Where are they??: KURDISTAN

From the border we kept seeing the snowed summits of Turkey... and we were going towards there, the road which we went up to Kars is the best landscape that we have seen in Turkey, and the less touristic, here the people started to notice us of the danger of the terrorist group PKK, three letters that must be pronounced in low voice.
We pass through snowed pass of more than 2.600 meters with solitary villages where the people work taking the flocks of cows and sheep, a very hard life, very different to the west of the country.
The man that pick us up by hitchhiking, the first that he said was: Yes!, I’m going to Kars… but you… what are you doing here? He was very nice, stopping in some places to take photos, besides he invited us to eat fish in a beautiful restaurant among mountains.

In Kars, we were hosted by the friends of the students of Nevsehir, and it was exactly the same... Aydın and his friends, gave us everything and they took us to see many things. Even they got a car to go to the castle of Ani, which is at the border with Armenia and nobody go there, not even buses, because the border is closed between these two countries.

In this photo it is seen separated by the river, Turkey and Armenia.

The visit of Kars city was incredible, one of the guys has a policeman uncle, and at night, during a routine control, the policeman took us to see the important places in the city. It is very curious, here the policemen go patrolling through the streets and with the megaphone they give advises to the drivers.

We left the coldest city of the travel, Kars is found at 2.000 meters of altitude; we enjoy about 2 degrees, but in winter it’s around 45 degrees below zero; we go into Kurdish lands, a place forbidden to pronounce in Turkey, Kurdistan. Through these roads the antiterrorist military checkpoint with tanks are constant. They always stopped us to check the cargo and ask for our passports. The soldiers are entrenched with the sand bags prepared to any attack. The villages have changed in houses of adobe with all the loose animals which cross in the road. Checkpoint after checkpoint we arrived to Iğdır, just in front of this city is the Mount Ararat with its 5.100 meters of altitude.

Here it is not usual to see foreigners and the habitants offer us to go to their houses to have a cup tea, but we must reach Doğubayazıt before gets dark; we caught a small truck; in that moment, a boy asked me if I understood his English, I said that I did and he was super, super happy!

We turn around the Ararat until reach Doğubayazıt where we tried to get in touch with the member of HC that waited us, but was very difficult; in Turkey is great that when you ask to a person on the street, in 5 seconds appear 20 around yours trying to help you, and in the end between some and others we started to understand something. We went to a place where they told us and we wait there; but when a car came to pick us up and started to go around, neither we knew where we were going, and the driver very proud said all the time that he speaks English but he spoke Kurdish to me. Finally we realized that Fakur lives far from the city, only 10 km from Iran, in a PRIVILEGED place, not for the village, but for the landscape. Our arrival was like: where we go! but in spite of his humble house, this family was a great experience in our journey; we lived the traditional life of the Kurdish people, where it is usual large families of about 7 children at least. About the bathroom; we see that they don’t have it as a cozy place, it is the dirtiest place of the house and it is outside the house; they don’t have shower or hot water either, so they warm up the water in barrels with an electric resistance. Their hospitality consists in that we are kings and they don’t leave us to help them, which is more incredible because they have nothing…

This village it’s only three kilometers from the supposed Noah Ark, you can take it in a thousand ways, but officially has the form of a boat and the wood is petrified from thousands of years, the rest for the imagination… It will be or will not be....
There, where we go, always are children that accompany us and in this case approached a Kurdish girl that simply wanted to pass some time with us.
When we went back to the village a man brought us down; here a stricter Islam is seen, when María went to shake hands with the man, he put his on the heart, forgiven himself because he cannot touch a woman...

The day that we left, we hitchhike to the truck drivers that came from Iran, and the driver came with a lot of pistachios (typical from Iran), he took us about 30 km and gave us 2 kilos of pistachios and two pomegranate. Bordering the Iranian border we go towards Van, that city that always people said us "don´t go there!" But really nothing happen, simply continuous military checkpoints where they ask us for the passport and revise the truck in depth.

The west and Turkish east is white and black; here the people live, or, badly lives of the cattle, the children don’t go to the school and with 8 years old are already working. The houses are of adobe and they have the pile of animal excrements outside to use it as fuel and to warm up in winter.

