We go through Armenia and pitch our tents on Mt. Aragats.
The sun peeks over the horizon to reveal a spectacular view. From our vantage point at 3200 meters above sea level we can see for miles in the fresh morning air.
Mount Ararat has two peaks, one at 5137 meters and the other at 3896 meters
To the south the legendary Mt. Ararat seems to float in the air as the first rays of the sun hit the spectacular snow capped peak at 5137 meters.
The view from our camp is truly staggering at 5.30am, but enough of the waxing poetic! We pack up relatively fast as the temperature is only about 5°C and we just woke up after a night filled with weird noises (a blocked French nose from the couple a few tents away is to blame for some of that, I’m sure). «A puny 5°C is nothing for two Norwegians to get bothered about», you might think, but the past weeks in near-broiling temperatures have turned us into a couple of sissies as soon as the quicksilver goes lower than 10°C.
Lars was seriously considering putting on his woollen underwear during the night, but then he would never have been able to live down all of Snorre’s snide remarks for the rest of the trip.
Crap roads in Aragats, Armenia
The temperature rises quickly in the next half hour. This is because we are driving back to the lowlands and because the sun is already heating up the air around us.
A minibus driving up Mt. Aragats
We follow the, so far, shittiest road we have driven so far: with pieces of the road being at different elevations, or cracked into a bazillion pieces or just missing altogether. Still, we enjoy our surroundings. These consist of a small bus we are meeting on the too-narrow and partially missing but boulderstrewn road, as well as a Canadian scout camp, where all the youngsters already are up and learning knots and what types of breakfast cereal are poisonous.
Scouts from Canada on Mt. Aragats
Finally, we reach the highway. Now we’ll be able to make some speed. So naturally, the first thing that happens, is that we are being stopped by the Armenian police. Again. This time we KNOW we haven’t done anything wrong, as we stayed in traffic, didn’t cross the «hotline» and also saw the patrol car from afar, so we were on our best behaviour, vehicularly speaking.
Naturally, the officers insist that we have been zooming past them close to the speed of light and also that we had been passing an «Autobus».
As we have not seen a bus today (the one on the mountain doesn’t count), we object strenuously to such false accusations.
We noticed quickly that we were dealing with an unusual pair of Armenian officials here. The patrols we were stopped by yesterday had had a very relaxed way about them and approached us in a friendly manner, short of giving us cups of cocoa.
These two are best described as a couple of tossers!
After about 15 minutes of fruitless threats, exhortations and ludicrous pointing by the two policemen (to which we replied with Buddha-like calm), we are told to sod off.
At least that’s how we choose to interpret what the officer in charge tells us in Armenian. As he strides back to the cop car he says something that sounds like «Problem border. Problem border», and in our minds we both go «Uh-oh».
Doesn’t matter. We are NOT going to give in to these greedy bastards. We just have to take our chances that they haven’t told the Armenian border guards that a couple of highly unstable lunatics are closing in on the checkpoint and that these Norwegian speedfreaks should be put down with extreme prejudice. Preferably with shotguns.
Thoughts like that would be ridiculous and paranoid.
The border between Armenia and Iran is only 35 km long, and is in a very remote and mountainous area. It is squeezed in between Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic (a landlocked enclave of the Republic of Azerbaijan), and there are not a whole lot of roads to choose from. For those of you wondering about Nagorno-Karabakh, it’s a piece of Azerbaijan that has been occupied by Armenia since 1994.
Nine days before we passed through here, the region experienced some of the worst clashes in years over this Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, with 15 soldiers dead.
Now we have to travel winding roads that look like they belong in a Mad Max movie. These roads are so curvy that sometimes the car seems to look back on itself as it passes the corners. Asphalt also seems to be optional (or not invented), so we bump along, sometimes not doing more than 30 kmh.
Armenian crosses dot the countryside
The only redeeming part is the fabulous countryside. In between the dust clouds (that we are the reason for), we see ancient ruins, monasteries, rock formations and a whole lot of crosses dotting the landscape. Armenia became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion, around 301 AD. For this reason, Armenia is often referred to as the «first Christian nation».
Thanks, Wikipedia.
We briefly stop at The Devil’s Bridge, a natural rock formation where you can drink natural mineral water out of a crack in the ground (no thanks) and Tatev Monastery, a 9th-century monastery located on a large basalt plateau.
Tatev Monastery in Armenia
From then on it’s burn-rubber-time. At 30 kmh.
Anyway, we drive past Arevik National Park and get to the border after several hours with dust-laden air. We randomly choose among the myriad (2) roads and slowly cruise towards the border town of Norduz.
At the checkpoint, nobody waits for us with machine guns. Phew. The car and the two passengers have to be thoroughly vetted though, and the officers start by checking all of Snorre’s and the car’s papers. Lars has to go through a separate entrance, where his and everybody else’s papers are being minutely studied by Russian officers. What? Yes. Russian.
