Month: November 2021

The Volcano

From Tatvan a good road leads up to the big crater of a volcano, and we went to explore it a bit. But we also found an incredible cemetery a little bit further north. The road took us up the mountain, past a chairlift for skiing in winter and to the rim at about 2500 …

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Lake Van

From Doğubeyazıt we drove to Lake Van, passing incredible lava formations, a waterfall and an old bridge before we reached the lake. We visited Van with its fortress and museum before we accidentally joined the Black Friday shopping. The next day the sun was out and we took the ferry to visit an incredible Armenian …

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Ishak Pasa Sarayi

On the way to Doğubeyazıt we had some incredible mountain views, but none of Mount Ararat. Apart from that mountain, the most important sight in this area is the Ishak Pasa Sarayi, one of few surviving historical Turkish palaces. We are now in Turkish Kurdistan, and regularly we have to pass military controls along the …

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The city of Ani

From Hopa/Turkey, at the coast of the Black Sea, we drove inland along reservoirs and through valleys, until we traversed a pass at 2,600 metres, before we reached a high plain where Ani, the Medieval capital of the Armenia Kingdom, lies directly at the border to Armenia. The city, which experienced its golden age during …

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Short hike @ Borjomi

Borjomi is famous for its hot sulphuric mineral water but also for the national park surrounding it, where you can take a lot of different hikes. We had decided on a hike to the bath of the Tsar which included a ride with the old cable car! Already the Russian Tsars valued the healing qualities …

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Cave town No. 3

From the plateau at 2000 metres we were driving down a valley doted with the remains of castles, until we reached the cave town of Vardzia, one of the major sights in Georgia. We had visited the cave town of Uplistsikhe, which is much older, and the cave town of Khndzoresk in the South of …

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The Menhir

We were now in the South of Georgia, at a 2000 meter high volcanic plateau with lakes and rivers surrounded by treeless steppe and subalpine grassland. We wanted to visit one of the sights in this area, the Tejisi Menhir, a huge megalith. In the Middle Ages a cross was carved into the stone and …

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