Third time is a charm, right? Well, the unplanned third time in Turkey did turn out to be the most scenic, challenging and wierdest part of my travels in Turkey, and included attacking sheep dogs, stone-throwing shephards, high-altitude food poisoning, a midget Kurd, pole-vaulting, and non-stop gorgeous mountain climbs and scenery. But from the beginning . . .

Crossing the border from Syria into Turkey the landscape changed almost immediately from dry toast desert to lush green fields and dirt so rich you could eat it. This is the result of the network of dams built as part of the Güneydoðu Anadolu Projesi - with the cornerpiece being the Attatürk Dam - one of the largest in the world (I stopped to admire - but the photograph is pretty boring - it's mainly just a big gravel fronted retaining wall). Anyway - you can see the contrasts here - the deep irrigated green and then the desert browns where the irrigation waters have not reached.

Most of the small town mosques are of the one minaret variety, like the one here in a small village on the way to Adayaman. So I read that the former mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoðan was jailed for "inciting religious hatred" because he compared minarets to bayonets in a public poetry reading. To me they seem more like slender rockets from the Apollo/Sputnik era, with multistory boosters underneath the astronauts' capsule. Some might say this is further evidence that Mohammad was not transcribing the word of Allah, but rather taking dictation from extraterrestrials. I think I wrote a paper on that at one time - very compelling evidence. (4/14/05)

This was toward the end of the ride up to the top of Nemrut Dagi, with a summit of 2150 meters - or 7052 feet. The hierothesium of Antiochus I Epiphanes at the top of the summit was a wierd scattering of heads fallen from the seated statutes, and that - as well as the views from the top - were worth the struggle to the top. But I made a few bad choices here that had some nasty results, and were you there with me at two o'clock in the morning you unfortunately would have seen me: (1)sick as a food-poisoned-dog underneath body-odor sheets that smelled as if they had not been washed since Antiochos ordered the construction of the hierothesium, (2) in a bunk room sleeping with a snoring father-and-son duo who manned the summit station and who earlier had supplied the food my stomach would later forcefully and painfully reject, (3) regretting every breath in the bunk room filled with noxious smoke from an unsealed wood stove that the duo had fed a constant supply of plastic-coated cardboard for fuel, (4) wishing I could not hear the ceasless pecking - like a constant request for release - of a poor little bird trapped in an evil small cage of sticks underneath one of the bunks (which later caused a moral dilemma in the morning as to whether its conditions of captivity were so appalling that I would be culpable for failing to secure its release), and (5) making repeated runs of desperate haste outside the room to the stenchified bathroom block in the pitch darkness with cold summit night winds blowing to puke up the entire contents of my stomach. It was the kind of night where I thought seriously about getting a return ticket home. I guess my stomach is not as strong as I thought it was with foreign food. (4/15/05) *

The next morning a bus load of Turkish tourists arrived at sunrise while I was still feeling nauseated and praying that my stomach would not require me again to make a mad rush past them to the toilet block. After they left I went up to snap a couple of photos and ended up laying down on the gravel to get some non-plastic-smokeyfied rest before the ride down. Even though it was downhill, I only made it about 10 km to a more suitable and oxygenated pension in the village of Karadut - where I dropped my bike, ate an antibiotic pill, and slept for the next 20 hours. In that 10 km downhill I had rolled over 20,000 km on the odometer but I was too sick at the time to get excited about it. But anyway - the next morning I was cured and ready to ride again due to the magic of overprescribed and overused antibiotics. (4/16/05) *

The road from Karadut to Diyarbakir was a niece piece of Turkish engineering with a gradual incline followed by an extended gradual decline, so there was no wasted energy with a bunch of ups and downs. The road was broken at one of the dam-caused lakes, and in the wait for the ferry I was surrounded by fellow passengers who had a lot to say and gesture about George Bush, which is often an embarrassing topic for Americans abroad. I think my reaction was sheepish nodding with the explanation that basically half of us voted against GWB - but I have to admit that the topic is beginning to get tiresome. So, Diyarbakir is on the Tigris River with a history that goes back to Mesopotamia. I came to see the Great Wall of Diyirbakir, which was built in Byzantine times and runs over 6km in length - a distance claimed to be second in length only to the Great Wall of China. I'd guess that's a pretty distant second, but it was still pretty amazing. Here is a dramatically-lit section along with a nearby park. The walk along the top as the sun was departing was good fun. (4/29/05)

