The trip to Ani was arranged by a man called Jelil (again, I am Anglicizing spellings) and on this point the guidebook was finally proving to be useful. The crew that day comprised the driver; me on the front seat - I always ride shotgun for the room and the view; a young American guy who I think said he was studying "computing" in Egypt (!) and a dusky beauty he said he had "met on the streets of Cairo" (!!); a couple of Japanese ladies; and a pair of Italian girls. Off we went at about 9 am. It is incredible that there are no regular buses to Ani, which is what most people come to Kars for. Where is the spirit of enterprise? It is astonishing. If someone bought a couple of vans, put themselves on the Internet and got a mention in a travel guide, there is a mother lode waiting for them.
About 20 minutes out, on the highway the young driver received a call; did a u-turn; and we picked up another guy, a larger man in a suit. He became the new driver, the original moved in and my dreams of a roomy ride gazing at desolation were shattered. Also, they could both have done with some Axe effect. Or perhaps they were wearing Axe for Goats.
The landscape was pretty desolate. It is amazing how far the fucking steppes stretch. It could have been Mongolia. Slightly undulating plains, brownish scrub, goats and critters and a road in the middle of it. We drove for about an hour and finally passed a small village and got our first glimpse of the ruins of Ani. The village was sweet - little boys on the side of the road spinning tops, flying kites and whatever other useless stuff we did as little boys. Some waved. Older men would nod at us. Low-built, nondescript houses occupied both sides.
After we landed, and established that we had 3 hours to roam around, we all got tickets and a lecture on not going to the old castle in the complex because it was too close to the Armenian border. Indeed you could see a river winding past the ruin complex and that was the darn border. Not exactly the DMZ and Li'l Kim on the other side, but I guess sensitive enough. One almost gets lulled into underestimating the animus simmering across this sensitive border. When you think about it Turkey is in the middle of so much - southern Caucasus and all the bothersome Stans there, where from it is theorized crazed headhunting Scythians, Sarmatians and the likes went east and west; the troublesome issues with Armenia; Persians, enemies since antiquity of the Turkic tribes; Arabs to the south-east; of course Greece and intractable Cyprus. Sheesh. And then the Balkans to the north. What a landmine.
Ani was everything they say it is - eerie, desolate, magnificent, beautiful. A perfect place for a solo traveler, a history lover, for Japanese tourists to take thousands of pictures. Actually I kid you - the Japanese ladies, I saw later, were at one of the ruined cathedrals, making drawings or sketches or something. I, in fact, was behaving like a Japanese tourist by taking a lot of unnecessary pictures. I never understand this - a few carefully selected post cards will provide much better-photographed views that any amateur tourist could ever make it. Me included. Yet it is a moronic mania that takes over when you have a large (memory) stick. However, I did learn to use the timer very skillfully on this whole trip and so at least I show up in roughly 1 of every 10 pictures. (I remember on my trip to Mongolia way back when, the misanthropic British asshole in our group of four poured scorn at the Chinese for wanting to be in all their pictures, while he presumably shot highly artistic pictures that National Geographic was going to pay top dollar for. Well, guess what, those Chinese families have meaningful, visual memories of their fun and this misanthrope is probably still giving himself an enema.)
Enough of photos, back to Ani. The various complexes were spread around and it did take the full three hours to step into each of them. Some were in better shape than others. Georgian and Armenian cathedrals for the most part, but also some minarets, which themselves may have been built on top of older Christian structures. The characteristic dark and lighter-red blocks used to build these, and the conical roofs and - dang it, pretty much everything made the whole experience special. It was tempting to just walk right through into the old castle, but I did not want to risk the consequences. But what I saw was good enough - this was the spiritual and political capital of Armenia once. How transient our ideas and establishments are. It humbles a human being to be in such surroundings.
The two artists took a long time to return to the van at the end of three hours. While waiting we struck up a conversation with one of the guys from the ticketing booth, who it turns out was living in Brooklyn and was a student in New York before returning for his conscription and had been assigned to Ani. We asked him about security, and about whose cows and goats we had seen in what presumably was a compound under close military watch. He frankly admitted that those belonged to local farmers, and they did not really understand nor care for the law and all that crap. They warn the farmers, they stay off, then they come back. Anyway he rightly pointed out that there are n-number of entry points, as it is not really a compound, and people could drive their herds in from any direction apart from the frontal stretch with a few hundred feet of continuous walls and the ticket/police booth. He rather snobbishly characterized them as "low class". It only struck me much later that perhaps he was Turkish and the locals were largely Kurds.
No comments:
Post a Comment