September 9, 1996

Four little words were more than enough to convince us not to drive to Maylatya. Getting lost was probably a blessing for us. If we hadn't, we might not have pulled over and a local man might not have come to our vans with news that the road ahead was bad. "Bad bumpy?" I asked, "Or bad police?" "Yes," he replied. He made the motions of shooting a rifle. "Danger for your life."

Eastern Turkey isn't considered the safest place to go these days. The guide books and foreign tourist offices all give warnings about venturing too close to the Middle Eastern borders. And that is especially true now that American forces are sending cruise missiles to destroy the Iraqi air defense systems. The further east we drove, the more military personnel, caravans and guns we saw. Guards were carrying machine guns and shepherds were carrying rifles. We saw one pat-down at a military check point but nothing that suggested we were in any real danger.

What is dangerous and what is not? That was the question we asked everyone. At the Paris campground in Urgup, the owner pointed to my map. "No danger," he said. He pointed to another city. "No danger." Then to another city and another. But further East we heard different stories; one report of a city being "not safe" was enough for us.

It was obvious that the areas in which we were traveling do not see a large number of tourists. "Tourists are afraid to come here," one small boy told Hana. "They used to come, but not now." Locals were amazed to see us. When we told them that we were on our way to Mt. Nimrod, they always smiled. "It is beautiful there," they said. A Turkish travel agent that we met later was surprised but happy that we had gone there. "It is not bad there but people hear things and they are afraid to go." That is a shame. The landscape that we have traveled through has been magnificent. The rolling arid mountains, the gorges and hillside villages are very different from what we have seen in the west.

But despite the warnings in brochures, some travelers do come here. (Tourists tend to stick to the tour bus routes). We met three separate couples who were on their way to, or had just come across Eastern Turkey through Iran to Nepal. One young British couple were doing the route on 1970's motorcycles. The other two were in VW vans.

But doable as these crossings are, caution is always important; listening to the locals is paramount. When the man at our van window insisted we not take our planned route to Maylatya, we listened. "Which way will you go?" he finally asked us. Hana pointed behind us toward Kharaman Maras, the way we had come. "Good," he said. "I'm glad." And so were we.