In Van, Hamdullah and Ahmet hosted us, two Kurdish guys who gave us a very different vision of this big problem that lives Turkey. They feel in a strange country that doesn’t give them freedom of speech. We cannot know up to which point it is well or bad; which is true, is that the Kurdish people have a very different culture of the Turkish, a different language and nearly 50 million people divided among Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq, without an own country.
During these days the demonstrations against the PKK are continuous, everything is getting worse, Turkish and Kurdish join each other against the violence.

Hamdullah was very nice with us, he brought us to see the city settled on the shore of a lake with a castle of stone and adobe walls; Hamdullah had to go to work, but he wanted to stay with us, so he went to the doctor to ask for a medical report simply claiming that he didn’t want to go to work... he also prepared us a Van Breakfast, the most famous in Turkey!

The following city will be to forget forever... Diyarbakir is found at 370 km from Van, is the "capital city " of Kurdistan, and lodges the second biggest wall of the world, after the Chinese; we arrived with only one truck. On the way, checkpoints with tanks as always; and always seeing two foreigners is motif of stopping us and asking us for the passport.

We never had problems until now with a member of the club, it was here and it was very important, this person drugged us from the first day with something that even we don’t know, we pass three days “flying”, even one of the days we did a small “tour” by the surroundings, Mardin, Hasankeyf (a place that will be sunk forever by the construction of a dam in the Tigris river), and Batman. A "tour" that we remember vaguely, and in which we could have possible risks as hitchhike late-night in the place less indicated, in Batman. But under the effects of that drug we were not capable of thinking rationally, not even to think about leave the house of that person.

The last day the thing exploited when he came in our room and attempt to misuse María.
We went out running, still “flying” for the effect of the drugs; the police arrived, and we all went to the police station, this day they behaved well although we had to tell them that we needed an analytic, they didn’t know how to proceed… We made the report and this night we were helped by another member of the club; Erkan and his family gave us the affection that we needed in that moment, although we remember very vaguely everything.
On the following day we had to go to police station again, and we found out that the criminal was at home. We could not withstand the risk to go to his home. Doing this, we pass from attacked to aggressors, we were denounced of "possible crime". They retained us, there was a judgment, and supposedly we won, but they retained us for motifs of safety for a night. A retention that changed in prisoners, and changed into a big problem that almost took us to the deportation to Spain, something that would break all our schemas and dream.
Fortunately the pressure and the performance of the Spanish Embassy in Ankara, who was in touch with us all the time, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Spain, obtained our freedom and fought until justice was done, 24 hours helping us.
In the moment that we were free, and the criminal in prison, we didn’t think twice, we run away from this place, the police left us in the bus station, and we caught our first bus in Turkey up to Siverek, and from here in a minivan we crossed by ferry the Euphrates River, up to Kahta.

We stayed again with a charming Kurdish family, with the same curious habits, as eating sitting on the floor. They don’t use tables, they put big trays on the floor and we all sit around.

Our idea here was to go to Nemrut Dağı, and they told us that to hitchhike here is impossible, but… how they tell that to us! we went there in many different vehicles, even in a police car where we were 6 person plus guns... We manage to go up to this mountain of more than 2.500 meters of altitude where there are a huge stone faces from the 1st century B.C. A very cold place, with a lot of wind, but very special for us, because here we have celebrated our 9th anniversary, with an impressive sights.

Arrive…we arrived, the problem was how we were going to go back; but we are always lucky, in the summit of Nemrut we met a Swiss couple that came by van from Australia! we talk with them and they took us down, up to Kahta.

The car that took us to our last destination of Turkey, burst the engine on the way, we keep hitchhiking, and arrived to Sanliurfa, where we found a dry weather, more arid and a very nice temperature to be November.

Here it is said that, it is the city of the prophet Abraham, and the most symbolic places of Urfa are related with him.

We found more Arab style, we are very near Syria... The markets of the city are authentic! everything is handmade; but is complicated to move tranquil for the hundreds of eyes that observe our movements, and the children are a little tiring with the “What is your name? Our answers keep varying, inventing different identities...