Sivas to Malatya, Turkey

Sunday 15 April 2007

Today is another pleasant drive through central Turkey along wide high standard traffic free roads. We were going to write that based on previous experience but after venturing to the UNESCO world heritage site at Divrigi to see the splendid Seljuk Mosque and Madressa complex we find ourselves on a dirt track masquerading as an A road for 150kms. Just as well the car hire co can’t see us ploughing through axel deep mud, scraping the undercarriage on the ruts and shedding hub caps as we climb over mountains, through farmyards and across bogs. The GPS says there’s no roads here but the signs keep telling us to keep going and we pass lots of Turkish families apparently picnicking in the fields. This seems to be something of a Turkish custom, the whole family sits down in the middle of fields of by rivers and makes a bbq even if its snowy or raining. Eventually we find a real road and get back on track, arriving in Malatya, the apricot capital of Turkey and the world by late afternoon and after a tour of its public housing estates, check into a very ordinary but cheap hotel on the main street.