Philip and İ are doing very well. İ forgot my camera at the hotel - so no pictures today - so sorry! We crossed from Urfa to Tatvan in two days - we planned a lot more for that stage.
This is the region you should actually not go to! Good news we made it without any trouble and once again all travel advice was far to conservative.
True - one must not be disturbed by all the military hanging around in every village and in between towns. But beside that all the people here (predominantly Kurds) are very confident in telling you that there is no problem.
We both did not like Mardin too much. The city is wonderfully placed on a mountain but is spoiled be tourism. (kids shouting: give me money!) We still had a good time the couple of hours we were there. On the way to Hasankeyf we passed through Midiat. İ am actually sorry we did not spend more time there. Nice houses and super nice people.
Hasankeyf was wonderful - we camped next to the Tigris and had great fish. The town is threatened by a dam project and will most likely be flooded anytime soon. This is a pity because there is a cave city and the remains of a really old bridge (Arab) besides a lot of other roman stuff.
From there we cycled / were taken to Tatvan. (quite an Odyssey: bike, truck, bike, old Mercedes, bike, pickup)
We plan to head along the northern shore of the Lake for the next few days.
Maybe we will also cycle up the other Nemrut Dagi (the Vulcan north of Tatvan)
The mountains are full of snow here - the climate is a very nice change after the desert of Urfa and Mardin.
The heat there was also the reason why İ skipped my Syria plans for the time being.
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