lake Van looked serene bathed in the morning sunlight… in the backdrop one could see the snow-clad hillocks… the scenery was surreally beautiful… one could had just sat down along the edges… and stared at it for hours together… it reminded me of an equally surreal scenery at Egirdir a few days ago.

Dogu lies on the eastern border of Turkey… a few kilometers away from Iran… relations between Turkey and Iran are better understood through the prism of NATO-Iran relations… Turkey, it appears, has no big outstanding issue with Iran… and yet because of Iran’s animosity with the West… the Turkey-Iran border is decently militarized... In fact, Turkey and Iran may find more reasons to cooperate than fight, if left alone.

As we started approaching Dogubayazit… I could see a number of Military checkpoints… the locals were pulled out and checked more than me … I immediately gathered that these checks are more to do with current tensions between Turks and Kurds, than the border regions. The Kurdish fault-line runs larger than I previously thought.

I reached Dogu at around 10 am… and quickly enquired that Kars is poorly connected to Dogu… I have to first go to Igdir a small town midway between Dogu and Kars… and then take a connecting minibus from there… There was another problem… due to the ongoing riots between the Turks and Kurds… the minibuses to Igdir were suspended after 1 pm… so if I had to see the Dogu castle, I had to see it in a jiffy…and then move to Igdir. I wondered how to do that?

It was then I met this street urchin… Walat… presumably a tout… I have always maintained that touts after all are not such a bad proposition… they tend to fill a demand supply gap… if any. More than that, they provide customized service… if need be. It was time for such a customized service.

Walat approached me selling a hotel room… but I cajoled him to help me with seeing Dogu castle… and then get me boarded on a bus to Igdir… he understood my predicament… and hired a taxi for 20 Lira… to Dogu castle and back… to the Igdir taxi stand.

We started talking while on the taxi… he realized that I would be going to Kars from Igdir… and planned to see Ani ruins… he gave me the number of one Jaleel… a tour guide in Kars, who could give me a good deal in Kars… when we became pals, he confessed that 20 Liras is a high price for a taxi to Dogu castle and back… and he would get at least 5 out of it… or may be 10… considering the fact that Dogu borders Iran… and a lot of cheap Iranian “benzene” gets smuggled into Dogu… the Taxis make a huge profit in Dogu.

He chuckled… Dogu has more car-mechanic shops than petrol pumps… petrol pumps do not do any business because of smuggled Iranian benzene… and car mechanics do a roaring business because the smuggled Iranian benzene is adulterated... Iran has one of the cheapest gasoline in the world... and Turkey has one of the dearest gasoline in the world.

The Dogubayazit Castle is an amazing (though not so beautiful) expose of many different styles of architecture… a little bit of Indian, little of Iranian, little of Ottoman, little of Seljuk… all architectural forms are present in the castle… the mish-mash however is not so well done and the entire effect of the castle is just about OK… nothing great. However, it represents a fertile mind, which tried to capture all the beautiful architectural forms…

What sets Dogu castle apart however is  its dramatic setting… amidst snowcapped hills… beyond which the Iranian territory is located… At the backdrop one can see Mount Ararat… which, according to Jew-Christian traditions, is the place where the Noah Arc rested…

And then the story behind Dogu castle… also known as Ishak Pasha castle… legend has it that Ishak Pasha, who was a governor of Dogu area, had a beautiful daughter Gulbahar… who fell in love with Ahmed, a shepherd boy… Ishak Pasha was not ready to marry Gulbahar to Ahmed and therefore asked Ahmed to give a test… to climb up Mount Ararat… and light a fire atop it… and if the fire was seen… then he could come back and marry Gulbahar… Mount Ararat, till that time, was unscaled and had swallowed many who tried to scale it. But Ahmed goes atop it and lights a fire… but when he comes back… Ishak Pasha goes back on his words and gets him killed. However, Gulbahar doesn’t forget Ahmed and her father repented his deed. Thereafter, he constructed the palace for Gulbahar… so that she could live over there… and always see Mount Ararat, a severe test, which Ahmed passed just for her.

The legend of course is just a legend… however it is full of pathos… and when Walat told me about this legend… I could imagine Princess Gulbahar… sitting in the palace… crying for her lost love.

It was time to leave Dogu… Walat dropped me at Igdir minibus stand… I hugged him… Touts are not always after money… they sometimes make good friend… money becomes just an incidental. Walat had proved me right.

I tried to offer him 5 Liras… but he refused to take it… and smiled… you are a friend.

I was off to Igdir… I thought that I had seen enough of Kurdish fault line… now nothing else remains to be seen… I was wrong… the worst part of the fault line awaited me at Igdir.