The Doğu Express (Orient Express) train leaves Ankara for its long journey to the North-East of Turkey reaching Kars after a whole day snaking its way through Anatolia. We left late in the afternoon deciding to make for the Kaçkar mountains and the Georgian border by train. As darkness descended we slept soundly in our cosy private compartment, eagerly awaiting sunrise to catch the first glimpses of the Anatolian wilderness.

Transfixed, from our comfortable little niche in the last carriage of the train we watched the countryside roll by, green and blossoming among the jaggedness of hills, the train trudging slowly on its tracks. For most of the journey, the rail is the only man-made object for miles around, while the train’s slow, rhythmical stutter alternated with the roar of the river below.

By the time we reached Erzurum, 20 hours later, we were restless. The landscape had gradually become wilder, the distant peaks closer and still covered in snow. We wanted to reach them that very night.

The city of Erzurum lies on a large flat plateau at over 1700 metres above sea level. During its history it saw wave after wave of conquerors and armies from the East and the North, having been under Persian, Russian, and Ottoman rule, just during the last 200 years. Its geographic position and altitude meant it had a strategic military importance for the three empires. Once home to one of the largest Armenian communities in the Ottoman Empire, it saw the entire Armenian population wiped out. Among Armenians, we later discovered, Erzurum was still symbolically important.

As we hopped in and out of cars on our way north to the mountains, we sipped tea in the main squares of the small villages on the way, enjoying freshly grilled Çağ Kebab, the local specialty of skewered lamb meat, tail fat, yogurt and onions, skewer after skewer piling up until we figured out it was up to us to tell the waiter to stop.

We did not have a special destination in mind and were excited to hear from our last driver about an old abandoned Georgian monastery, perched high up in one of the valleys that opened up on both sides. Our new friend Adem decided to drive us there, even though that meant pushing his old battered car up unpaved dirt tracks and climbing higher and deeper into the mountains, and a good two hours out of his way. When we finally reached the village of Çamlıyamaç, we felt overwhelmed by the intimidating size of Oşk Vank, a towering stone church built over 1000 years ago. This monastic complex had been the most important of the Georgian feudal principality of Tao, which had ruled this region between the 9^th and the 11^th century, and after being converted into a mosque for over five centuries, belongs now to the State’s heritage list of protected buildings, although its current state suggested otherwise. We bade our new friend farewell, bought some provisions, and as dusk was drawing on, we made our way up a path that climbed up behind the village and upstream. We left the last wooden huts behind us and found a flat patch of grass just above the river. We pitched our tent and ate our bananas unsure where the path would take us.

We spent the entire following day trekking uphill until we were well beyond the snow-line, often having to wade our way through deep snow, as it melted literally under our feet. Water trickled and flowed all around us. We crossed waterfalls and countless streams where we washed. Our only means of orientation was a picture we had taken on our phone of a very impressionist hiking map we had found by the monastery. However, we knew we were heading for the Çoruh river valley on the other side of the mountain range. We finally reached the highest point of our track and the scenery immediately exploded in front of us. The peaks of the Kačkar mountains closed our horizon, Kaçkar Dağı dominating the scene, its peak shining white in the daylight sun. After a short descent we ended up in the middle of a tiny village consisting of just a few houses and a mosque. The trees had been cleared around the village and the fields were impeccably neat.

As usual, all the men of the village were sitting on the benches outside the mosque smoking, and we exchanged laconic Salam Alaykums. In these parts of Turkey people are a lot less talkative. Black Sea folk are often mocked by other Turks for their laconic and cranky manners. We found them very friendly all the same, as they sat smoking and playing with a litter of sheepdog puppies. There were muffled voices coming from the mosque and a general quiet atmosphere which suggested some sort of mourning was taking place. And so we were invited to tea, soup and supper by an old man into his home and away from the grave mood hanging over the small square. He was tall and springy and lived alone, his house decorated with photographs of his children and relatives now living elsewhere.

He talked about the upcoming elections, his disgust for Erdogan and the ruling party; “I vote CHP” he boasted beating his chest with his finger. I asked why so few young people lived in the village. Like the rest of Eastern Anatolia, in rural areas particularly, people have been flocking to the large cities in the West along the coast, or have emigrated abroad. We listened as he explained that many return in the summer to help during the most demanding stages of work in the fields, but most only return for short visits escaping the summer heat waves of the coast.

That night we camped on the hill behind the village choosing our spot carefully so that we could enjoy the best possible view of the mountains around us. I don’t know whether it was the time of year, or that spot in particular, but I had never seen anywhere so intensely green in my whole life. The night was moonless, and the stars at night seemed to shine only a few feet above our head. We awoke shivering as soon as sunlight flickered through the tent, which overnight got completely covered in a thick layer of frost.

We picked up the trail as far as we could, until we reached a group of houses, too few to be called a village. Here we were told that we had to take the dirt road on the other side of the valley. This road would take us down to the Çoruh river valley. We saw trucks tugging on the road leaving trails of heavy dust behind them. One stopped as it passed us, and invited us to climb up and sit on top of the driver’s cabin. The open container was loaded with coal, and we dug our boots into the black stuff to balance ourselves. Next to us a black-faced young miner grinned maniacally every time we turned a sharp bend, his teeth glaring against his black sooty face, delighted to see our expressions of terror as we looked down hundreds of metres of emptiness, as our backpacks made us swerve violently left and right.

He pointed out the coal mine and told us it was over a thousand metres deep. The mountain side covered in heaps of trash. The trees were gone by now, just the bare dry rock and the dusty dirt road carving a spiral into the mountain’s side.
We rode like this, our hands gripping tightly to the cabin, feet wide apart plunging into the coal, for over an hour, snaking our way down the circles of this ecological hell.

We finally reached the Çoruh river, but the ordeal wasn’t over. To cross it the coal trucks had to drive over a wooden suspended bridge, heavily signaled with warnings of certain death to anyone foolish enough to attempt crossing it. Miners, obviously, don’t count.

At the depot we thanked the miners and carried on hitch-hiking, the mountains entirely bare, stripped of all trees and plants, scarred by dirt-tracks on every side, as trucks carried down their dirty loads to the depots in the valley. The river banks turned into reinforced concrete, taming the river’s force and slowly shaping it into a placid artificial lake. We were about to reach a dam, a fitting final appearance as our final stretch turned our dreamy landscape in the mountains into a concrete nightmare.

Turkey’s government has planned the building of thirteen dams along the Coruh river, for hydroelectric production. They are now still under construction, but their impact is already incalculable. In the two years that have lapsed between my journeys along the river, I have seen this landscape dramatically changed and violated. Managed by a governing class which has put development over everything else, environmental concerns are simply brushed away. The environmental violation is the result of a country forsaking its natural beauty in name of development.