Moghul Gardens, Dal Lake, Srinagar

September 1971 - a diversion from the Grand Trunk Road: from Amritsar to Jammu, then the climb up to Srinagar in Kashmir.
I've still got a few photos of it - some of the original slides are losing their colour and going blue.

The first sight of the Vale of Kashmir on the way up there; and the houseboats we stayed on.

             
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A day was spent on the Dal Lake in these shikaras, and visiting the Gardens, the next day was pony trekking in the hills.

           
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                                                       AsiaBus 1966 - Click the picture to reveal more...



This is part of one of Rory Maclean's (writer of Magic Bus) pictures on Flickr, Does anyone know who ran, or drove AsiaBus?

And there are more interesting pictures in this Flickr GALLERY

                                            1958 - Asian Greyhound bus: a Guy Vixen

This picture is cropped (I wanted to see more detail of the bus), from the one sent in by Norm Harris (click the picture for the link), where it shows a bus on the Zigana Pass - this is on the road that climbs south out of Trabzon, and eventually re-joins the main trunk road east to Iran, between Erzincan and Erzerum. This route was the one we used in 1968 (Safaris trip), it was a dirt road, and the pass, at some 2,600 metres, is even higher than the infamous Tahir Pass - between Erzerum and Agri. But as far as I remember, there was nothing like the amount of freight traffic on the old, or pre-1977, Tahir road.


                                  Click the picture for the complete on-line Turkish Road Map

We don't hear much about the route from Istanbul - Ankara - Samsun - Trabzon - Erzerum and so on: the so-called Black Sea route; I did it only once - regrettably, and from what I remember of it, I preferred the whole northern route to the Mediteranean Coast; from Samsun to Trabzon, and particularly onwards from there it is spectacular, with terrific scenery and mountains. Whether the Black Sea Coast has survived the march of mass-tourism, I don't know. I'd like to think it hasn't been ruined. From the modern Turkish map, it looks like a new road has been constructed just to the west of the old (Overland) road.

The next paragraph is from the Safaris leaflet of over forty years ago:

. . . Depart Ankara and on across semi-desert to the Black Sea and Ünye, mid-way between Samsun and Trabzon. Ünye - taking it easy, swimming, sightseeing.

Depart for Trabzon and over the Torul Pass 7,500 feet, for Bayburt and the 11th century castle, overlooking the town at 6,500 feet above sea level.

Depart for the Zigana Pass at 8,000 feet and down to Erzerum, one more climb over the difficult Tahir Pass and arrive in Agri, this is bandit country. No sleeping out.

Depart Agri through wild and mountainous country via Mount Ararat and the legendary landing site of Noah's Ark.

Across the border into Iran and stay at Makoo [sic], stock up with food, then drive across the desert to Tehran.

The heights of passes often seem to include some strange variable (especially on the Internet) - you can find references to the Tahir Pass râkim (altitude), stating that it is anything between 7,500 and 9,000 feet. Same with the Zigana: it apparently varies from 6,600 '¹' to over 8,500 feet '²'. We also went over another high pass, nearer to Erzerum - the Kop Geçidi, between Bayburt and Aşkale. By the time we got to Erzerum it was night-time - but we had first been able to see the lights of the city, twinkling in the distance, from over thirty miles away - the road had been that high up.

[1] "The Road to India", 1977, by John Prendergast
[2] The on-line modern road map of Turkey - in the link.

Has anyone got any more pictures, or tales, or anything from those early Overland days - the late 1950s and the 1960s?

Inside the links I put in the Indiaman thread, there are almost four-hundred pictures, starting with some taken on the first Indiaman trip around Easter 1957; and another 300-odd pictures taken by Peter Moss on the second of the firm's second trip in August 1957.


                   1968 - Safaris bus (AEC engined Maudslay) on the Trabzon to Erzerum road
                                                               (picture shown before)

For some reason we spent a night out on the Zigana road; nearly everyone slept in the Maudslay bus, but me and a couple of others slept underneath it; it was later on in September, and as it was so cold, those kipping under the bus were given a substantial slug of Scotch (duty-free Johnnie Walker Black Label, bought on the Channel Ferry), however, this was done outside, otherwise the bus would've been abandoned for the night. There certainly was a sharp frost by the morning - and my sleeping bag was found to be soaked with oil; further on when it got warmer, the oil-drenched sleeping bag was disposed of. On this mountainous route, south of the Black Sea, we had plenty of trouble with stone-throwing Turkish boys; we had a bucket of stones as well, in the the bus, by the door - to retaliate with. They used to take advantage of the steep hairpin sections of the road - so that they could rain stones down onto the bus roof, from above.

Did the Guy Vixen bus do more than one trip, I wonder, in 1958? According to one of my old books, the four-cylinder petrol Sunbeam engine could produce about 58-bhp; interestingly, London Transport bought 84 of these 29-seaters - but ordered them with 65-bhp Perkins P6 diesel engines  - and that was for use around London - not the mountains of Asia.