Hacker News Reader

Comment by roadbeats | Hacker News Reader

If you consider visiting Van, I recommend you to take train. This route is still not popular enough among tourists because eastern Turkey had gone through violent conflicts. As long as you don’t get yourself in trouble intentionally, you’ll be safe though. I traveled Eastern Turkey by hitchhiking last year with my wife, and felt really safe and welcomed. People are very friendly, food is great, the nature is like Switzerland. I’m sure that this area will be too touristic to visit in the future, so I recommend you see there before it gets hit by tourism.

If you want to do a full trip in Turkey, this is my route recommendation: İstanbul -> flight -> Cappadocia -> Bus or hitchhike -> Urfa -> Mardin -> Hasankeyf -> Van -> Doğubeyazıt —> İran. These towns are all wonderful, and probably the most different beauties I’ve ever seen. Highly recommended.

View on HN

> As long as you don’t get yourself in trouble intentionally, you’ll be safe though.

What do you mean with that part?

Stay out of shady bars/clubs, don't go looking for drugs, don't get too terribly wasted if you get aggressive.

You'd be surprised how many travelers find themselves in trouble because of some stupid thing.

And most importantly, respect the locals.

Getting terribly wasted in general is probably worth avoiding.

In certain places yes, in others its kind of expected.

There is a lot of military check points, many undercover cops. So you need to manage your ambition about politics when you’re there. just be a tourist and you’ll be fine :)

>So you need to manage your ambition about politics

A polite way of saying "don't be that jerk that goes to someone else's home/town/county/state/country just to tell them what they're doing wrong" which really shouldn't be that hard to do if you're distracted by all the other touristy things you should be doing.

Edit: I know this is gonna get down-voted because it's not "nice" but it's true. You shouldn't go to where someone else lives and tell them they suck or they're doing it wrong and expect to be treated nicely.

Anyone downvoting you is an idiot. It's disrespectful towards locals and unless you are of the exact same culture there is a ton implicit cultural context one is not aware of. So, unless one has some concrete mission (in which case one is not a tourist but entirely something else) any disrespectful comments are likely to only hurt feelings and project ill will towards the transgresssor.

Any tourist activist is a pure idiot. People are quite capable of taking care of themselves, and if something human behaviour related looks like it needs fixing it's likely a non trivial thing to fix.

I'd say people need to recognize that the role of tourist and activist are different, and don't combine well. Know why you're there, and take the appropriate precautions for your role, and you're probably going to be fine. But don't show up as an activist and expect to be treated like a tourist.

Activists in general should always expect to be treated harshly.

I actually took that train route too, this Brownbook Magazine article is what made me do it: http://brownbook.me/the-trans-asia-express/

Lake Van Express(Eastwards:Sundays and Tuesdays, Westwards:Tuesdays and Thursdays). Eastern Express, which works between Ankara and Kars, is running sleepers full.

It is usually overbooked though. It was great a few years ago when it wasn't very popular.

Not overbooked, it is just sleepers full. Seats cars and compartment cars are approximately half full and carrying mostly Ankara-Kırıkkale and Erzincan-Divriği commuters.

thanks, corrected

Thank you very much!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com