sorgun – malatya
We left ankara in the afternoon, happy that we finally solved the visa problem. We couldn’t reach Sivas before nightfall, so we decided to stop in the town of Sorgun.
We only managed to find a dreadful hotel on the outskirts of the city at a huge price.
In the morning we left at 6 o’clock to go to Divrigi.
Divrigi has a little 13th century mosque and hospital. Lonely Planet describes it as Turkey’s least visited monument (although is a UNESCO World Heritage site). It is really out of the way in between Sivas and Malatya some 90km from the main road, and after a 1950m mountain pass.
The plan was to start from Sorgun and an stop in Divrigi for the night after 350km.
The mosque and the hospital (a mental hospital built in 1200 🙂 ), are simply breath-taking. You really can’t tell from the pictures, you have to there yourself.
The problem was that the hotels in Divrigi were beyond awful , even worse than the Sorgun thing. We decided to go to Malatya to have a decent night’s sleep.
So we ended up with a 610km day.
As a sidenote/rant, The turkish hotel industry is a lot like the romanian industry in some ways. There are lots of old, state-owned hotels, which are awfull, dirty and overpriced.
If you are in a tourist area you can find small private-owned hotels which are reasonably priced and clean. But if you are in a small town out of the main tourist path…you are in bad position.
August 19th, 200711:34 am at
From Sivas to Divrigi, what was the route, to East passing through Zara or to South (Kangal)? I suppose you followed E88 to Zara, but I can be wrong.
August 19th, 200712:21 pm at
prin Kangal 🙂