Nemrut Dagi

From Gazientep we took a bus to Kahta to organise getting up to Nemrut Dagi to see the 'giant heads' at the top of the mountain. The history behind the statues is that a King built a big statue of himself and various gods up there around 60BC. The statues were once seated, but the heads of the statues were at some stage removed from their bodies, and so are now scattered throughout the site.

Our initial plan was to stay at the little town named Karadut which is on the road up the Nemrut Dagi mountain. The supposedly ideal time to see the ancient 'giant heads' is at sunrise so we thought it would pay to be handy to the top to extend our sleeping opportunities. Unfortunately it turned out that the buses to Karadut were not running on the day we arrived so we ended up staying in a town named Narince a bit further away. We were offered dinner, a place to sleep, transport up to the top of the mountain for sunrise and breakfast the following morning from a local family. The father, Mehmet owned the local pide (bread) shop and so was used to early starts with the bakery.

The following morning we got up for the 3.30am start to the top of the mountain. Mehmet started to drive us up the road to the summit. The road got steadily more steep the further we went and unfortunately was too much for his little car which stopped dead in its tracks about half way up. All that Mehmet said in his stilted English was "problem." He then proceeded to try and fix the issue by fiddling around with various fuses, pulling them out and putting them back in again. We were not filled with confidence at Mehmet's mechanic skills. Eventually we came to the conclusion that the car was not going to make it to the top however by a stroke of luck Mehmet knew the driver of the local school minibus and in true Turkish hospitality he loaned the keys to Mehmet to get us to the top for sunrise.

Surprisingly, after all of the drama we still managed to just make it up in time for sunrise and managed to get a few good shots at the top. There was still snow at the top of the mountain and it was windy and FREEZING cold so needless to say we didn't muck around too much up there. On the way back down, the driver of the school bus kindly towed Mehmet's car back to the town.