‘A Traveller on Horseback in Eastern Turkey and Iran’

Sure enough, near our store in Kadıköy I found a photographer who turned this box of buried memories into a living set of pictures. So next week, when I visit for Christmas, I need to fill my suitcase with the rest of our treasured but unused slides.

The box I had randomly picked up was film processed in August 1970. My colleagues were as eager as I was to see the quality of the work when I returned with them on a CD. They enjoyed the views of the ancient Weavers Cottages in Canterbury, the beautiful flowerbeds in the local park, the fashionable 1970s haircut of my Auntie Christine, and thought my big brother saluting in his cub scout uniform was cute.

But I guess they really wanted to see what one of the bosses was like when she was three! They weren’t disappointed. A picture of me sitting with my brother on the statue of a gorilla in Crystal Palace Park (we just fit perfectly under his arms) elicited squeals of delight. “That is definitely you: You still do that same facial expression when you are thinking!” Perhaps the shot that got the most comments was of me on a well-kept donkey, with my mom holding on to me and my brother standing proudly by her side. They asked where in Turkey I had been. I had to check back to my late father’s writing on the original slide to see which UK coastal resort it had been taken in: Broadstairs in Kent.

Donkey rides for children may be common at the British seaside, but I have only ever been on horseback once in my life. Growing up in London, owning a horse was only for the very rich, and there were not many places suitable for riding. It was not until I was on holiday in the Mediterranean in my mid-20s that I got the chance to go horse-riding one afternoon. For a few hours probably the most docile creatures on the island were saddled up ready for the absolute beginners to have a pleasant ride through the countryside. I guess we didn’t really get any faster than walking pace, but it felt like a great adventure.

But of course, for a really great adventure on horseback, you need to be a lot more proficient a rider and know a lot more about caring for your horse. Christina Dodwell is no stranger to long adventures on horseback, and in the 1980s she engaged in an adventure in eastern Turkey and Iran. In those days power in Turkey had only recently transferred back to an elected government after a military coup, and Iran was at war with Iraq. Of course many of her friends thought she was crazy going to this part of the world. Her perspective on it is that a journey is more fun in a wild part of the world.

As a first step, she got herself a Turkish map and was disappointed to find that only the west of the country was shown in detail. The east was shown in small scale “and most of it was empty.” Nevertheless, she decided to start her three-month epic adventure in Erzurum.

Now, from the title of the book, I was expecting to read of a lady who went hundreds of miles across mountains and plains on horseback. Dodwell does ride considerable distances, but not all the way from Erzurum, across Iran’s eastern border with Turkey and then its western border with Pakistan (into Baluchistan) and then all the way back. She boards her fair share of inter-city buses and hitches rides from passing trucks when getting from one area to another. Then, at her destination, she buys or hires a horse to travel for a few days or a few weeks. In order to see certain local sites she is not averse to leaving the horse in a stable and jumping in a jeep or hiring a taxi.

Dodwell is not just a horse freak: she has a genuine love of village life and the wonderful scenery she gets to enjoy by passing through on horseback. Her travel memoir is full of beautiful descriptions. In Cappadocia “we passed a ruined caravanserai, and villages with mosques eye-catching by their needle-like minarets.” Near a Turcoman village in Iran, “crested meadowlarks flew up from the track in front of our rattling approach, and the wheat was alive with turquoise bee-eaters and white butterflies.”

After riding through the usual tourist trail in Cappadocia, Dodwell crossed into Iran, and traveled through this country from the Caspian coast to a desert of salt, exploring the Turcoman tribal region east of Gonbad-e-kams, the area around Shiraz, the Qashgai tribal center of Firuzabad and the Southern deserts around Kerman and Bam. Here she saw a good cross-section of Iranian life and also had a number of run-ins with the Revolutionary Guard.

With more than a few separate nights spent in Iranian prison cells -- it seems the Revolutionary Guard in one province did not let those in the next province know she was harmless -- when she rode through the Valley of the Assassins on her way back to Turkey, it seemed to Christina that “the spirit of the assassins lives on.”

She was not the only one to be relieved when she crossed the border to Turkey -- “welcome to Turkey -- you may take off your manteau and scarf, your permit is valid for three months” -- a few weeks later in the mountains near Doğubeyazit she was to meet a fugitive deserter, a young man conscripted into the Iranian army.

In Turkey she bought a wonderful horse named Keyif -- pleasure -- and she describes this part of her journey in more senses than one as “travels with Keyif.” Her adventures in Turkey started with a game of cirit in Erzurum. From there she headed towards Van, through a part of Turkey with history including “Sumerians, Urartians, Cimmerians, Babylonians, Scythians, Medes, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Seljuks, Mongols, and that only gets us to the 13th century.” Of course, there are plenty of ruins for the independent traveler on horseback to stumble across.

I am unsure as to whether the star of the story is Christina herself, her amazing steed Keyif or the many generous villagers who offer her hospitality en route. “There was nothing to fear, people were generally wonderful to me,” and as the sun set she would regularly find herself being offered warm bedding, the best of village fare and hay for her horse. Many people would crowd round to say hello to the first tourist ever to come to their village.

In Van, all the villagers seemed to think she would have a treasure map. Van Lake is alkaline, and so feels silky and soapy to Christina’s touch. Keyif’s ticket on the Van ferry cost the same as Christina’s. Here they found many forts and castles because Urartian Van was only 300 kilometers away from its rival Nineveh. From here she went to Hakkari, following the route veteran traveler Freya Stark took when traveling the Tigris on a mule, then north across a plain where Selim the Grim had defeated the Persians, to reach the Ararat area.

Finally, going further north to Iğdır, Ani and Kars she has a reminder of the Cold War when Turkish police escort her out of the province following a Russian complaint about a lone horsewoman too near the border.

Heartbroken to finally have to sell Keyif, Dodwell realizes she is saying goodbye not just to a friend, but to “one of the happiest episodes of [her] life.” During the journey she had learned so much; maybe the biggest lesson was about journeying itself. “One cannot fail unless one sets out to succeed. Goals are like destinations, they don’t always matter. Our journey was enough in itself.”