4th - Coming back home

Coming home from Turkey was very eventless - especially considering all the problems we had going down.

Early departure from the hotel, arrived at Van airport where all the luggage was checked in all the way, and with a 2 hour layover in Instanbul this part of the trip was actually the easiest one.

Coming home Wednesday there was no time for rest, though, as I would be leaving for Romania the following Saturday. More stories to come!

3rd - Return

We had a relatively early start today; breakfast at 0700 and departure at 0800 so we would have some time for some sightseeing in Van. I woke up a few minutes to 0600, the 11 hours of sleep felt great.

We were soon on our way down to our pick-up point and 3 hours later, much warmer we were on our way back to the hotel where we had left any unnecessary luggage before going to Ararat.

Oh, by the way, the weather and mountain gods apparently hate us. We could see the summit the entire morning until we were picked up and there wasn’t a single cloud near the summit. And it was less windy. It feels better knowing that both guides had never seen such weather at the top before during a summer climb.

Back at the hotel we retrieved our stuff, had a short rest (wifi- yay!) and waited for our luggage to arrive in the second bus which had stayed behind waiting for “our” horses to get down with our bags. Finally the bags arrived, we all moved to a larger bus and we were soon on our way towards Van with a quick lunch stop on route.

We arrived at our hotel in Van where we had 40 minutes to shower before we would be leaving again to visit an island on which there was a small Armenian monastery. The island itself was quite small, not even one km long or wide, and with only us and a couple of local employees on the island it was a pleasant calm after the hectic climb.

Sailing back to the main land we had dinner on the beach.

The drive back to Van was eventless, and after getting off from the bus across from the hotel most of us went to a bar to have a couple of drinks. I shared half a bottle of raki with two others, and I’ll admit it tasted good until getting halfway through the glass, after which it got too much. No worries – the others were more than happy to help me with it.

After enjoying our drinks we were a few who went down to the street to get some durums – mainly to compare them to the ones you get at home. Conclusion by just looking at them being made was unsurprisingly that they naturally were in a completely different league. We were allowed to eat them in the hotel bar as long as we bought beers/drinks, which we of course dutifully did. After a couple of fun hours (Bo has some amazing stories from his climbs around the world) we went to bed.

Panoramic view of base camp after coming down. You can see the shadow of Mt. Ararat with the sun behind it.

The Armenian monastery.

29th - Continuing east

The flight to Van had a boarding time of 0600. The locals said that we should depart the hotel at 0500 – something making us a little nervous considering it took us more than an hour to get to the hotel last night. But it was agreed, and wake-up calls were ordered for 0430. It was clear who had set their own alarms, as they were the ones ready to depart at 0500; the calls never came in. Delayed we left the hotel at 0515, and this time it took less than half an hour to get back to the airport. A little confusion about where to be and a few moves from counter to counter later we had checked in our luggage (again) and were ready to go to security. Stressful moment (“go to gate” when entering security, a couple of minutes later when having completed security “last call”) but we made it to the plane in time. The flight itself was (surprisingly) eventless.

Arriving at Van the two lost pieces of luggage hadn’t shown up but the rest of us received our bags without any issues. We also got to meet our local guide for the first time.

Bus app. 4 hours to get to our hotel in the village Dogubeyazik, and after check-in we had lunch followed by sightseeing the old palace Ishak Pasha located overlooking the town. It was a beautiful view of the surrounding area.

We came back to the hotel, relaxed a little were briefed on the next couple of days and went to dinner where we got back together with the two guys who lost their bags who had spent their afternoon on replacing most of the things.

Back at the hotel we went to the roof where we enjoyed a drink while having a closer view of Mt. Ararat.

Weird standing in the hotel room and seeing a sign pointing towards Iran.

Police car parked down town.

Ishak Pasha.

The view of Mt. Ararat from the hotel roof.

Sunset over Dogubeyazik.