Inbetween the officers rubbing the pages of the passport and saying out loud what it says on its cover («Paaazz-aport»), nothing spectacular happens. The whole process takes an hour or so and then the car has to go through a second Armenian (or is it Russian?) checkpoint.
Now the car’s papers have to be REALLY checked.
Sign at the Armenian/Iranian border
After 30 minutes where we haven’t even scratched the surface of our now well practiced bureaucrats-must-all-die demeanor, it’s our luggage’s turn.
We have to take out a couple of bags, while the Russian/Armenian/Insert-other border guard pokes the bags and boxes. A few minutes of this and we are done.
Now we get to do the same thing all over again on the Iranian side of the border.
Yippee.
We fear the worst as we drive the car through no-man’s land between Armenia and Iran, having heard all kinds of strange tales. We are quite understandably a bit apprehensive when we reach the Iranian checkpoint and are told to get out of the car and approach the hut to have our papers checked.
So imagine our surprise, when the first thing we hear from the two border guards is «Welcome to Iran!», a big smile, followed by firm handshakes from the two of them. While one border guard is cursorily checking our passports the other lights a cigarette, offering one to us as well. We decline politely, just as the guard currently checking our papers suddenly exclaims: «Ah Klinsmann. Good Football!» and a big smile.
He had realized Lars has a German passport.
Lars, of course, knows diddly about football. German or otherwise. So he nods politely and mumbles something about Klinsmann being overrated.
This doesn’t put a dampener on the Iranian borderguards’ demeanor however, and we are through.
Well, not quite, since now our luggage and car have to be examined. Again. We go into the arrivals hall and have our passports checked again – this time by a striking looking man, whose perfectly coiffed hair possibly doubles as a combat helmet, it’s so thick. As we marvel at this type of hair-engineering, we almost don’t realize we are asked several questions: «What is father’s name? Where do you work? You are married? German passport? How about that Klinsmann?»
To be fair, I made that last part up.
After everything seems to be in order, it’s time to have our stuff x-rayed again. A very nice man, apparently the chief of security, tells us exactly what we have to do – but not before he shakes our hands and warmly welcomes us to Iran and hopes that we have a pleasant stay here!
Nice!
To make a long story short: this all took awhile.
Everyone was extremely nice, helpful and even apologetic about the whole rigmarole of having to check all our stuff just for entering their country. Things came to a head, when Snorre had to help two officers locate a stamp he had to have on his carnet de passage. Apparently the stamp was in an office no-one could find the keys to and when they did, there was no light anywhere. Good thing Snorre carries a torch on his key chain.
You get the picture.
It’s completely dark as we drive from the border and into Iran.
We follow the winding highway 400 km to the city of Tabriz. There isn’t much happening on this nice highway, until the car driving in front of us suddenly seems to grow wings and literally flies away.
We brake hard and reverse on the highway to where the other car has disappeared. A light shines into the night sky from the ground around the highway, which is about 2 meters higher than the surrounding countryside. It seems that the other car for some strange reason suddenly turned on its emergency blinkers and sped full tilt off the highway, so that it for a short moment seemed to fly in the same way that a brick doesn’t.
We climb down and walk closer to what surely must be a wreck of a car with at least some hurt passengers.
Nope. Everyone’s fine, although a bit shaken up.
We make sure the two guys are ok, but they are allready calling emergency services to pull their car back onto the highway.
This certainly woke us up.
We get back into our car and continue towards Tabriz.
It’s incredibly hot this close to midnight and as soon as we reach the city we start looking for a hotel.
Tabriz, with its 1.4 million inhabitants, is one of the largest cities in Iran. You’d think you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a hotel in Tabriz, but that wouldn’t be true.
Of the twelve hotels we managed to find, not a single one has any available rooms!
It’s now getting close to 3am.
We avoid being shanghaied by a polite but persistent man who follows us in his car and claims he has a room to let. After taking one look at the room, we realize even the cockroaches are fleeing this place and take our leave.
It seems that we’ll have to sleep in the car. We’ve been up since 5 am and are now getting dangerously close to blacking out. Not a good shape in which to drive around an unfamiliar city in.
We find a petrol station and fill up the Yaris. At the station we meet a friendly Iranian (really, is there another kind?) who tells us he knows of an International hotel, and he’ll take us there. All we have to do is follow his car.
We do, and sure enough, after a few minutes we reach the Hotel International something-or-other.
Which is fully booked.
Fuck!
We are getting seriously tired now, but our helper isn’t giving up. He jumps in his car and beckons us to follow him again.
We are beginning to lose hope, and a ditch at the side of the road starts to look really inviting now, but only a few minutes later and we are at the Caspian Hotel.
Which has an available room. Thank Allah!
At the Caspian Hotel
It turns out that it’s a suite, not a room, at the steep price of $90.
Screw it. We are just about ready to collapse into little heaps, so we thank the manager and tell him yes, we’ll take the room even if the cockroaches turn out to be the size of TV-sets. We profusely thank the young man who refuses to take any kind of reward and without whom we probably would have spent an awful night in the car.
At last. Bed.
We drove 683 km through Armenia today
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