Author: Oli

The Doğu Ekspresi is the daily east-west train route spanning the width of Turkey. It used to run all the way from Istanbul in the west to Kars in the east, although with the arrival of high-speed rail, it now connects only Ankara to Kars via a mere 1,944 km of track (!). I’d seen the railway referred to interchangeably as the Doğu, Orient, and Eastern Express, which confused me until I found out that all three terms mean “East.” Even more confusingly, the ambiguity of the term “East” means that the name also collides with the Orient Express, the direct train from Paris to Istanbul, which is sadly now lost in time.

Booking a sleeper carriage on the Doğu Ekspresi is notoriously difficult for a few reasons. First, demand for tickets far exceeds supply, so most are booked as soon as they go on sale (which, unhelpfully, is any time between 15 and 30 days before departure). Second, tour companies tend to block book carriages directly with the train company before they even go on general sale. And third, men and women can’t share a (4 berth) sleeper compartment overnight unless the whole compartment is booked. For these reasons, we opted for spacious pullman style seats and planned a daytime itinerary from Sivas to Erzurum, which rather poetically departed at sunrise and arrived at sunset.

---

With bleary eyes, we checked out of our hotel at 4.20am, and walked through Sivas in darkness. This train route is notorious for long delays, but without a way to track the train, we had no choice but to arrive at the station ahead of its scheduled departure.

Although we’d heard that delays of 4 hours were quite common, our train departed Sivas a mere hour and 20 minutes late. Still, this gave us plenty of time to eat our makeshift yogurt and honey breakfast, and we happily trundled out of the station just as the sun was rising.

Put simply, this was by far the most spectacular train ride I’d ever been on. Over recent years, the route has become so popular that a second “touristic” train was scheduled consisting of only sleeper carriages. However, this train was discontinued earlier in 2022, further adding to the supply and demand problem. Still, it’s hard to appreciate the scenery if you’re asleep, so we were happy in our upright seats and did our best to keep our eyes open despite the early start to our day. Sara even told me off for paying more attention to my laptop than what was outside the window, before promptly nodding off herself.

The train snaked through mountainous terrain (aided by only a handful of tunnels) for the majority of our journey under a huge and cloudless sky. In fact, the track rarely seemed to hold a straight line, and in some areas the rock face came right up to the train window on both sides.

To stretch her legs, Sara took a walk down the train and found the sleeper carriage. It’s only looking at this photo now that I realise that these compartments don’t have a view out of the right hand side of the train. This made me even happier with our “choice” of upright seats.

As the train continued into the late afternoon, the rocky mountains gave way to more fertile plains, with the low sun turning the landscape golden and casting long shadows behind every lone tree.

Finally, we pulled into Erzurum around two and half hours late, although to be honest I’d stopped counting by this point, and was happy to appreciate the journey for what it was. Some of the stops en route had been incredibly brief, so we were waiting at the doors with our bags on, ready to mind the (rather large) gap down from the train to the platform.

---

In total, our tickets cost the equivalent of £3.49 per person to cover 547 km of track over a period of 12 hours. At an average speed of 46 km/hour (28 mph), there’s plenty of time to gawp at the spectacular scenery.

Although we only travelled a little over a quarter of the Doğu Ekspresi’s full distance, it definitely scratched the itch left by our cancelled Trans-Siberian Railway adventure. It also gave me an appreciation for the importance of covering long distances in multiple short stretches, rather than in one go.

Sadly, this is where we leave Turkey’s rail network behind – after a few days exploring Erzurum, we plan to travel north by bus towards the Georgian border.

Cappadocia’s bizarre landscape formed as a result of volcanic eruptions and millions of years of weathering. The result is a sea of fairy chimneys, mountains, and canyons. While our hot air balloon ride gave us an aerial view of Cappadocia’s rock formations, we also wanted to see them close up. We took a road trip to explore some of the churches that had been built into the rock further afield, as well as spending a day navigating the Rose Valley on foot.

