After a significant delay, we were off again….. This is the railway station at Bostankaya, which is only a small village but has a nice transportation arrangement. Regardless of whether it was on the timetable, we tended to stop at every station en route before a staff member gave us the go ahead to continue.
The views were beautiful along this stretch of the route, although I was working out that an arrival time of midnight was now too optimistic, it was looking more like 01:30 and that felt sub-optimal. Especially as the initial arrival time was 16:00.
It was something of a surprise that there was actually any rail service in operation, the snow was over two feet deep here.
At 17:10, we rolled into New Kangal railway station which opened in 2012.
And at 17:35, the train arrived into Çetinkaya railway station, the last one of the journey that we would see in daylight.
As it was getting dark and there was nothing to look at out of the window, Jonathan and I went to the buffet car.
This is Bağıştaş railway station and at some time in the future, it would be nice to visit these locations to explore them. It was now 21:00 and it was evident that we wouldn’t be in before 02:00, but Jonathan and I thought that was reasonable and just hoped for no more delay. In retrospect, that was aspirational.
Another delay.
Excuse the poor quality photo, but at 22:07 we arrive at Kemah, the site of atrocities where thousands of Armenians were murdered during the First World War.
Arriving into Tanyari railway station at midnight, so we had now been on the train for 30 hours. Without Internet.
A cross between a dog and a polar bear.
Into Aşkale railway station for 02:30 and the train decided it would stop here for thirty minutes. This didn’t surprise and delight me.
Ilica railway station at 03:55, but we were getting there….
At 04:25, we arrived, over 12 hours later. We were safely in Erzurum and now just had to hope that we could get into our hotel.
It was a delight to be in Erzurum, as my loyal readers won’t be surprised to hear after these three blog posts….. I did enjoy the railway journey, but would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had worked out data on my phone in advance or got an e-sim. Either way, it had been a proper adventure. Videos and the like will follow…