Kars, Türkiye

We had a long transit day to go 1,700 km across the country, from Selçuk in the west to Kars in the east.

We started at 5am at our hotel in Selçuk. We packed up and carried our suitcases down three flights of stairs as quietly as we could.

Dawn was just breaking as we drove to Izmir Airport, about 45 minutes from the hotel. I was cutting it close with gas - it was about 60km to the airport, and the car said we had 80km of gas. I was just hoping the car’s estimate was accurate.

We made it to the airport and filled up the tank. The car rental return location was luckily one of the few signs in English, so we were able to find it without u-turns. The Sixt folks were very efficient going through their checklist.

It wasn’t very busy at departures. We were able to check our carry-on suitcase (so we wouldn’t have to compete for overhead space) but had to remove 3kg to get under the weight limit. So I now had a smaller backpack as carry-on.

Our hotel had prepared breakfast bags to go. We got cappuccinos at the airport and ate our breakfast, which was one of the better bagged ones we’ve had.

We tried out one of the automated massage chairs while waiting, as it was only 1.50 CAD for five minutes. I think it made us feel worse lol.

The flight to Istanbul was short, only 45 minutes. We actually departed about 10 minutes early! We’ve been impressed with all our Turkish Airline flights.

We had a four hour layover in IST. Found some seats with a plug-in so we could keep our phones charged. I caught up in my blog.

We boarded on schedule for the flight to Kars. There weren’t many tourists; just a small group from Korea and another couple. Kars (and all of eastern Türkiye) is not on the usual tourist trail.

The flight went well until the approach to Kars. We circled a couple times (I was watching the flight tracker), which seemed odd cause Kars is not busy with air traffic so it wasn’t like we were waiting for a landing slot.

Then the pilot announced that due to weather conditions in Kars, we were being rerouted to Erzurum. I’ve heard of flights being rerouted midair but it’s the first time it’s happened to Heather or me. Erzurum is about a three-hour drive west of Kars. We actually have a transit stop planned for Erzurum on the way back.

We landed at Erzurum and deplaned. There was a bit of confusion. Heather found a couple other English-speaking tourists (the aforementioned couple and one of the Korean tourists), no one really knew what was next.

Then I got a text from Turkish Airlines “… vehicles for the planned ground transfer to KARS (KSY) Airport will depart in front of the airport exit … “. Somehow very quickly, the airline had arranged for two buses to transport us all to Kars that evening!

There was a bit more confusion as to whether we had to claim our luggage in Erzurum (we did). Heather and I managed to get two seats on the bus across the aisle from each other. And then we were off!

We stopped about an hour outside of Erzurum for a 30 minutes at a roadside restaurant. I had some really good beef stew with rice, and then we rushed back on the bus. I had taken a picture of the license plate so we knew which bus was ours, a lesson I learnt the hard way while backpacking in Central America in my 20s.

The scenery along the way was amazing, mountains and valleys and snow-covered forests. The road itself was clear, just a bit wet. Kars is at 1750m, and the forecast was low of -5C, and high of 4C while we were here. There was a big storm this evening, which caused the flight disruption, but the weather had cleared up by the time we arrived in Kars around 7pm. This is the coldest place we’ll be visiting on this trip.

The buses dropped us off at Kars airport, which was closed. I guess we weren’t getting our rental car this evening, oh well. We bundled into a shared minibus to get into town, 100 TRY each (about 3 CAD).

We were dropped off in front of our hotel. We quickly checked in (the reception commented that we looked very tired), and got to our room. We were pretty beat from the car-plane-plane-bus-minibus adventure to get here. Had a shower and fell asleep.