Another long night bus. This time dawn breaks over huge fields of wheat and barley ready to harvest. Villagers work the vast area with hand tools. Not sure if the fields are old, or new ones irrigated by the sprawling Ataturk Dam built as part of the GAP project to help boost the economy in Eastern Turkey.

 

The bus arrives in the town of Khata, far enough South East for the men to be wearing baggy (MC Hammer style) trousers and everyone to be speaking Kurdish rather than Turkish. Its very hot. The next bus takes us up to a village called Karadut. Nice and cool up here with a pension garden camping spot and a view. Our friendly family hosts confirm the guide book claim of a 10km hike from Karadut to the big stone heads on Mount Nemrut and we set off.

 

The guide book also had a few paragraphs on the history of the 2000 year old mountain top tomb at Nemrut. I forget the name of the king but he sounded like an OK sort of a guy ruling over a small but tricky patch of land stuck between Mediterranean powers in the West and Persian powers in the East. He claimed to be related to Alexander the Great on one side and Darius on the other. To finalise a series of efforts to unite East and West he built the tomb at the summit of Mount Nemrut - a 30m high mound of gravel (tomb buried deep inside) between two rows of giant statues of Gods. One row sitting looking West, the other sitting looking East.

 

The guide book said the thing to do is to watch the sun rise/set over the giant stone heads, but with the stunning mountain top views it was much more tempting to look out over the valleys than look back at the heads crawling with tour groups.

 

JL