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We finally made it to Divrigi the morning after I last posted. Prior research indicated that there were very limited accommodation options but we had the name, approximate location and phone number of a government-run hotel. Our initial inquiries took us to the local council offices where we were served tea, met the mayor and generally sat around wondering what was going to happen next. Once everyone had had enough tea they drove us to the hotel and made sure we were settled. We were. It was a beautiful hotel in a peaceful location and to top it all off was the cheapest place we’d found in our time in the country! Happy as two travellers could be we headed off to see the main (only?) attraction in town, a trio of intricately carved doorways.

It seems like a strange reason to detour hundreds of kilometres down a dead end valley but the doorways on Divrigi’s Great Mosque and hospital are incredibly beautiful. The mosque was built in 1229 by the local lord and at the same time his wife commissioned the building of the adjacent hospital. Inside and out the yellow stone walls are very plain but it’s as if the entire decorative power of the areas artisans was dedicated to the carvings surrounding the doorways. The stone bends and warps in ways that make you need to touch it to prove that it’s stone, it looks more like plastic or wood carving. There are three doorways and each seemed more amazing than the last, though believe me when I say that even the first one was impressive.

Historically it’s hard to see why these amazing doorways are in such an isolated place. In the past, as it is now, Divrigi was at the end of a dead end valley. There is one road in, and it doesn’t go much further up the valley than the town. All we can assume is that the lord had some spare cash lying around. We spent a fair while exploring the building, taking far too many detail shots of the amazing carvings. As we were getting ready to leave the caretaker invited us in for a cup of tea then fed us some Turkish pizza. Chai really does make the world go around in Turkey. Before we left he said “My village good. You go?” before telling us to meet him back there at 4:30pm. Sure, why not?

Having no idea what we were getting ourselves into we rocked up at the appointed time, chocolates in hand. After wandering around with him for a little while we picked up another guy who apparently had a car. Some food was bought, some raki (aniseed liquor) was bought and we drove up the valley. After about half an hour Brett and I were a little worried about how we’d get home but it all turned out marvellous. First we drove past his village up to a dam, where we had our first glass of raki in the car, looking out over the lake as the wind whistled outside. Then we drove up to a fish farm where we bought some fish that we later fried up for dinner. Back at his village we stoked up a fire in his village house and the four of us sat around eating and drinking until the raki was gone. Thankfully both men live full time in town so we all headed back there, though the second bottle of raki at the company’s garden house nearby probably tipped the balance. It was a crazily random night, and it was great to experience such lovely hospitality.

After a bit of head holding and feeling sorry for ourselves the next day we left Divrigi to make our way down toward Mt Nemrut. The mountain is famous for the massive stone heads that have toppled from their 8m high statues and now lie around the place looking ridiculously picturesque. It’s one of the iconic images of Turkey but we’d been worried that too much snow on the peak would stop us from going up. Thankfully we’ve spent so much time exploring the rest of the country that the snow has melted and the hotels opened. We decided to do a bit of a circuit, travelling up to the summit from Malatya for sunset then staying near the top, going up again for sunrise and descending to Kahta. The drive from Malatya was scenic, it gave us two chances to see the heads in different light and we got to see the ruins of the capital city at Arsameia.

Like Divrigi the remains on Nemrut Dagi are the work of a fleeting dynasty which would be no more than a footnote in history if it weren’t for a single, strikingly over-the-top feat of construction. In the case of Mt Nemrut it was an independent king who set himself up as a buffer state between Rome and the Parthians. He claimed ancestry leading back to the great empires to the east and west and his son revelled in delusions of grandeur. He ordered the building of a massive terrace on top of the 2,100m high peak and placed 8-9m tall statues of himself and the gods (who he claimed were his relatives). In the middle of the terrace is a 50m high pile of rubble which it’s assumed covers the tomb of King Antiochus. He decreed that ceremonies to him would take place on the mountain, in a temple he constructed there, twice every month. It didn’t last long, after his death in 38BC the territory was annexed by Rome and the Kingdom of Commagene was effectively over.

These days the heads have been toppled from the statues by earthquakes and lie at their feet. It was nice to have both sunset and sunrise at the summit as it gave us the chance to see both sides with good light. As it turns out that chance was thwarted by a cloud covered sunrise but we had some nice weather the night before and it was actually quite atmospheric with the mist. On the way down the mountain we stopped in at Arsameia which was the summer capital of the kingdom. There’s not much left apart from a few massive steles, one of which shows King Mithridates I shaking hands with the god Heracles. There is also a long tunnel dug 158m down into the bedrock which was designed for worshipping the king after his death. Up on a hilltop with a beautiful view down the valley is some walls, and a pebble floor from the ancient royal palace, but little else remains.

Later that day we made it back to Malatya to catch our overnight train back to Istanbul. Our time in Turkey was nearly at an end but we were looking forward to going back to where it all began 2.5 months ago. The last few days have been spent revisiting some of our favourite spots in this amazing city before we say a final farewell tonight. We’re catching the train to Belgrade, Serbia, though this was something we weren’t sure of until this morning. Yesterday they couldn’t tell us whether the train would go or not, it’s just pure luck that it’s going on the day we want to. The schedule says every day but hey, what kind of an adventure would that be? So we’ll spend a few days in Belgrade (and read about what there is to do there on the train) before heading to Munich.

Tags: Divrigi, Istanbul, Mt Nemrut, UNECO, World Heritage