---

On our first day in Göreme, we set off for a road trip with Mick & Helen through a few of the villages south of the town. First up was a visit to an abandoned church attached to a rocky cliff in the extremely quiet town of Cemil.

I’m not sure what I was expecting to find inside, but I wasn’t expecting this.

The church was an eerie blend of vibrantly colourful columns, vandalised frescos, and modern graffiti. Slightly unsettlingly, the faces had been scratched from many of the frescos that adorned the walls. This place sent chills down my spine.

We continued on to a monastery complex just outside the village of Keşlik, containing two more churches, a wine cellar, a house and a monks’ refectory, carved entirely from caves. We were met by the site’s guardian, who listed the use of each cave in the monastery complex, and repeatedly insisted that a “complete visit is possible.”

Dutifully, we entered the first cave and were met with a dazzling array of colourful 9th-century frescos. In contrast, the 13th century cave-church appeared to have its ceiling painted black. That was until our guardian friend emerged out of the darkness with a torch, and helpfully pointed out Jesus and his disciples depicted in various biblical scenes across a number of faded frescos. These were all but invisible until he highlighted them with the beam of his torch.

As we continued to explore the monastery complex, we came across what looked like a giant millstone standing just inside the entrance to one of the cave rooms. Once again, the guardian popped up to demonstrate that it could be rolled across the room’s doorway sealing it against any intruders, therefore allowing the monks to make their escape down a tiny tunnel at the back of the cave. This level of foresight and preparation gave us a bit of insight into the fear of persecution under which these monks lived.

All this exploration was hungry work, so we drove on to the village of Soğanlı and came across this beautiful family-run restaurant in an apricot orchard. As per usual, we ordered a colossal amount of food (not pictured), and spent most of the mealtime trying to palm off our plates on to each other.

The main reason we’d driven as far as Soğanlı was explore a whole ancient city of cave dwellings. Below you can see Mick welcoming us to his cave church, while I’m demonstrating how the monks used to dine at long (and now very dusty) communal tables carved out of rock.

The return journey to Göreme was largely uneventful, save for a few cows unapologetically flaunting the no overtaking signage.

---

We spent the best part of our second day in Göreme hiking through the Rose Valley. Sadly, Mick wasn’t feeling well, so we stole him some of the breakfast buffet and left him in the peace and quiet of our hotel, while Helen, Sara and I set off on foot into the Rose Valley. It didn’t take long before the landscape had turned lunar in its appearance.

The destination of this hike (besides experiencing the breathtaking landscape up close) was a trio of churches, this time cut out of the inside of some fairy chimneys.

These multi-storey rock-churches had some of the most impressive and colourful frescos we’d seen so far, although again, the faces had been disturbingly scratched off.

We’d only hiked 5 or so kilometres by this point but we were already struggling in the afternoon heat and relentless sun. But then, as if by some mirage in the desert, a cafe emerged at the top of a rocky climb just as we arrived at the second church. Exhausted and slightly dehydrated, we flopped into seats in the shade of an umbrella, and gladly accepted the offer of some freshly squeezed orange and pomegranate juice. If I didn’t have a photo to prove its existence, I’m not sure I would have trusted my own memory as this seemed such an unlikely refuge in the otherwise barren valley.

Helen became quite comfortable in the cafe, and was happy to sit tight while Sara and I continued toward the final church. However, we hadn’t gone far before Sara judged the descent too steep and decided to stop. I was determined to continue given how far we’d come, and proceeded to half-abseil, half-scramble down the path to the final church. Anticlimactically, the church was locked shut, and I returned to Sara bathed in sweat and out of breath, but with my need for completeness satisfied.

Sara took the following photo while she was waiting and is very proud of her new game of “Where’s W-Oli” (below). I should say that we think WordPress is compressing our images so this is probably virtually impossible!

