Just few steps to the border

Walking around the road. Different smells, lot of trash everywhere. People looking at us, pointing on us.
Good weather with nice looking sky. some kid wanted some change. Some taxi driver stopping for us for same reason. We left Agri. I immediately felt better.

We got ride by a bank clerk who moved to Agri from some city on west coast few months ago because his bank opened new branch office in small city close to Agri. After few weeks his wife and kids moved out to different city because they couldn't stand people living there. Kids were afraid to walk around. They had same feelings as I, which proved my senses. He told us that we were lucky to stay in Teacher's house. We knew that.

He left us next to turning, wished us good and safe trip and went for his daily routine.
Some locals and taxi drivers had been waiting there. They immediately offered us ride.We didn't feel like paying them so we walked slowly away. But just in few seconds some car stopped for us. We didn't hitchhike but it was nothing extraordinary in Turkey. Driver was a man in his late 40s and wanted to take us with him. His car was dirty truck with cabin for two people. There were three of us. He didn't want to let us go by walking. He insisted on taking us even at behind the cabin on the truck. It was too dirty and he acted quite suspicious. The people standing with taxi drivers were also shouting all the time, telling us not to go with him, so we decided to let him go and walk further. He jumped in to the truck and drive slowly next to us, insisting to take us. After while he speeded up and left us on the road.

Then we got another ride to Dogubayazit which was our final destination in Turkey. During the ride Tony told us that these people standing with taxi drivers were telling us that the guy is a terrorist and he wanted to cut our heads. We will probably never know if it was real or they were just trying to persuade us to get some taxi. Anyway he was strange and all of us had mixed feelings about him.


We stayed in Dogubayazit just a while. It was enough for some tourist office managers to invite us for tea and propose us some trips on Arrarat and nearby. We refused and continued out of the city and towards border with Iran. Then we met some traveler passing by us, after few minutes we got acquainted. He was 27yo Czech tourist who was coming from Armenia and went for trek to Arratat for few days. He made some friends from the city and before we went with him to the road, he went to say goodbye to old man from some shop who invited him for tea. It was interesting to see their conversation. They didn't speak the same language but shared the same emotions, like when old friends are saying goodbye to each other.

Just few minutes later we found the road again and when Czech guy continued back home, we were slowly walking to the border. We got ride from Iranian truck driver and he took us few clicks to the border.
There were tens of trucks waiting in line to get through. When we passed Turkish control, we found a bottle of beer which we forgot to drink before. So hidden behind some truck we drank it and went to Iranian border control.

All soldiers with guns were looking at us. It's the place where you are afraid to walk faster or take a photo.

We came into the building which looked like departure hall from airport and were told to wait till someone will come to check our passports. Tony went first, for him as a Turkish national it was easy. Then it was our turn. We had our visas checked, they asked us some questions like "how long are you planing to stay in Iran?" or "which border crossing are you going to use on your way back"? And for some reason we could cross the border only together.

Kurdistan - new tabu word in my dictionary

From Erzurum we hitchhiked to Agri. Two young man took us there and in a while we realized they were members of The Kurdistan Worker's Party also know as PKK. According to Wikipedia PKK is separatist organization which fights an army struggle against the Turkish state for the creation of an Independent Kurdistan. European Union put them on list of terroristic organizations. They told us a lot about PKK, their ideas and goals.

Accidentally in the middle of talks with them in their car, going to Agri, I got a call. Some unknown angry Turkish guy called me just to say words like bitch, fuck and some others. All the time repeating this is Turkey not Kurdistan. It was hard to understand him, because we were in car, but later he sent us around 10 texts only with swears. All of them addressed to me. Imagine messages like "I will kill you, when i"ll meet you" ending with "Good luck on trip!". We got some idea who is it and later when we saw another message in mailbox which proved it. It was one couchsurfer who got request from me.
The request was something like "we are traveling around Turkey, passing through Kurdistan, going to Agri, can you host us?".. I didn't want to offend anyone and I didn't know that Kurdistan is tabu word in this part of Turkey. People were and they are still dying for this word. Apparently it's not just word.
I have to focus more on cultural than geographical facts for next time. There is not enough preparation for journey and this political correctness is killing free discussion.

In a while we were dropped in Agri and we started to explore the city. When we asked a policeman if he knows about any accommodation for us. He was surprised, asked what we were doing there but he told us about teacher's house (Teachers in Turkey have to spend some time teaching kids in east parts of Turkey and after that they can get well paid job in good schools in the west as ppl told us.
After arriving into teacher's house we managed (read Tony in Turkish with our moral support) to persuade guy working on reception to give us some place for night for free. Looking for hotel or other kind of accommodation would be loss of time. We could use one office next to reception. It was still to early for sleeping so we just left our stuff there and went explore the city. I don't know why but i didn't feel safe there for first time in my life. No tourists, no other foreigners, just locals who were staring at us. We went around, bought some food and after sun went down, we ate in the park and listened to some music from phone and from buildings around. I was suspicious and always looking around but nothing happened. So we went back to Teacher's house and made our office comfortable.

We woke up early bin the morning when someone was knocking at our door. We were locked because we didn't feel safe in this town. It was guy from yesterday, he told us that we have to leave bcs. his boss is coming and he can't found us there. It was ok, we didn't want to stay there longer anyway.
Walking through city till main road took us some time, we saw nice couch which would be great to have at home but too heavy to carry it with ourselves :) so at least we took a picture on it. That's the CS spirit!
There was another surprise when we almost reached main road. Look for yourself...