Eastern Turkey Holidays

What you can find on Eastern Turkey holidays that you won't find anywhere else?

Working in a clockwise direction from the port of Trabzon on the Black Sea, the obvious starting point should be the extraordinary Sumela Monastery, clinging to a cliff face in the Pontic Alps like a European/Christian version of Tiger's Nest Monastery in Bhutan and home to beautiful frescoes.

Further east still towards contemporary Armenia lies the poignant ruined city of Ani, once a thriving Armenian city in its own right that in the 10th Century rivalled even Constantinople. Along the same border to the south lies snow-capped Ararat, best viewed from Ishak Pasha Palace near Dogubeyazit.

Heading south west, the combination of Lake Van, Akdamar Island and more Armenia churches makes this one of the most photogenic corners of the region before a trip reaches the perfect culmination with visits to Nemrut, the Holy Pools of Abraham in Urfa, and finally the extraordinary Gobekli Tepe, at a mere 11,000 years old the world's oldest religious complex, predating Stonehenge by 5,000 years. A fitting postscript is the Zeugma Mosaic Museum in Gaziantep, home to some of the world's finest Roman mosaics.

If all that wasn't enough to satiate cultural yearnings, Eastern Turkey combines beautifully with Cappadocia, or across the border with Armenia and/or Georgia.