Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Thirty Six and the last: The Musings by the river!

Coming back from Ani… I asked Jaleel to drop me at a convenient spot so that I may have a walk around… see the Kars museum and then the Kars Castle… he did.

I bid adieu to my fellow travelers. And walked up to the Kars museum… a decent museum… and though I am not into seeing museums a lot… but Kars museum was particularly informative. It got me hooked for a while…

Thereafter, I walked to the Kars Citadel… a castle on a hill-top, which gives magnificent views of Kars city… a rivulet flows right through the heart of the town of Kars… it looked enticing…

Atop the castle, there was a knee deep snow… I was alone… I couldn’t help the child-like instinct within… and played with snow for a while… trying to make a snowman… a Igloo… and generally making snowballs and tossing them in the air to fall on me and get strewn all over my body…

I walked down the castle… through another route… came across a Armenian church… closed… but still functional… as a mosque… there is a small enclosure in it, I was told, which allows it to function as a church as well… Kars has two Armenian families, and they strayed to this church once in a while till about a few years ago…

This cathedral has seen a tumultuous history… Initially a Armenian Church, made a Mosque… then under Russian regime made a Russian Orthodox Church… then after the Russian rule made Armenian Church… and now a mosque with a small Armenian Church enclosure… if only humans could realize that this is not what the Supreme Being wants from us.

I decided to walk along the river… it was getting dark now… and therefore I had to quickly do whatever I wanted to …

The Kars river looked beautiful at dusk… walking along it, I came across old dilapidated Turkish bath houses… and then the Kars University… the walk made me think of days gone by… the road was lonely… with occasional minibuses passing by … every time one passed… a head from inside popped out and looked at me… a foreign face in the desolate stretch.

Last few days have been an eye-opener… travels, if done without a purpose, are wanderings… therefore, one must travel for a purpose… of knowing the world around oneself in better light… Traveling should always have a purpose… an altruistic purpose… and once it has a purpose… the travels transform people. As I stand transformed today.

When I came to Turkey… I did not have much of an idea about it as a place… its history, geography, and polity… and today, in the last phase of this wandering… without even making an effort… I feel that I have known Turkey since its Pagan origins… I know what contemporary Turkey feels like…

Traveling makes you get into the skin of a place… automatically, without making an effort… for what else is history… but a collective conscience that pervades the people… and when you interact with them… you understand a part of it and partake in its making. History is more palpable to a traveler… and no wonder the medieval marvels of history… were all written by travelers, or travelers at heart.

These musings were no ordinary musings… these perhaps germinated the idea of writing a Islamic travelogue cum commentary in my mind for the first time… when I visited Syria, Jordan… it was out of sheer proximity to Egypt… but now Turkey and thereafter Iran… my travels have started following a pattern… of Islamic travels. I am getting equipped to write about the Islamic world… and one day I will...

It was growing dark and I had walked a long distance… much out of the town limits… so I retraced my steps… reached Kars… I was feeling famished… and went to a shop… therein three young people were sitting… I had some quick bite over there… befriended them… and promised to meet them again before I leave for Istanbul the day next.

I came to my hotel… and started going through my camera… all the photos that I had clicked while traveling in these distant land… the digital camera has become my companion… it helps me in trapping the fine nuances and memories… which otherwise have a tendency to evade human memories.

It has been a wonderful travel… the next day… I would be in Istanbul… and perhaps, may not come back to Turkey ever again… because of my thirst to travel to new and newer countries… but this place would have a special place in my heart… not because of Istanbul… not because of its tourist traps… but because of other places… which are off the beaten track… South East Turkey … a Diyarbakir, a Sanliurfa, a Hasankeyf and a Kars… and those wonderful people that I have met during these travels.

***

Sitting at Istanbul airport… I relished all the memories of Turkey… and soon my flight was announced… I went to the Afghan Ariana counter to check in… and could see a lot of Afghanis checking in… and though they were not my people… I felt a rush of emotions as a person feels when he sees familiar people after days of living in foreign land…

Afghans, after all, have become a part and parcel of my existence after these days spent over there…

The flight was comfortable… and I reached Kabul early morning… I had a day’s stay in Kabul… and was joined by my friends in Kabul over a lunch and then a dinner… the day next I had a flight to catch in early morning to Kandahar… where my home is.

The last two weeks were the best part of my life… I remembered the first time when I packed my back-pack… to tread the off-beat path in Konkan… and how I haven’t looked back ever since… And if at all… I owe my travels to that one decision to back-pack Konkan.