May 11th: Last evening we enjoyed a nice dinner with beers and some Turkish Ouzo…. Raki😃. We had some real good fun at the table we discussed the trip of today.
From Van to Malatya our GPS calculated 5h only . So we started late…7h00am breakfast, check out and than hit the road.
Our hotel in Van is located direct at the lake of Van. In the morning we had a magnificent view across the lake and in the background you saw the mountains still covered with snow on the top. If you are in Van make sure you really see the lake side…simply great. We packed our car and had a look at the tires … all good.
Starting direction Malatya in Van takes you alongside the lake. What a scenic drive… the lake shines in green and the mountains around cover the lake with their peaks full of snow. Not much more to say than: fantastic!
You remember we planned 5h. We will come to that in a second . Leaving the lake side you drive into a mountain area… the altitude is between 1500m and 2000 m nearly until Malatya. It is an amazing landscape. The small little towns you pass during that journey gave us the impression that we are in an area in which the people are less poor than in the area we passed from the border to Van. You can see massive investments in infrastructure….. most of the towns had brand new school building and the freeway we drove was also new. I can not recall that I drove on such a freeway in Germany lately😊. Difficult to understand the investment in the freeway if you look at the non existing traffic. Maybe already a part of the new Silk Road… who knows. If you read that you could easily come to the conclusion that we should be able to reach our destination even a bit earlier…. oh no that is misleading….
What we did not take into our consideration were the heavy police and military check points on the roads. We had 9 controls …. yes you read right….
Unbelievable!
The procedure is always the same: you show your passport, open your boot, tell your story and hope it goes fast. Honestly the guys are fully armed and we saw even some small tanks… this is a strange feeling…
I think all is related to the area there… you are more or less in the triangle of Irak, Syria and Turkey. So it is most probably the only way to give the people a certain guarantee of safety.
The highlight of the controls was No 5…. there the Officer in charge invited us to have tea. We agreed and had a chat in a mix of 3 different languages. We even took photos…. what an experience. Amazing!
So we reached our destination Malatya only after 8hs….
Now we will relax a bit and see what Malatya will hold for us. Tomorrow Ankara is waiting for us.
