How it all started ...

"I have a dream,"...

"... to set up an agency one day to give work to my large family and the people at the foot of the Ararat." Kemal Çeven

As a child, my mother and I always moved to our nomad camp on the Ararat, at 3000m altitude, in summer. There I helped her with the lambs. There were often climbers passing by who wanted to go to Mount Ararat. My eldest brother Hallis was already a mountain guide back then and led many of these foreign mountaineers to the summit of our Ararat. I have often wondered how I could one day be able to stand up there with him on the summit myself.
My brother Mehmet soon got a boat driver license. Now he too moved to the snow and ice covered summit with mountaineers from all over the world. I wanted to go too, but we had 9 lambs and these were the future of our family. I had to take care of her.

I asked my brother Halis if I could go to the summit. I could already speak a few words of German. In addition to the dream of my first summit success, I really wanted to learn the German language. This was not so easy in my home country, as we only learned Turkish and no foreign language at school.

In the summer of 1981 my eldest brother Halis took me to the top of our Ararat. It was much harder and more exhausting for me than I had imagined. From an altitude of 4600m I got a terrible headache. I thought my head was going to burst any minute. However, Halis was not allowed to find out about it, he would have sent me back immediately. In July 1981, when I was 9 years old, I stood on the summit of our Ararat for the first time. In 1990, when I was 18 years old, I got my mountain guide license.

In the spring of 1990 the Ararat was blocked. I woke up from my dream. A very difficult time began for our family and many other Kurds. Our Kurdish identity, that is, our language, our music, our culture, was banned under threat of heavy penalties.
The military moved through our country and our homes were raided many times.

Since the spring of 2000, Mount Ararat has been open to mountaineers again. I did the first ascent with Turkish mountaineers. My brothers worked a lot for the agencies from Istanbul, Cappadocia and also for Hauser excursions, the German Alpine Club (Summit Club) and Alibert. But I didn't know if it could go on forever. Should I set up an agency myself? We worked for the agencies for little money and were completely dependent on them. I had the idea of ​​founding an agency in the family. With my second oldest brother, Ahmet, I founded a tourism agency called Ceven Travel in 2002.

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"I have a dream,"...

".. to be able to speak German in order to be able to come into direct contact with German, Austrian and Swiss mountain guides, in order to be able to show many people our beautiful country and our diverse culture." Kemal Çeven

One day the famous extreme mountaineer Götz Wiegand called me. I got to know him together with Frank Meutzner and pastor Ulrike Aldebert from Munich. The three wanted to shoot a film with me about Mount Ararat, which we then put into practice. See our articles on SAT3 and BR »» .

Since then, Götz and his groups have come to our Mount Ararat every year. In the winter months I live in Germany and organize your dream tours from there. From spring to autumn I am in my home at the foot of the Ararat and accompany tours. Many people in my home country get jobs that they urgently need.

''I have a dream,"...

"... to further expand economically and ecologically sustainable tourism in our region and thereby enable the local people to lead a self-determined life with access to running water and electricity and with access to education for our youth." Kemal Çeven

For us, the Ararat is our life and our future. For us, every guest also means that we learn and experience new things. This exchange is very valuable to us, as we only have limited opportunities for further training here on site.
But we don't want tourism at any price. We therefore make sure that we give the local people work and support them on all trips. We keep all paths and rest areas clean and we start an action for the environment with volunteers at least once a year by walking the paths on Ararat and collecting and disposing of rubbish and paper, so that this beautiful, untouched nature is preserved.

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We are also a member of the local rescue association DAKUT and support rescue operations on a voluntary and honorary basis in the event of environmental disasters.
Without the support of our mostly German, Austrian, South Tyrolean and Swiss friends and partners, we couldn't offer our tours like this today. From our bus to the tents and clothing of our team, we are dependent on support from abroad.
Our special thanks therefore go out
Götz Wiegand | Ulrike Aldebert | Frank Meutzner | Günther Härter & his wife | Detlev Lehman and many more .....
Every euro of your travel price goes to the local people and helps them to get through the winter when there is little or no earning potential.
Many Thanks. Your CEVEN TRAVEL (Kemal Ceven) & team