Dust on My Feet: Special Places in the East

The ruined Kiz Bridge over the Qizil Üzen River in north-eastern Iran in 1970

There are times when we travel when we tend to over look the small places, places that seem unimportant at the time, but perhaps we take a photo anyway. Some of these places stay deep in our memory and suddenly come back to life when we look at a photo. Often something is triggered in the memory-banks, perhaps, an incident, a little spot of tranquility or just a place of rustic beauty and the photo takes on a new meaning. On my first Overland trip in 1970, I took several photos in a area spanning the Eastern Azerbaijan province of Iran and Eastern Turkey to the Black Sea port of Trabzon. At the time, other than the aesthetic value of the photos, I thought nothing of them, but recently, probably with the impact of world events - Iran falling under the sway of an Islamic Revolution and the tumultuous political struggles in Turkey's Kurdistan region, these places have triggered a renewed interest.

As we drove from Tehran to the city of Tabriz, we came upon an ancient ruined bridge over a small river. Although Hubert, our tour leader, would have told us briefly the story, I had forgot even the location. In recent months, and with the help of Google, I now know that this is known as the Kiz Bridge over the Qizil Üzen River, dating from possibly the 8th century, although some archaeologists believe it may even be of Sassanian, or pre-Islamic, origin. Despite its ancient origins, the damage to the central arch of the bridge was recent; in 1946, in the aftermath of World War 2, Communist separatists of the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, blew up the central arch in a futile attempt to stop the advance of the Iranian Army who were re-occupying this area of Iran which had been occupied by Soviet troops since 1941. In the course of my research I also came upon a sketch of the bridge, dating from 1840, by the French traveller Eugène Flandin, which shows the intact bridge.

Eugène Flandrin's 1840 sketch of the Kiz Bridge

Continuing north, after passing through the city of Tabriz we came to the border town of Maku, which is situated in a spectacular gorge of the Zangmar River. What was remarkable about this town was its setting with many of the old mud-brick buildings resting beneath what seemed to be a massive overhang of rock. That there had been collapses from this overhang was quite evident, with large rocks being visible among the old mud-brick buildings. I passed through Maku a couple of times in later years, but it was only really on this journey in 1970 that I was able to clearly see the rather precarious situation of part of the town.

A clear view of the rocky overhang that appears to threaten part of the old town of Maku, Iran

The border with Turkey is just a few kilometres down the road, at a small place called Bazargan which is dominated, on a clear day, by the twin peaks of Biblical Mt Ararat. Ararat is made up of two volcanic cones - Greater Ararat at 5137m and Little Ararat at 3896m. According to Biblical tradition it is on one of these peaks that Noah's Ark ran aground after the Biblical flood: Genesis 8:4 ‘and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest upon the mountains of Ararat.’ But if the passage is looked at closely it says the 'mountains of Ararat'. From the mid-9th century BC, all the area of Eastern Turkey, including the two volcanic peaks, was part of the Kingdom of Urartu which existed until the early 6th century BC. The name Ararat has its origins in Urartu.

Great Ararat & Little Ararat, the two volcanic peaks from the Bazargan border, 1970

Eastern Turkey is part of Kurdistan, the traditional homelands of the Kurdish people. We stopped at a small Kurdish village named, if I remember rightly, Dikendere. In 1970 villages in this area were pretty basic, with flat-roofed houses constructed from the local broken grey stone that lay around the hills. Conical piles of dung, used for fuel, were positioned throughout the village. The area was peaceful and the villagers scratched their meagre, subsistence existence with their sheep in these sparse mountains.

The Kurdish village of Dikendere, with conical piles of dung used for fuel. Eastern Turkey 1970

Kurds in traditional costumes appeared in doorways with their children and dogs while lethargic fat-tailed sheep stood by solid wooden-wheeled carts. The Kurds had lived in the region of Turkey for centuries, and as yet, their lives had not been disrupted by modern International politics.

One of the largest towns in Eastern Turkey is the ancient town of Erzurum whose origins go back to the Urartuan Kingdom and , under the Romans,was known as Theodosiopolis. The city's present name dates from the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century. In 1970, as the town wakes up, there is an intermingling of horse-drawn carriages, dolmuş - the popular share-taxis found throughout Turkey, and more modern local and inter-town buses.

Leaving Erzurum our route took us north over the snowbound Kopdaği Pass and into the small attractive town of Bayburt, dominated by a Byzantine Castle.

The snowy landscape near the top of Topdaği Pass on the road to Bayburt

Marco Polo passed this way on his epic journey along the Silk Road to China in the 13th century, however he limited his observations of Bayburt to: "And on the route from Trebizond to Tabriz is a fortress called Bayburt, where there is a large silver mine.". The Trebizond that Marco Polo mentions is modern Trabzon , our destination on the Black Sea. In 1970, Bayburt still had that ancient feel about it with horse-carts mixing with trucks and buses. As with most Turkish towns, a bust of Kemal Atatürk, Father of Modern Turkey, takes pride of place in the main street.

The small town of Bayburt is dominated by a Byzantine Fortress

As we continued towards Trabzon, late afternoon saw us enter a delightful little valley known as Ikisu. This means two waters in Turkish, and I watched two women industriously hoeing their fertile wall-enclosed garden.

Women hoe their fields in the beautiful Ikisu Valley

Peach blossoms were just coming to their early spring best as I walked through the Valley to the little, tinkling Ikisu stream.

Peach blossoms in the Ikisu Valley, late afternoon

Near Trabzon, in the Altındere National Park, is the amazing abandoned Greek Orthodox Monastery of Sumela, nestled on a ledge high on a steep cliff. After a hair-raising truck ride from Trabzon, along the mountain roads and an exhausting few hundred metres climb up a steep footpath, we reached the monastery.

The spectacular remains of the Sumela Monastery, near Trabzon

A number of very fine Byzantine wall murals of Biblical scene still remained in excellent condition, including on a Jonah and the whale and, the mural below. showing Christ's entrance into Jerusalem, although many of the more accessible had been defaced in accordance with Moslem iconoclastic beliefs.

Byzantine murals in Sumela Monastery

Much of the monastery buildings, including the former monks' cells, have fallen into disrepair and in my diary at the time I noted that: "the toilets of the monks put a completely new meaning to the term 'long-drop'."