Mount Ararat

Face north and wait. The air on this plain is dry and the light is hard, and for much of the day the mountain is not visible at all — it hides behind its own haze and cloud. Then the cloud shifts and a white cone appears above the horizon, far higher than seems reasonable. Wind comes across the flat ground and picks up dust. Nothing else in view is tall. That is the effect this mountain works with.

The summit reaches 5,137 metres, which makes it the highest point in Turkey. Beside it, to the southeast, stands a second and much smaller cone known as Lesser Ararat, at roughly 3,900 metres. A broad saddle of high ground joins the two. In Turkish the larger peak is Ağrı Dağı. Together the cones form a single volcanic mass rising from the surrounding plain, and from most viewpoints you read them as one shape.

The reason it looks so large has to do with what is around it rather than the height alone. The plain at its foot lies at roughly 1,000 metres. That leaves about 4,000 metres of visible rise between where you are standing and the summit, with nothing in between to break it up. Many taller mountains sit among other tall mountains and lose this effect entirely. Here there is one cone and a great deal of flat ground.

It is a volcano. The whole mass was built by repeated eruptions of lava and ash, layer over layer, which is what produces the smooth conical profile. It is not currently active. Across the lower slopes you can see dark lava flows and fields of loose black rock, along with smaller cones and craters on the flanks. Farmers work the ash-rich soil at the base, and the fields stop where the rock begins.

In 1840 the mountain caused real destruction. An earthquake and a huge landslide came down the northern side, into a gorge known as the Ahora chasm. A village and a monastery that stood there were destroyed and were never rebuilt. Debris and mud swept a long way down the valley. The scar of that collapse is still the most obvious feature on the northern face, a deep bite taken out of an otherwise even cone.

Snow and ice sit on the upper cone all year. This is one of the few permanent ice caps in the region, fed by moisture that arrives from the west and freezes at altitude. It has been getting smaller. Measurements over recent decades show a clear reduction in its area, in line with what is happening to small glaciers elsewhere. If you photograph the summit today, you are recording something that is changing at a measurable rate.

The Turkish name, Ağrı Dağı, is often explained locally by pointing out that ağrı means pain in modern Turkish. That is folk etymology, and it is charming but almost certainly wrong. The name more likely descends from older regional names related to Ararat and Urartu, the kingdom that occupied this part of the world in the first millennium before the common era. In Armenian the mountain is called Masis.

This peak lies entirely inside Turkey, close to the borders with Armenia, Iran and Nakhchivan. It is also the central national symbol of Armenia, and it appears on the Armenian coat of arms. Large numbers of people look at this mountain daily from a country that does not contain it. Few landforms anywhere carry that particular arrangement, and it explains why the mountain turns up constantly in art, logos and packaging across the region.

Then there is the ark. The Book of Genesis says the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat — a plural, and a regional name rather than a single peak. The identification of this specific mountain came later, through centuries of tradition, and it has been held sincerely by many people for a very long time. It is belief and tradition, not established fact, and it is worth holding both halves of that sentence at once.

That tradition has drawn expeditions for well over a century. Climbers and researchers have reported wooden structures, unusual shapes in the ice, and formations visible in aerial images. None of it has produced evidence accepted by the wider scientific community. A rock formation south of the mountain is promoted locally as the resting place, and geologists generally describe it as a natural feature. Visit it if you like, but go with your expectations calibrated.

Climbing is possible and it is popular. The standard route goes up the southern side from near Doğubayazıt, with a first camp at around 3,200 metres and a higher camp above that, then a long walk before dawn to the summit over snow and ice. No technical rock climbing is involved, but crampons and an ice axe are, along with proper acclimatisation. Permits are required and must be arranged in advance through a licensed agency.

Down here on the plain, life carries on without much reference to any of it. Shepherds move flocks across the stony ground. Storks nest on poles in the villages. In summer the fields are worked in the cool hours and the middle of the day is left alone. The border posts and their traffic are part of ordinary routine. The mountain is simply the thing that is always there at the edge of the view.

Give it one more look before you go, ideally early. Dawn and the hour after it are when the summit is most often clear, before the day's heat builds cloud around the upper slopes. Watch the light move down the ice as the sun rises. Then look at the ground at your feet — dark volcanic grit, thrown out by this same mountain a long time ago. You are standing on it.