A pitch-dark night…
Our tents are set up on the shore of the smaller of the Nemrut crater lakes (Ilıgöl). We are surrounded by steep slopes and rugged rocks. In the evening, the crescent moon appears in the sky; as darkness deepens, it quickly slips behind the rocky ridges and hands us over to the stars. Our campfire is burning… Camp conversations accompanied by the stars blend into the darkness of the night with cheerful laughter. I look at my friends sitting in a circle around the fire. While the warmth of the conversation heats us from within, the flames of the burning wood skillfully play a game of shadows on our faces in the dark of the night… And then the hours begin when the night cold turns into a biting frost. It is time to rest. We retreat to our tents.
Camping at 2,300 meters
Sleep just won’t come. Unfortunately, my sleeping bag is not suitable for such cold weather! As the temperature drops to minus five degrees Celsius, I helplessly toss and turn, bundled up in layers of clothes. After a brief doze of one or two hours between sleep and wakefulness, I wake to a morning covered in dew. When I poke my head out of the tent like a fish out of water, I lock eyes with the camp leader.
“Are you in?” he asks.
“Of course,” I say. “I love mountain peaks.”
While our friends shake off the fatigue of the previous day in their tents, we set our sights on the southeastern slope overlooking the lake and slowly begin climbing toward the summit. The spot where we camped is at an elevation of 2,300 meters. To reach the summit, we need to make a 500–600-meter ascent. After a while, daylight grows stronger. The sun, following the cold night, seems to smile with all its warmth… On one hand, the sun rises higher; on the other, as we climb the slope and our blood circulation increases, our bodies heat up and we’re drenched in sweat. And then we realize we forgot to bring water! But the excitement of reaching the summit instantly makes us forget our parched lips.
Alexander’s paradise
The slope is nearly 70 percent… As we approach the summit, rocky terrain becomes more frequent. We try to continue our ascent by avoiding the very edge of steep rocks and sticking to safer routes. Finally, we reach the summit, from where we can see Nemrut Crater Lake almost from a bird’s-eye view. We are met with a magnificent, breathtaking panoramic scene. Incredible… It’s the kind of feeling that makes you say, “This can’t be told—it must be lived.”
At that moment, some information stored in my memory comes to life:
Nemrut Crater Lake, located at the summit of Mount Nemrut, an extinct volcano, lies within the borders of Tatvan district of Bitlis. This extraordinary natural wonder is also known as “Alexander the Great’s paradise,” as it is believed to have been discovered by Alexander the Great during his eastern campaign.