---

Sadly, this concluded our final day in Cappadocia, so we packed up and headed to the bus station. But then, out of the crowds popped Piotr, an old friend of mine from Hive. He and his girlfriend are on a similar journey east, also avoiding flying wherever possible. Our meeting was brief as their bus was due to depart imminently, but I hope our paths cross again for a little longer next time!

No sooner had I waved goodbye and good luck to Piotr, it was also time to say farewell to Mick & Helen. We parted ways for them to return to Istanbul, while we continued our journey east to Sivas, an important trading post along the silk road. It was lovely to travel with them for an action-packed fortnight through Turkey, and waving them them off from the bus window certainly brought a tear to the eye. We hope to see you both again soon!

This title might be a little misleading! The Lycian Way is a long-distance walking trail snaking 540km along the Mediterranean coast in south-western Turkey, and it’s been on our bucket list of experiences for about ten years. However, we had so much ground to cover on this leg of our trip to Tashkent that we kept scaling back the time available to walk it. In the end, we had a single day to walk one very small section as a taster. Hopefully, we’ll be back one day to complete the rest!

The base for our walk was an Airbnb up in the mountains, and a 10 minute drive along dirt tracks from the nearest stretch of tarmac. The tranquility was absolute, apart from the chorus of frogs and cicadas that welcomed us to the wilderness.

That evening, just as the sky turned dark, Sara alerted us to an orange glow in the v-shaped gap between two mountains, growing brighter by the minute. We’d read a lot about forest fires in the area and for a worrying few seconds we all thought that one had taken hold across the valley. It took a surprising amount of time for us to identify it as a moonrise, which I think was a first for us all. Only afterwards did we realise how lucky we were to be sat in the right spot to see the combination of a full moon, rising in the evening, on a clear night, perfectly framed by the mountains. We couldn’t have planned it any better if we’d tried.

We managed to tear ourselves away from our beautiful (if slightly bizarre) villa for a day’s walking. Our 9.6 km route involved scaling Mount Chimaera, passing a handful of eternally burning fires, and ending on a beach in the village of Çıralı.

Our hike started in the village of Ulupınar, where we followed a dirt track down the mountain through forest and crossed a dry riverbed.

Following the trail was straightforward at this point, and we quickly picked up the Lycian Way’s distinct red and white way-markers.

The path then got a lot wilder as it climbed steeply towards the summit of Mount Chimaera, with the terrain growing rockier and the distance between way-markers increasing. Serious kudos to anyone who can spot the way-marker the following photo.

When we reached the top of the mountain and the first set of flames, I mentioned to Sara that I’d had Eternal Flame stuck in my head all morning. It turns out that you can’t make a comment like that without infecting everyone around you (you’re welcome!), and understandably Sara was not best pleased. In retaliation, she made up a song about venomous vipers (about whom we’d been warned) and sang it all afternoon. Well, she sang it until we actually saw a snake slithering extremely quickly across the mountainside, at which point it didn’t seem very funny anymore.

So far, we’d met a grand total of 3 human beings on the trail. The first two were a couple of hikers, and the third was a man herding his goats across the mountain. It felt pretty remote at times, but at least we had the wildlife to keep us company.

The second set of flames were even more impressive. We learned that the fires are fuelled by methane and other gasses which are being emitted from the rock, and apparently have been burning for over 2,500 years!

The descent from the lower flames was much more straightforward, with clearly marked steps leading us to the base of the mountain. The path then met a near-deserted paved road, which lead us back into Çıralı village.

We reunited with Helen & Mick for a victory drink, before swimming in the gorgeously warm sea surrounded by dramatic mountains in almost every direction.

Even the walk back to the car was spectacular. After a short plod along the beach, we joined a boardwalk that followed the Göksu river through the ruins of Olympos just as the sun was setting, casting a stunning golden glow over the meandering river and the ancient city.

The following day it was once again time to move on. This time, our destination was Cappadocia – home to around 100 daily hot air balloon flights and an endless sea of fairy chimneys.

---

Special thanks to George & Erin for restaurant and cat recommendations, and to Helen & Mick for driving the support vehicle!