Van Gölü Ekspresi

Everybody has heard of the Doğu Ekspresi. Almost nobody has heard of its sister.

The Van Gölü Ekspresi — the Lake Van Express — leaves Ankara twice a week and spends around twenty-six hours crossing Anatolia to Tatvan, 1,352 kilometres away on the western shore of the largest lake in Turkey. It carries pullman seats, couchettes, sleeping cars and a dining car; it costs very little; and because it has never gone viral, you can usually get a berth on it.

It used to run all the way from Haydarpaşa, the grand old station on the Asian shore of Istanbul, until the Ankara–Istanbul high-speed line rearranged the map and the service was cut back to Ankara. Something was lost there — but what remains is still one of the longest and least-touristed rail journeys in the Middle East.

And the destination is genuinely strange. Lake Van sits at around 1,600 metres, ringed by volcanoes, and it is not fresh water but soda — so alkaline that the story goes you can wash your clothes in it without soap. It is an unreasonable shade of blue. On an island in the middle stands a tenth-century Armenian church carved with Adam and Eve and Jonah's whale, and on the far shore a fortress the kingdom of Urartu cut into a rock ridge three thousand years ago.

You get there slowly, through gorges, with tea. It is the better train, quietly.

The Van Gölü Ekspresi shares its first stretch with the Doğu Ekspresi, and for a while the two trains describe the same Turkey: out of Ankara across the central plateau, past the volcano at Kayseri, on through the Seljuk stonework of Sivas. Then, where the Doğu Ekspresi swings north-east for Erzincan and Erzurum, this one turns south.

That divergence is what makes it. The line runs down to Malatya — apricot country, the orchards heavy with them in late summer — and then east to Elazığ, where it enters the finest section of the ride: a long succession of river gorges, the train hanging above green water, curving between rock walls, ducking through tunnels and out again. Around Palu and Beyhan the valley narrows and the whole train becomes visible ahead of you on the curve. Almost no road follows this; you are seeing country that is essentially only reachable by rail.

Beyond, the land opens into the wide, high plain of Muş, and the train climbs again onto the eastern highlands — bare, huge, cold in any season, with volcanic cones on the skyline. Late in the second day it comes down to Tatvan, on the western shore, and there is the lake: 1,600 metres up, ringed by mountains, and blue in a way that seems like a trick of the light.

From Tatvan you have arrived at the edge of somewhere rather than the middle of it. Van city, the castle, and the Akdamar boats are on the other side of the water — the lake is big enough that getting round it is a journey in itself. Above Tatvan sits Nemrut, a collapsed volcano with crater lakes in its caldera.

It is worth being straight about the character of this trip: there is no luxury, no dome car, no excursion programme. There is a corridor, a window, a great deal of tea, and a day and a night of country that most travellers to Turkey will never see.

The Van Gölü Ekspresi is a regular TCDD service, not a tourist product — a real overnight train that local people use to cross the country. It runs twice a week in each direction, so the calendar rules your trip.

That's about 26½ hours over the 1,352 km, calling at Kırıkkale, Kayseri, Sivas, Malatya, Elazığ and Muş. Accommodation is Pullman seats, couchettes and sleeping cars, with a dining car.

Good to know:

• Twice a week, so the calendar rules. With only two departures each way, build the whole trip around them.
• The Güney Kurtalan Ekspresi fills the gaps — on alternate days a sister train covers much of the same line before branching to Kurtalan rather than Tatvan.
• The Turistik Tatvan Treni, a sleeper-only tourist train on the same route with a three-hour stop at Elazığ out and at Sivas back, ran twice in 2024, in June and August. No run has been announced since, and TCDD says it is still gauging demand.
• Tatvan is not Van. The train stops on the western shore; Van city, the castle and the Akdamar boats are across the enormous lake — allow time and transport.
• It no longer starts in Istanbul — the Ankara–Istanbul high-speed line ended that, so you connect via Ankara.
• Best May to October, when the highlands are green and passable (unlike its winter-pilgrimage sister, the Doğu Ekspresi).

Times are TCDD's own, as of September 2026, from its Trenim Nerede page (opens in a new tab), where each station's board lists the train and its stops.

Tickets are sold by TCDD Taşımacılık, online or at the station. Ankara to Tatvan costs 970 TL in a Pullman seat, 1,635 TL in a couchette and 3,220 TL in a sleeper — very little for the distance, and, unlike the Doğu Ekspresi, you can generally get one. For twenty-six hours, the sleeper is the one to book. Prices checked in September 2026.

With two departures a week, plan the trip around them; if the days do not fit, the Güney Kurtalan Ekspresi covers much of the same route on the alternate days. Carry cash in lira and bring food and water. And have a plan for Tatvan: you arrive on the wrong side of a very large lake from most of what you came to see.

This is a journey to a corner of Turkey that sees very few visitors — and rewards them disproportionately.

The scenic heart of the ride is the run east from Elazığ, where the line spends hours above the water between rock walls, threading the gorges around Palu before it climbs to the plain. Tatvan, at the far end on the lake's western shore, is modest in itself but is the gateway to everything here, with the caldera directly above it and boats and buses around the shore.

Van, across the water, is the real prize. The modern city sits beneath Van Castle, a fortress the Urartians cut into a rock ridge nearly three thousand years ago, with cuneiform inscriptions still legible on the cliff and the ruins of the old city spread on the plain below. Van is also home to the white, odd-eyed Van cat, famous for actually swimming in the lake, and to a breakfast culture that deserves its own pilgrimage — a table of twenty or thirty small dishes, herbed cheeses, clotted cream and honey.

Lake Van itself is the largest in Turkey and one of the strangest: a saline soda lake with no outlet, sitting at 1,640 m, holding well over a third of the country's surface water and so salty it almost never freezes.

For the night on board, the choice is the usual Turkish overnight ladder — and at twenty-six hours, spend the extra.

• Sleeping car — a proper compartment and a bed. Cheap by any international standard and the obvious choice for this distance.
• Couchette — berths shared with whoever's travelling; comfortable enough, and the sociable option.
• Pullman seat — a reclining seat for a day and a night. Doable, and what most locals use, but you will feel it.

At the far end, the geography matters more than the hotels: Tatvan is on the opposite shore from Van, and the lake is very large.

• Tatvan — modest, functional accommodation right where the train stops. Fine for a night, and the base for the Nemrut crater above town.
• Van — the better base by some distance, and where you should spend most of your time: a real city with hotels, the castle, the Akdamar boats within reach, and the celebrated Van breakfast to work through in the morning.
• Ankara — business hotels near the station at the start; no reason to linger.
• Malatya — worth a stop if you want Nemrut Dağı and its stone heads, which are a serious detour but a genuinely extraordinary sight.

Timing: aim for May to October. The east is high, and winter here is severe — this is not the winter train its famous sister is. Note too that eastern Turkey is remote; distances between towns are long, buses fill the gaps, and it pays to plan the days after the train as carefully as the train itself.