Another
cool morning of -5°C .
No water again, just as well as we filled a 5 litre bottle last
night.
A
herdsman bought his herd of sheep/goats down for a drink and came to
the vehicle. John went out and said hello to him but then he ran after
his herd.
I
started walking shortly after 11:00.
A fisher boat was laying a net
quite close to shore.
A
beautiful sunny day but still a hill in the wind still only about
2°C. I walked around
the end of the lake and John picked me up just before the small
village.
It
was a lovely drive around the lake. Many other fish nets were laid
around the coastline.
At
the end of the lake we were back onto a sealed road.
We wound our way
through the little villages with so much sheep poop on the roads it
was hard to see whether sealed or not!!
The
land is so brown with no or very few trees and no plants or gardens
in the villages.
It doesn’t look like they grow anything except,
animals and dung and hay piles!!
Even
in the outskirts of a big town of Igdir we still had to contend with
animals on the road.
A
slow trip leaving Igdir to the south and heading out in a circle to
Mt Ararat. There is a white road that crosses the foothills at about
2000m on the northern slopes. This was our aim for the night.
It
was late as we turned south and up the foothills of Mt Ararat the
tallest mount in Turkey at 5137m. it has a permanent ice cap.
The
road up was rough the slope is very very much like driving up a larva
flow which I guess is what we were doing!
The
last village on our map Esenkaya at 1600m here we turned west and
headed across the mountain. Dusk and the smoke was overtaking us at
1600hrs so could not take photos.
We
got some very strange looks
Found
a park about 16:30 overlooking a rough valley. A couple of herders
were camped below with their sheep, sleeping under the stars.
We
had put hot water back into the tank twice during the arvo and once
just before bed.
150km Camp site 1619m alt.
150km Camp site 1619m alt.