Mount Ararat is probably one of the most remote places you can visit in Eastern Turkey. When visiting this place, we used the city of Doğubeyazıt as our home base since it has nice hotels and restaurants.
After being in Turkey for 5 years, I have to say that this area not only has significant sites for believers in the Bible, but some of the oldest history. The bonus is that Doğubeyazıt has delicious food and some cool, quirky sites to visit as well.
Here I want to share with you things that you MUST know and see if you can make it this far into eastern Turkey with the goal of visiting Mount Ararat. Interestingly, Jehovah started life in this area twice! Once in the Garden of Eden and second from Mount Ararat. I wrote another blog about our visit to the nearby possible location of the Garden of Eden here.
Mount Ararat sits on the borders of Turkey, Iran and Armenia. It is located just North East of Lake Van, Turkey. Just to borrow a map from the old green Bible, here is it’s approximate location:
The first thing to realize is that you can only get so close to Mount Ararat. Kurdish people live on it and it is a very sensitive issue as to it’s sovreignty because of it’s borders. Even visiting near the base, we were literally about one mile from Iran.
Another important thing to take into consideration is that the Bible says that the ark came to rest on the ‘Mountains of Ararat’. Therefore there is more than one mountain. There is one larger and one smaller peak.
The Noah’s Ark Visitors Center at Mount Ararat
The best place to go so as to see the two peaks of Ararat is here. It has the best view and is the location of the Mount Ararat visitors center as well as a supposed location of Noah’s Ark.
Here is the Noah’s Ark Visitors center.
Don’t expect to find anything inside it. There are a slides of underground x-rays. That’s about it. The reason for the x-rays is because of this mound near it:
Since this mound has similar dimensions to Noah’s Ark, many feel that this could have been it. Inside the visitors center you will see underground scans detailing things like timbers and rooms. I was skeptical. You be the judge.
Just above the mound in the previous picture is the border of Iran. It’s not so easy to see the fence, but it’s there. The local caretaker of the visitors center warned us not to go any farther along the road. So a word of caution, ‘Only go to the point of the visitors center and no farther’.
Watch this short video of what it looks like there:
What is interesting is that there are stories of people who have climbed Mount Ararat and say that they have seen it. They even brought back pieces of wood. Maybe they found it, maybe they didn’t. The jury is still out on that one.
Here are a couple of great articles about this. Judge for yourself:
If you can make it out this way, I have a few tips for your visit:
1. View this part of your trip as a culinary experience. The city of Doğubeyazıt is here. It is loaded with Turkish, Kurdish and Persian speaking people. It’s a culinary vacation all in itself. At night, everyone is out on the streets eating, though it’s almost exclusively men. But recognizing us as tourists, no one seemed to mind. Here we are on the street for a meal.
2. The city of Doğubeyazıt is not tourist oriented like the cities on the west coast of Turkey. Therefore hotels are not as plentiful. However we found a fantastic place to stay. It looked even better than the pictures online (such a rarity these days). It was called the Tehran Boutique Hotel.
3. There are many checkpoints. In this part of Turkey they are situated at the entrances and along the highways. Security is a big issue. Have your passport on hand for checkpoints.
4. Visit the waterfall. There is a beautiful waterfall not far away called Muradiye Selalesi. It’s worth a stop since it’s along the highway. Here is a short video of it.
5. Visit the palace. Though it’s not related to the Bible, there is a nice palace built in 1685 called Ishak Pasha Palace. It’s worth a stop if you want to do something extra.
What really prompted me to go to this mountain was a book that I read a few years ago. It tells about a French explorer named Fernard Navarra who miraculously got permission to climb the mountain and claims to have seen it. It was so convincing to me that I think of passages from this book when we visit. Here is the book if you are interested. It’s called, “Noah's Ark - I Touched It!"
I hope that I successfully helped you to plan your trip to Mount Ararat. I’m happy to answer any questions and share more if you still have questions.
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