Day 126/128 Kars, Turkey

We’ve had two extra rest days in Kars as a result of being bussed through the Kurdish area of Eastern Turkey.  Nice to have extra time to clean and organize things, catch up on everything else not-cycling going on in the world.

Kars is normally a busy tourist area, first as the major stop on the way to Mt. Ararat and 2nd to visit the nearby site of Ani.

Since we never got to see Mt. Ararat in full, below is what we did see and what we could have seen:

Couldn’t resist taking a picture of Turkeys in Turkey:

Yesterday we did a trip out to the ruins at Ani, Ani is a ruined medieval Armenian city, located literally a couple hundred metres from the Armenian border.

The following copied from Wikipedia:

Between 961 and 1045, it was the capital of the Bagratid Armenian kingdom that covered much of present-day Armenia and eastern Turkey. Called the "City of 1001 Churches", Ani stood on various trade routes and its many religious buildings, palaces, and fortifications were amongst the most technically and artistically advanced structures in the world. At its height, the population of Ani probably was on the order of 100,000.

Long ago renowned for its splendor and magnificence, Ani was sacked by the Mongols in 1236 and devastated in a 1319 earthquake, after which it was reduced to a village and gradually abandoned and largely forgotten by the seventeenth century. Ani is a widely recognized cultural, religious, and national heritage symbol for Armenians. According to Razmik Panossian, Ani is one of the most visible and ‘tangible’ symbols of past Armenian greatness and hence a source of pride.

Some pics of present day Ani:

Where I am: