After breakfast we consulted the man in the tourist office and received a map. He said that the place to see the Van Cat – a white cat that swims and has one yellowy green eye and one blue eye – was at the university. A kitten of this unique breed costs over $A1000 and it is not possible for them to leave the country. Our other options were castles and museums, so we optimistically thought we would try to fit them all in.
We were going well time wise because the section in the Museum about the Turkish and Armenian troubles, the one I had specially gone to Van to see, was closed. The other displays of items from archaeological sites around Van were very interesting, particularly the gold jewellery, the belts, helmets and beautifully rounded red burnished pots and a tablet with cuneiform writing on it.
The kingdom of Urartu flourished from the 13th to the 7th centuries BC. There was a chronological exhibition of Urartian reliefs, which showed the development of artistic skills. 
There were also some examples of very early cave art – simple designs which are still seen in the kilims of eastern Turkey. Our next priority was to see the cat.
Van has a number of small bus stations and it is possible to flag down a bus in the street as well. To do this you need to be in the right street, or know where the right bus station is. We purchased a cap for me and then began the long process of asking people for guidance on where to go for the bus. Each instruction took us a little closer to the target and a little further away from knowing where we now were. At last we saw a bus with ‘Campus’ on the front and joined the student passengers for quite a long trip out of town. Passing through a grand gateway into the university grounds, we realised that it was an enormous place. How would we ever find the ‘kedi’ (cat)? In Turkish, I made an announcement saying “Where possible see Van cat?” The Turkish language does not have words in the same order as us and I had no idea about verb endings, so the response was lots of laughter. One boy said in English that he could show us when the bus stopped.We followed the directions of ‘behind the mosque and beyond the Military School,’ with a young soldier then pointing out a two story red house some way off that was the ‘Kedi Evi’ (Cat House). We were amused to see the barbed wire fence around the Military School, with the cheerful and friendly guards and a rather nice orchard being protected so well. The gate to the Cadi Avi seemed locked and we turned away, thinking that we would have to look at the cats from a distance. We could see them in outside cages. An upstairs window opened and a dishevelled young scientist poked his head out to tell us how to open the gate. The male and female cats are kept separate. The females were very sweet, coming over to the fence for attention and a stroke. One played with the camera strap. Not all the cats had two tone eyes. Some had two blue eyes. There were some with long hair and some with short hair, and a very attractive, but not classic one, with tabby ears and tail. We took lots of photos and really enjoyed watching them. One of their characteristics is that they do not yowl too much.
We could hear a fair bit of yowling going on so I started to wonder what was going on in the laboratory upstairs. On the other side of the building we smelt and heard the males before we saw them. They showed the combination of features that the females exhibited, but they were tattered and bloody from scrapping with each other. They yowled and pranced, with some being fearful of others.
We spoke to the scientist before we left and he explained that they are doing breeding experiments with different gene combinations. A pair of mixed eye parents will produce three kittens with blue eyes and one in four with mixed eyes. Long hair and short hair are independent of eye colour. They had 50 kittens inside. We had lots of questions but were aware that we had taken up his time already – tourist information was probably not in his job description.
On our way back to the Military School, some men came by in a ute and asked us if we were going to catch the small bus back to Van. We said we were so they told us to hop in and headed quickly for the university gate. They indicated that they were connected with the agricultural school in some way and in the distance we could see tractors with students standing around them. They whistled for a bus to stop and we got in. When we attempted to pay, the money was waved away. Apparently this was a bus of workers from the university returning to Van. It was only when we turned into the hospital gates that I saw that a couple carried x-rays and when we arrived, all the passengers were greeted by workers there. It remained a total mystery. One of the men took us out into the street and walked with us until we found a bus, so crowded that no-one could move. Obviously there was no fear of police checks in the main streets of Van.We Skyped Joel from an internet cafe to talk about problems with our house rental and had some lunch before setting out to find the bus to Hosap Castle. It was raining and we didn’t have time to go for our coats, nor did we have any idea where our hotel was. We followed instructions from friendly shop keepers and eventually we were off to Hosap. In the bus, we read the description in the Lonely Planet guide more carefully and realised that it was over 50 km from Van. Too late to stop, and at least we were dry, while outside it was raining quite heavily.
After some more picturesque Van scenery and an elegant ancient bridge, it seemed that we suddenly were in a different movie altogether. The mountains became barren, with gouged out diggings on their sides, and the only river seemed to be a dull sludge colour. Sweeping down a hill with a filthy road criss-crossed with the debris from truck tyres, we entered a strange valley. Here every truck in Turkey had been summoned to park in a careless and overlapping way along a stretch of unloved wooden and tin, low roofed buildings. A beautifully decorated mosque in the middle revealed that this area had not been forgotten entirely. The village is called Guzelsu, which means ‘beautiful water’ so it must have been named at some time n the very distant past. Rising behind the river, whose elegant arched bridge was hidden on one side by stone walls and on the other by trees, was what we had come to see - Hosap Castle.
Hosap Castle was built in 1643 by a local Kurdish chieftan, Mahmudi Seuleyman and contained over 100 rooms. It rose majestically, and yet with a romantic aura, above the dusty, drab, grey town below. We followed the road around the hill, even though we were told by a man we met that the castle was closed. The castle is relatively intact on the outside, and appears more so from a distance, but as we approached we could see the cracks and precarious stones that looked close to falling. Really it was magnificent, with a gate that made us feel that we had truly approached a mighty castle. It felt well worth the freezing cold and long trip to see it. Some local teenagers were playing soccer using the walls and door as goals – it hurt every time the ball struck.Looking across the hills away from the village, we saw two other buildings in fortress style with the remains of a wall running between and beyond them. They looked very strange, as if time and erosion was slowly melting them into the mountain.
When we returned to Guzelsu, a man asked us if we wanted the bus to Van and we said that we did, but that we needed to go to the toilet first. He directed us to the mosque, and when we came out the bus to van was waiting there for us. We jumped on, glad not to have to wait an unknown time in the cold. It was not a regular stop so we can only imagine that the man let them know where we would be.We ate in – picnic, chocolate milk and crisps. There was so much more to see and do in Van and we were doing what we had hoped not to do – trying to fit in too much in a short time. We had arranged to be in Trabzon for some couch surfing on Saturday and so had a deadline.
No comments:
Post a Comment