Having patched the inner tube of the back wheel deflated for a puncture, on June 13th I left the farm in Agarak and headed straight to the Meghri mountain range in the region of Syunik. After five kilometres, a patrol of soldiers busy repairing a section of the barbed wire wall marking the border with Iran along the Aras River stopped me and asked for my documents, no doubt only to take a break from their exhausting task and satisfy their curiosity about my nationality.
The sergeant found on page 44 only the stamp of entry into the country and not the adhesive Visa that normally takes up an entire page. He asked me why and I reply that mine it was an “Electronic visa.” In fact, the e-visa has been recently launched by the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the ministry website where after filling out a form online and paying by credit card, the Applicant receives a reference number to show to the customs officers. But the Foreign Minister did not sufficiently informed the Customs agents, and a couple of days before, on my arrival at the border, I said to the officer checking my passport that I had an electronic visa and a reference number but nothing printed and she answered “No papers, no visa.”
Fortunately, everything was resolved with a telephone call to the central office. Now it was the turn of the sergeant to call the Customs and after two phone calls, made with two different mobile devices, was informed of the e-innovation. Leaving the banks of the river, the road climbs gradually but inexorably and the slopes are covered with dense woods crossed by streams of clear crystal water. Cars are rare and birds chirping, my breathing and the slight squeak of the chain were the only sounds that I could hear.
Riding uphill for 40 kilometres, the last ten kilometres with an inclination between 15% and 18%, I got increasingly closer to the sky, ’till I reached the Meghri pass at 2535 meters which stands opposite to the northern side of Mount Kaputjugh (3904 meters) still covered in snow. I run out of water for couple of hours and, unable to buy it due to the complete absence of villages, I filled my bottle directly from a stream coming down from the peak. In the mountains the weather changes in the blink of an eye and suddenly blacks clouds appeared from the south-west covering the sun, until then master of the sky, releasing cold drops that drenched me. Hungry and shivering from the cold, I reached a hotel in Kadzharan at 2100 meters where I spent the night and had dinner with biscuits and Mars bars from the room mini bar.
The next morning I had a very heavy breakfast with fat pork sausages, fried eggs floating in oil, goat cheese and half a loaf of bread on which I spread two fingers of butter and a mix of strawberry and apricot jam. Still cycling through enchanted forests, for the first 30 kilometres the road descended to Kafan at 950 meters to remount up to Goris at 1600 metres where I spent the night in a motel still partially under construction but with cheap rates considering the category. Here it begins a plateau between 1800 and 2200 meters where literally the trees disappear completely and the ground is covered with half a meter of grass dotted with red poppies, lilac, white and yellow daisies, bluebells, violets and other varieties of flowers to create an unreal colourful rug that seems to come out from the canvas of an impressionist painter who, with a tiny brush, adds dots of colour to a bright green background. My nose reminded me of being allergic to the pollen of some spring plants and flowers from the old Continent, intolerance of which I lost memory for not having suffered at all of hay fever in the last 12 years living in Egypt and along the Mekong shores.
I spent the night of June 15 in my tent at the west end of the plateau on the edge of Gor Ayk village at 2400 meters, in the central region of Vayots Dzor. Although I worn most of my clothes and I covered myself with the blanket Maral gave me in Iran, the cold was biting hard and I did not really sleep for most of the night. Then, when the first rays of the sun began to give me a bit ‘of warmth and I dozed off, I woke again hearing the hooves of a herd of cows passing by a few centimetres from my igloo. I was afraid that some of those big cattle, scared for some reason, would trample me running over the tent in panic. But the opposite happened when the bovine, seeing suddenly me emerging from the tent, rushed away in the opposite direction.
After Vorotan pass, for a good twenty kilometres, the road goes downhill and the mountains slopes become dry and covered with Mediterranean vegetation. While, symmetrical rows of vines lie in the valleys, from which the Armenians produce a red wine robust and strong in alcohol.
