Van!

So, as I said...after Kars and Ani, we went to Van.

Now, you might have heard about Van on the news last Friday because there were some riots and protests there. While such events are not really common there, it was expected because the Turkish prime minister visited the city. The Van region has a lot of Kurdish people living there and the prime minister is not very popular with SOME of the people in the region. But, my group was not in the city that day so I cannot tell you anything more than that.

Van was the center of the Urartu kingdom and so there are many ruins all around the region. We visited two major sites - the Van Castle located near the modern day city and one farther away (and closer to Iran!) named Çavustepe.

This is Van Castle - you can see in the background modern Van.

Urartu is another name for Ararat - the kingdom was a union of several different small regions reaching across eastern Turkey and into Armenia. The people of Uratu mostly wrote in cuneiform and I was able to see some of their writing! But, even though they used cuneiform, their language was really different from most of those spoken in the region. Linguistics is a little confusing for me, but Urartian is not related to Indo-European languages (that means not close to English!).

Cuneiform writing from Çavustepe.

I was really surprised by the beauty of the region. I thought everything was going to be a desert, but there were streams and rivers everywhere and it is common to see water bubbling out of the ground.

Van Lake is huge and amazing. We were able to take a ferry to Akdamar Island on the lake and the water is an amazing color. It changes throughout the day and can be an amazing crystal blue or a sparkling green. Also, even though it is located in the mountains, it never freezes because it is a soda lake. If you go swimming, you have to take a bath or shower soon after so your skin doesn't burn!

This is Van Lake with Akdamar Island in the background.

On the island is a church, graveyard, and there used to be a palace and monastery. The church was the private chapel of an Armenian king and was recently restored by the Turkish government. It is covered in amazing details and carvings that represent stories from the Bible as well as local Armenian saints.

This shows the story of Jonah and the whale. Because Van is located in the mountains they didn't know what a whale looked like so they made a monster with a lion's head!

A lot of ruins in the region are controversial because they are links to Armenia. There are problems because the Turkish government tends to downplay Armenian influences in the region and attempts to minimize parts of history. But, that's another story...