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11 August, Doğubayazit to Diyadin, 48km
Öğretmenevi 50TL

We are Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in Diyadin. We assume no tourists ever pass through this town of 20,600, 7km off the main road, as we have been treated like celebrities all day: everyone smiling and greeting us, people asking to have their photos taken with us, one man inviting us to drink tea in his family home and then inviting us to spend the night, families going out of their way to drive us to the nearby thermal spring and back to our hotel, men buying us post-dinner Nescafe. We arrived here after a pleasing ride on a road in perfect nick that took us through naked hills, their true colours shining through: earth coloured red and aubergine, green and grey, tan and brown. The Kurdish home we visited comprised three large rooms – lounge, bedroom and kitchen, with, we assume, an outside bathroom. The mattresses and bedding were piled almost ceiling high in the bedroom to make space for our host, his wife and their five children: four girls and one boy. While we consumed cinnamon tea and chocolate toffee sweets with dad and granddad, mom, kids and cousins sat to one side watching. After a nap, we walked through the town onto the road to the thermal spring not very optimistic about getting a lift, but within minutes found ourselves bouncing around on the floor of a panel van with the women of another proudly Kurdish family. All day I had been fantasising about the hot spring in which we were to swim, only to find, as is often the case in Turkey, that the reality was considerably less romantic than my imaginings, but so quintessentially “Turkish” that I could not help but enjoy it. Instead of a hot pool beneath a canopy of green trees, the spring water has been diverted into separate buildings for men and women. These are ugly and stand on a dusty, litter-strewn plain. In “my” building was a large pool filled with hot mineral water, with semi-naked women and totally naked children, both girls and boys, bathing and swimming and chatting and relaxing. And there I joined them while Charl did his thing next door, and loved every minute. 

Between Doğubayazit and Diyadin
Between Doğubayazit and Diyadin
Between Doğubayazit and Diyadin
Between Doğubayazit and Diyadin
Between Doğubayazit and Diyadin
Between Doğubayazit and Diyadin
Between Doğubayazit and Diyadin
Between Doğubayazit and Diyadin
Kurdish family - lift to thermal pools
Kurdish family - lift to thermal pools
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