During a stop in a bar down the road, three Polish “centaurs” also stopped and one of them took some photos of my bicycle parked outside. They too were travelling for several months through the Balkans and Turkey (this is their site where there is also the photos we took together www.prm-poludnie.pl), when they saw me, they wanted to know everything about my trip. I drove for another twenty kilometres up to 1800 meters, to get around mount Shal’-Dag, and then came down to the wide valley at the north-west end of which Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, lies. The city has not been too crippled by the overbuilding of the Soviet times and keeps some beautiful buildings and a circular radial urban structure in the city-centre.
On June 18th, the day of my 42nd birthday, I spent most of the day answering and thanking the hundreds of people who on Facebook and by email wished me an Happy Birthday. So many posts made me really happy as well as kept me company and I celebrated drinking two large mugs of local beer with 6.5% alcohol at an outdoor café that made me tipsy and made me perceive reality in an even more positive way than I usually do.
The next day, I took the motorway M1 direction north-west arriving at Verin Talin, where I found accommodation in a former health SPA and, I believe, disused brothel at least since the fall of the Soviet Union. Everything was still there, in a state of neglect and decline with the rust and dust marking the inexorable passage of time: the indoor swimming pool, now without water; the sauna with wooden benches in tiers and Turkish bath with aquamarine mosaic tiles depicting a girl who poured a water-bag; a large living room with bar; and rooms with beds for massage … with mirrors on the ceiling and walls.
The two elderly owners, after having placed me in a room with a double bed and a broken mirror on the ceiling that reflected a dozen pictures of me, gave me the keys to that ex-paradise asking to put the key under the doormat at my departure the following day, then they went away by car and I have not seen them again. The next day, I continued northward reaching the village of Gukasyan, fifteen kilometres from the Georgian border.
There, at 2100 meters, I was struck by a hail with hailstones the size of small grape which, hitting my bare legs, left a few bad bruises. Due to the lack a hotel in the village, I set my tent in a meadow near the police station, when Arman invited me to stay at his family’s place for the night, since it was cold and could even be dangerous because sometimes wolves entered the village! This usually happens during the winter, when snow makes it particularly difficult to find food for them, but it was better not to risk it.
My possible saviour is some twenty years old and lives with his parents and a brother in a large house where a small crowd of curious friends gathered to see the novelty. He also called his cousin, Araqs, and her friend, Anush, two students of languages at the University of Yerevan, I think the only two in the village who spoke English well and who were most necessary interpreters.
The next morning, I was served a gourmet breakfast made with fresh boiled eggs from the family’s hens, a delicious cheese and a delectable strawberry jam both homemade by the mum. She works as a nurse in the hospital built by the Italian Caritas at the express wish of the then Pope John Paul II after the earthquake that hit Armenia in 1988 and is directed by Father Mariano. I went to the hospital but, unfortunately, I could not find my country fellow-man who was in the capital to meet a cardinal from the Vatican visiting the country. In the morning I reached the border point with Georgia.
The Armenian side consists of two prefabricated huts, where a young customs officer asked me why I did not have the Visa sticker pasted on the passport. At my words “Electronic Visa” the officer nodded and stamped me out the country wishing me a safe trip. After crossing the no man’s land, more than one kilometre wide, I was before the vast and new structure of the Georgian customs which waved the national flag with five crosses and a much larger blue flag with twelve stars in a circle of the European Union.
Strangely, I was directed to the cars line, as if driving a motor-vehicle!, rather than the people’s line inside the office, as it should be natural. But, at least, I did not have to queue and within a few minutes the officer stamped my passport and welcomed me to Georgia.
Going from a former Soviet republic to the other, the mountainous territory does not change but one immediately notices a certain difference in the houses building materials: mainly blocks of stone in Armenia against red bricks and wood in Georgia. Also, the physical differences of the two ethnic groups: with blacks hair and dark eyes the Armenians against blond and light irises the Georgians.
That night, the only one I spent in Georgia, I stayed in Akhalkalaki, and on June 22nd I crossed the border with Turkey at Vale-Posof. Also there, as along the border between Armenia and Iran, there was the same wall of rusty barbed wire, indubitably that was the way the Russians marked the limits of their empire. Several red flags with white Crescent and star were waving on the Turkish side, while, at the top of the highest Georgian hills, Christian crosses stood as spiritual barriers to a possible spiritual Islamic invasion … Until next time.