We spent about a week running right along tense borders in the east and south of Turkey: Armenia, Iran, Iraq and finally Syria. Even more tense is the mood in this part of Turkey because it is where the Kurdish separatists call home. Yeah, those Kurdish separatists who keep bombing the tourist areas of Turkey. The military checkpoints actually got a little tiring after a while as they mean extra time on the bus. The trip from Doyugabazit to Van, through Batman to Diyabakir, off to Mardin and then to Urfa, Harran and Mt. Nemrut was through the frontier and agricultural heart of Turkey. People tended to be very friendly, if for no other reason than the curiosity of passing Americans.

‘beehive’ houses ın Harran next to the Syrian border. Note the TV antenna…

Mary playing kissie with the Travelocity Gnome at Mt. Nemrut

Rest of the family at Nemrut

Batman: İ don’t need to make this stuff up. There’s really a town named Batman. We just passed through, but long enough to note that the bus station looks a lot like the Hall of Justice. Really, it was quite funny. But the bus didn’t stop there so no picture I also wasn’t fast enough to get a picture of the Batman ambulance we saw in Diyarbakir. Gotta be quicker with the lens. The picture here is from a bus company in the next town advertising service to Batman.

My Shoe, Part 2: I tore the leather out of the sole of my sandals hiking in the Kackar mountains last month. Mary fixed it up with some twine and that kept me going until Diyabakir. A rug salesman noticed the repair and as his opening line said something to the effect of “nice to see there are Americans as poor as we are”. Not 10 minutes later, we stumbled across a row of cobblers and gave one a chance to disguise my poverty. The bottom picture is the stitching that resulted. That was a couple weeks ago and it’s still holding strong. Pay attention Merrell!.

Home cooking:We’ve become really tired of Turkish food. It’s good and all, but after a few weeks we very much craved anything else. Luck came in the form of a Burger King in Diyarbakir. There’s no two ways to look at it. We had two meals in the town and both were Burger King. And they weren’t small meals. We gorged. Now that we’re back in civilized Istanbul, this process is out of control. We’ve already had Slotchkey’s Deli, Pizza Hut and McDonalds (twice).