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Published: August 15th 2010
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From Goreme we headed East towards the Iranian border. It took 2 long days of driving to get to Lake Van. In the morning at Lake Van we went to visit an Armenian church that was on an island in the middle of the lake followed by another long drive to the frontier town of Dogubeyazit. The mid-day heat is quite intense by our standards. We passed a sign at 10:30am that read 40 degrees C. I'm sure by mid-afternoon it was pushing 45. With the windows down on the truck trying to get air, it felt like someone was blowing a hair dryer in our faces. It's amazing how vast these countries are. Even a short driving day is 6-7 hours.
In Dogubeyazit we visited Ishak palace in the evening light and then headed back to town for dinner. It's now the month of Ramadan where the muslims fast between sunrise and sunset. For some reason we seem to always pick this time to travel to Islamic countries. At about 7pm we found a local restaurant that seemed pretty busy and the food looked good. It was a set menu of various meat and veggie dishes. Anyways about half
way through our soup we realized that no one else in the restaurant was eating. They were picking at their food and staring at their watches. Apparently the fast was not yet over as we had thought. We stopped and waited until the mosque sounded the end of the fast at 7:15. Simultaneously everyone at the restaurant began to eat. After we finished we apologized to some guys that wanted to chat and they smiled and said there was no need for us to wait since we are travellers.
Next stop, Iran!
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Dawn Smallwood
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Looks amazing!
I love your Turkey blogs! There are some interesting buildings. Look forward to your next installment! Best wishes, Dawn