LAKE VAN AND ENVIRONS

Van is the economic hub of Eastern Anatolia, and modern streets are lined with stores both modern and traditional and strangled with traffic. There's a definite feeling of hustle to the town, with cafés and restaurants filled with young characters, many of them students from the regional university. With its combination of rather uniform-looking and ugly cement constructions, what Van lacks is a sense of history, which should not be unexpected. The Van of now dates back to the early 20th century when it was rebuilt some 5 km (3 miles) farther inward from Lake Van after being destroyed in battles with the Armenians and Russians during World War I. Old Van first appeared in history 3,000 years ago, when it was the site of the Urartian city of Tushpa, whose impressive fortress—built on a cliff rising from the lakeshore—dominated the farmland. What lives of Old Van, in a grassy area near the lake, is a depressed jumble of walls that cannot be sorted out; only two vaguely restored mosques, one 13th-century, the other 16th-century, rise from the marshland.