Down a narrow alley in Diyarbakir's old town is a Chaldean Cathedral with some stone animal engravings above the metal double doors. Although I was rapping pretty hard with the door knocker in an attempt to gain access, no Chaldeans were there at the time to open the giant metal doors to the cathedral. I did not know that eastern Turkey was part of the Chaldean territories - but so it is. (4/29/05)

Southeastern Turkey is Kurdish - and there is a strong military presence in this part of the country with multiple Jandarma checkpoints along the highway, tanks, barbwire, military installations and other indicators of ready-to-use force. There was some serious civil unrest in the 90's following the immigration of millions of Iraqi Kurds into eastern Turkey and so there remains a large armed presence to deter any separatist notions. On the way to Tatvan from Diyarbakir I was called over to one of these concrete roadside Jandarma stations where the Turkish officers tried to talk to me but couldn't due to my failure to learn Turkish. Some of the nearby Kurdish villagers who could speak English came in and ended up inviting me back to the main house where some pre-wedding festivities were taking place. I was in the men-only room that you see here, and the next room sounded pretty boisterous with Kurdish music, clapping, laughing, and (when the door occasionally opened) I could see dancing. On my right you can see the groom-to-be who was scheduled to get married the next week. The smaller guy on the right of the photo was cracking the most jokes - and they must have been good ones judging by the reactions. They said he could read minds and alter weather patterns by sheer force of will - which I thought was pretty cool. I kind of got the sense that the village was pretty self contained and self sufficient and did not receive too many visitors - it was out in the middle of nothing and every house had extensive gardens and either sheep or cows that supplied a ready food supply. The next day it was more and more Jandarma checkpoints - definitely a police state out in the east. (4/30/05) *

In order to reach Tatvan I rode the twisting road laid in the gorge cut by the Bitlis River in the Musgureyi Mountains. It was really scenic with multi-colored hills with splotches of reds, purples and lead greens, a series of rushing waterfalls and crumbling Ottoman bridges. Also this is the time of year for babies, so the cows, sheep and geese all had young ones in tow. Have you ever seen a goose responding to a perceived threat to its young (like a passing cyclist)? It is like something from a horror movie. This day I was running a gauntlent of clusters of aggressive onion-selling kids that would try to stop my bike by grabbing the load that was on the rear rack. I had to adopt diversionary tactics that proved fairly successful. (5/1/05)

Lake Van reminded me a little of Alaska. The lake is a gigantic blob of blue covering the eastern part of any map of Turkey, and viewed in person is ringed by ice-capped mountains. The lake is at about 5,500 feet, but the north shore road was totally flat and largely desolate. I started the morning under hail, but that petered out after a few minutes. Ahlat was one of the few towns along the way, and it housed this Seljuk cemetary with giant gravestones made of volcanic rock carved with Kufic lettering. It was here that the sheep dogs and stone-throwing shepard kids began their concerted offensive against this unprepared cyclist, an assault that would continue through to the border region with Georgia. (5/3/05)

Flowering trees in bloom, grass in springtime photosynthesis mode, the calm lake waters, all of this was the peaceful backdrop to a wave of territorial aggression. First - the canines. The sheep dogs are of the Kangol breed - and they look very wolf-like to me. I will post a photo in this album later of one tearing apart a cow (it was the only photo I could take because every other time I saw one I was only concentrating on speeding away from their psychotic charges - that one was safely preoccupied with the cow). A significant number of them are made to look even more terrifying by wearing giant collars with three-inch metal spikes (like the dog in the bad campers' boat in "Race For Your Life Charlie Brown") - these supposedly protect their necks from wolf bites. When it is one dog alone it is not too bad - but out here I would often run into packs of three or more of these donkey-sized dogs that would be lying in wait. I am packing a Dog Dazer - which worked pretty well on some of the wild dogs in Syria - but is totally ineffective against Kangols. The Dazer works by emitting this high frequency noise that is supposed to be an acoustic Hell for any canine. I tried it out on a Kangol, which was a big mistake. It was taken as a provocation rather than a demand to cease and desist the chase, and the dog began chasing me with a sudden frenzy of aggression and ferocity that I could have scarcely imagined possible of humanity's best friend. (5/3/05) *