The 24-hour train journey to the remote, snow-covered eastern regions of the country has become a hot ticket among young Turkish travelers looking to follow one another on Instagram.
Social networks stimulate interest in the 1365-kilometer route “Doğu Ekspresi” (“Eastern Express”) from the Turkish capital Ankara to the border town of Kars, the newspaper Yeni Şafak reported this month: “It is very difficult to find a seat on the train because tickets were sold out in a few days before the trip ….. Hotels in Karsi are working at 100% occupancy “.
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Since the beginning of the new year, about 20,000 students, photographers, bloggers, hikers and other travelers have traveled by train to Kars, a former Russian outpost, which is also the main gateway to the UNESCO-listed Ani ruins. Turkish state railways that operate the train have added extra carriages to meet demand, and Turkish media abounds with stories of the trip and hunters for “likes” on board, making the route the “most hipster” domestic journey and “today’s fashion” among young Turks.
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Everyone was taking pictures and taking photos: “I decided to take a picture of the Doğu Ekspresi sign, which became a cult train, but when I approached our car, ten people were already standing in line to pose next to it,” Academician Nagihan Khaliloglu wrote in his report. People about the trip Also popular are photos of fashionably dressed passengers admiring the snowy scenery – through the open doors of the train or the compartment window, which they decorated with fabulous lights and personal photos, as well as group selfies in the narrow corridors of the train and skillfully composed still lifes from books. mugs.
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Author Kaan Murat Yanik says that hundreds of readers have posted photos taken on the Doğu Ekspresi train with his book Uzakların Şarkısı (Song of the Far), which takes place partly on the train to Kars. He told Yeni Şafak that he was fascinated by the combination of “cafes, traders, market soldiers, officials, students, Russian buildings, snow-covered streets, villagers and children” in Karsi, a city which, according to Yanik, has “its own special smell, smell of cold and smoke “.
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The overwhelming admiration for the trip was also a joke: the satirical newspaper Zaytung, similar to “Onion”, “reported” a new competitor Doğu Ekspresi: the bus company advertises its trip from Istanbul to the southeastern city of Hakkari – a 72-hour journey that can be up to 96 hours in winter through closed roads, if the bus arrives intact … “- as an adventurous alternative for those who can not get train tickets.
But even those who look at this madness a little cynically, can not help but obey the beauty of the scenery by walking. The joy of this experience probably outweighed the discomfort, – writes the traveler Khaliloglu, – because I have already begun to think about other long train journeys that I could make, discovering the amazing and hidden corners of the diverse landscape of Anatolia.