Today we entered Europe. From Ankara this morning we caught a highspeed train to a newish station (named Söğütlüçeşme) in Istanbul on the Asian side. Thereafter a traffic intensive bus ride took us across the Bosphorus to the area around the Blue Mosque.

In Kars at 8:00am on the morning of the Sept 23rd we caught a train destined for Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. This would be the longest train leg of the journey so far covering something like 1446km and lasting 26-27 hours. In some regards it was a boring journey, just sitting in a train compartment listening to Audible books or looking out the window. But on the other hand it was also interesting. The entire length of the journey we passed through, was bare mountainous agricultural land. We also saw many villages where the basic living standards would later contrast markedly with the cities of Ankara and Instanbul.

This morning a short bus ride from Batumi deposited the group at the Georgia-Turkey border along with a few hundred locals and maybe a hundred other tourists. So the crossing, which consisted of much pushing and shoving, was a little time consuming but not complicated. Once in Turkey we met our new local guide and driver and started a long slow drive of approximately 300km to the city of Kars. This was a spectacular drive. It was a mountainous road for almost the entire length. Initially passing some impressive dams and hydro power plants and then later, villages used by shepards (of sheep, goats and cows) during the summer months. In keeping with the entire trip however, because there were no temples/mosques/churches to see we did not stop for photographs but just kept driving. As you might guess that will be a point of feedback when this trip is over.

We spent most of yesterday (Sept 20th) in Yerevan with a late checkout before catching another overnight train. This one would take us back into Georgia, through Tbilisi and onto the Black Sea resort town of Batumi. The border crossing back into Georgia hapened around 22:00 and between Armenian exit processing and Georgia entry took a couple of hours and was all done either with officers boarding the train or at a small office beside the train.

Yerevan is a very old city with parts of the city being inhabited as far back as 3000BC, and the fortress of Erebuni (from which maybe the modern name of the city is derived) being established in 782BC. The following link Yerevan will give more details on the history of Yerevan.