The shortest route to Kars from Dogubeyazit is via Igdir. There are frequent minibuses from the centrally located minibus station.
Dogubeyazit to Kars
Dogubeyazit is a bit of a scruffy town located quite close to the border with Iran and seems to be small enough to still have it’s minibus station in the centre of the town, not 6-14 Kms out of town!
The minibus cost us 45 TRY each for the 1 hour journey to Igdir. Our minibus was not in top shape and took a while to get over the mountain pass located next to Dogubeyazit.
The view was beautiful until we hit rain and drove through the clouds.
Igdir to Kars
When we got to Igdir we found out by asking around that the next bus was at 5pm. It was around 1:45pm so we had three hours to kill. Luckily the bus stops are in the centre of town.
We bought the bus ticket (90 TRY each) and went for a wander. Igdir on a showery October day is not the most inspiring place. We had a bit of lunch and then went for a walk.
I have been meaning to get a shave and a haircut for a while and this was the perfect moment. There are A LOT of barbers in Turkey. I cut and a shave set me back 50 TRY (about $4 CAD).
We had left our bags at the ticket office so we had been free to wander around. One should never be complacent when travelling, but people are pretty honest here and so I don’t worry too much when leaving my bag.
The bus to Kars was another 1/2 bus, well that’s how they describe it in Turkish anyway. In fact it was the same size as the bus from Van to Dogubeyazit. Around 28 seats with big windows. It’s a shame it gets dark here in the East at around 5:45. I think we are now about 1,600 Kms due east from where we started our trip in Turkey and the nights draw in quicker here.
The journey took 2 and a 1/2 hours in the end. We hit some big rain clouds on a couple of mountain passes which made things slower, along with the two military check points where all IDs were checked.
We walked to a hotel which we had bookmarked and checked in- 400 TRY a night including breakfast.
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