Bicycle touring to the far east of modern day Turkey is an exciting adventure, even for experienced bike tourers. As I am from Armenia, I’m also anxious to explore the remains of our tragic history in these lands.
In this unique travel documentary we take you with us on a difficult, very personal and emotional part of our journey around the world. Continuing our story in Diyarbakir, we cycle via Batman, Bitlis, Tatvan, Lake Van, Van, Dogubayazit, Ani, Kars, Cildir Lake to the border with Georgia.
As the historical context we provide throughout this episode might be conflicting or maybe even new information for some viewers, we provide some LINKS to quality sources for further reading at the end of the description.
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Editing our videos takes an enormous amount of time and we need money to rent a room. Every video release shortens our adventure on the road by over a week. We highly appreciate any support you can give!
Music
Armen-Levon Manaseryan https://www.youtube.com/c/armenlevonmanaseryan
Epidemic Sound
#biketouring #armenia #kurdistan #turkey #cyclinglife #history #traveldocumentary
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PREVIOUS EPISODE: https://youtu.be/kHzX1v_Aoyc
WORLD TOUR PLAYLIST: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaSOS22KIJA6MVRw24RHbumv4FXzm_p5V
NEXT EPISODE: coming soon!
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Check out our equipment list on our homepage: https://amazingworldbiketour.com/equipment/
You can also follow our trip on other channels (SPOILER ALERT):
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Our Webpage: https://amazingworldbiketour.com
Epidemic Sound
Find our playlist with the tracks we’ve used here:
https://share.epidemicsound.com/5qhut0/?playlist=i5seikpe5ya3rozifb90z1jos7i8bcf8
If you sign up to Epidemic Sound through our playlist link, you’ll get 1 extra month for free!
Thank you so much!
Arev & Mathias
Further reading:
Akçam, Taner (2012). The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: the Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691153339/the-young-turks-crime-against-humanity
de Waal, Thomas (2015). Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide. Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/great-catastrophe-9780190904784?cc=us&lang=en&#
Encyclopaedia Britannica: Armenian Genocide https://www.britannica.com/event/Armenian-Genocide
Wikipedia (EN): Armenian Genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide
00:00 Introduction & Context
01:29 Leaving Diyarbakir
03:42 Sick in Batman
06:13 A busy day
08:27 Eastern Anatolia
10:00 Arev gets a present
12:56 Into the Taurus Mountains
13:55 Turkish breakfast
14:21 A dangerous road
16:37 Eastern toilets explained
17:25 Thoughts about privilege
18:55 Bitlis & Kurdish hospitality
21:31 Tatvan was not for us
23:39 At the lake was not better
25:25 Saved by a truck stop
26:25 Tunnels are bad
27:05 Akhtamar Island
30:07 Van, Van, Van
31:15 A big fortress
32:00 A weird moment
33:01 Riding with Dani
34:00 Dangerous Iranian border?
37:00 Dogubayazit
38:00 Mount Ararat
40:28 Money, Money, Money
41:53 Close but far from home
42:17 Exceptional landscape
42:51 Brutal heat and headwinds
44:44 Ani Ruins ruined
48:31 Time to move on
50:20 Goodbye Dani
50:56 Final thoughts
52:00 Please support our work
19 Comments
Arev, you look great 🙂 The scarf suits you! There are very great shots, lights and wonderful landscapes. It's also nice that you give historical facts and comments. I learned several things. You're both really brave and strong. THANK YOU!
How’s everything going?~ insne ! so long- Amazing. 😊
Hallo Arev & Matthias,
Once again: well done!
I love watching your video, which is well cut together and accompanied by many interesting information.
Good luck with the continuation of your trip. Wherever you are right now, take care and enjoy.
Greeting from
KaterOnBike
The language barrier is my number one question for world travelers. Do you have any tips that will help with languages you don’t understand
Hi M & A, I am really enjoying your videos and each one seems even better than the previous. I think you are amazing adventurers and am full of respect for your determination and intrepidness. Already looking forward to your next video; the longer the better. Thank you.
Great videos! It is one of my dreams (and now intentions) to quit my job and go on some kind of an epic bike tour in the future (partly because of videos like yours).
On a side note: I sometimes wonder how you find the motivation to film when you're struggling through tough climbs and hot weather 😅
so….. we watch this channel to see different places and travel, not to be force feed history about Armenians and Armenia and how the turks did this and that, it is all in the past, we have forgave the Germans for the two world wars and the Japanese, we have all moved on, so how about sticking to bike touring and showing us people and the beautiful places, there are enough problems in the world as there is !
Another amazing video. It would be great if you could split this down into chapters. That way people could more easily watch this very long video in chunks. It would still one video, but with chapter markings.
Thank you for your honesty about the historical issues you wrestled with while riding in this region. It added a lot to the video. A ride like this is more than just beautiful scenery, so I'm glad you shared the feelings you experienced along the way.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing this. I love these places with all my heart and it’s so good to see them through the perspective of a person who can see them in a way I never can. I appreciate you two!
Amazing…i like your video..
Hi Arev and Mathias, a truly moving video with a lot of content for the mind and soul. Very good editing and drone shots. Sometimes I couldn't keep up with reading the subtitles. Keep it up, stay authentic. Best regards Fred
Brilliant video guys
Thanks a lot for amazing video Arev and Mathias. Probably i am the only Turkish person here to write a comment about video. And it was great to see Van and around. Because i was a teacher in Van almost 7 years. Especially when you told the story of Akhtamar island. you mentioned Yaşar Kemal. Thanks for that because no one know about that story in Turkey. At last; about historical truth, i've nothing to say about that. But we're the children of the same region and same mountains. We shared our breads and life for hundred of years. We got married for centuries. We will heal our wounds together as a brother and sister…
Great video, as usual.
The Armenian genocide is such a tragedy. I admire your ability to bring some attention to the sad history of that region through your own personal perspective. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Big hugs and mad respect! Keep pedaling!
Amazing video, so nice to watch. We enjoyed crossing Turkey by bike and your video made us feel nostalgic, in a good way of course. In Brazil the Armenian community is huge, mainly from the Armenian diaspora, so we already knew about the Armenian genocide, but we got really touched when we visited the genocide museum in Yerevan. We posted about it in our Instagram and Blog, soon after that our blog got blocked in Turkey.
Thanks for the video! Looking forward to more!
I was following you until you mentioned the Genocide Lie, but I'm done with it! I'm unfollowing you. Goodbye and good luck to both of you
Well u are coming our country, we are showing respect and love to you but u are insulting us.