Lake Van

Lake Van is the largest body of water in Türkiye and one of the largest soda lakes in the world. Its water is alkaline enough that locals once washed clothes in it without soap, and only one fish, the pearl mullet, can survive in it, migrating into the freshwater rivers each spring to spawn.

Above the town of Van rises the great rock of the citadel, carved with cuneiform inscriptions left by the Urartian kings who made this their capital nearly three thousand years ago. From the walls you look down on the foundations of the old city, abandoned after 1915.

Van is also famous for two things at opposite ends of the day: its white cats with one blue eye and one amber, and a breakfast tradition so elaborate that whole streets are given over to it, with twenty or more small dishes arriving at once.