Armenia

2005

Just minutes after waving goodbye to the Iranians I was met by Armenian border guards. Girls with long blonde hair flowing from their uncovered heads and the shortest miniskirts that I had seen in a long time. This was a welcome relief from the all in one black blobs that pass for females just the other side of the river.
The police here were so surprised to see me that I began to wonder if I had made the right decision, but they were all very friendly and I managed to smuggle my rabbit past them without a problem.

Southern Armenia near the Iranian border

I was without a guide book or a map or any idea what was in Armenia. I had planned to get a bus from the border to the capital, Yerevan, but there were no busses on the day that I arrived so I decided to hitch. Unfortunately the border that I had crossed was completely in the middle of nowhere and got no traffic. (I also later learned that sticking out your thumb is quite a rude gesture so I would have offended any potential rides anyway.) After a few hours standing in the cold on a deserted road I ended up sharing a taxi with a soldier to a nearby town called Kafan. For about an hour and a half we drove over snowy white mountains that reminded me of the alps, the only towns on the way were bleak soviet looking places with a big rusting factory in the middle and surrounded by high rise apartment blocks. And despite the snow, a surprising number of miniskirts.

In Kafan I was told that there were no busses until the following day and so had to stay the night. The only hotel in town was this huge 18 storey monstrosity that looked like it had been built in the dark ages. Apart from a few "ladies" I was the only resident in the hotel and was soon being shown to my room which for some reason was on the 9th floor. Perhaps the only floor with usable rooms? Just as he was leaving the old man made some gestures with his fingers that I understood as 'would you like any company this evening?' Mmm, perhaps not.

A church in Yerevan in which a weding was going on

Everything about Kafan was more soviet that Russia. The whole town was old and falling apart or rusting and the people all looked scary. They weren't at all, they were very friendly, but the combination of gold teeth, scarred faces and awful 80's haircuts made them look a little menacing. The best thing about not being in an Islamic state, apart from the miniskirts and the abundance of porn on public display was the alcohol. Every little shop stocked at least three times as much liquor than anything else on their shelves. Before long I was dancing around my room with my rabbit drinking something that tasted like paint stripper and chewing on a stick of salami. Not surprisingly after 3 months without alcohol or pork my body was not in the party mood I thought it was. One minute feeling great, the next minute being violently sick in to a rusty toilet. As there was no running water in my room this turned out to be a really unpleasant affair, and so it was with great pleasure that I vacated the room the following morning.

Again I was told that there were no busses to Yerevan so I stood out on the main road with my bag determined to get a lift out of this town. After two hours I was still no better off. In fact I was worse off as I was freezing and for the past half hour there had been a little fucker somewhere in a tower block throwing stones at me. The third time I was hit I decided to walk back in to town and get a taxi to the nearest operational bus station. It turned out that in fact there were busses from Kafan that day and so cold and quite pissed off, and injured, I climbed on to a bus and set off for the capital.
Armenia in January is just white. Snowy mountain after snowy mountain, very beautiful but after four or five hours quite boring.

Arriving in Yerevan in the evening sometime I was directed to the cheapest hotel in town. I was very disappointed to find out that it cost $35 a night (the hotel in Kafan cost $4), so I trudged around in the ice for about an hour or so but even the hotel/brothels were more expensive so I eventually ended up back where I started. Unfortunately as soon as I had checked in I had to go back out in to the ice on a hunt for food for the rabbit.

I think this a cinema but I can't be sure

Yerevan is a really nice capital city. Very quiet and clean. I wandered around a lot in the snow and saw a few churches. I went in to one that had a wedding going on. There seemed to be other members of the public in there too staying out of the cold so I hung around for a while until I felt warm enough to go back out. There isn't that much to do in Yerevan but there are some very interesting things to see. The train station is very soviet looking and one day I went to the Cascades, which are these steps up the hill with fountains falling down between them, were interesting enough to spend about an hour at. To be honest though the amount of money that I had spent on my room I spent a lot of time there. It was warm; there was a TV with CNN and hot water. A rare luxury and so I had my first proper shower in…too long to even say.

I would have loved to have spent more time in Yerevan but $35 is a lot to spend on a room even if it does have all the mod cons, so after a few nights I left for Sevan, a small town by a huge lake of the same name.

Lake Sevan

The hotel I stayed in in Sevan was like something out of the shining, (the soviet version). I was again the only resident apart from the family that owned it who all lived in one room that they never seemed to leave. The whole place was under two feet of snow and apart from a few old people hanging around, seemed almost deserted. The lake itself was incredibly beautiful and obviously quite a popular place with Russian tourists in the summer as there were lots of camping lodges etc. there was even a small water park, but the pool was full of snow in January. I spent hours playing in the snow and ice but the lake, and even met an ice fisherman with absolutely no teeth. We stood and shared a few cigarettes, but no real intelligible words were exchanged. I think that he would have been a nice guy to talk to. In one place as I was admiring the lake, I could hear a noise like a loud crushing sound. After a bit of investigation it turned out to be the ice on the lake. It was being slowly pushed ashore where it was breaking up and creating piles of what looked like panes of glass. I was amazed and just stood there for about ten minutes watching it, and then as suddenly as it had started it stopped and I was left standing there in the silence. I stayed until sunset and tried with varying degrees of success to make ice sculptures out of the panes of ice.

Sheets of moving ice on Lake Sevan

The following day I bus hopped from one place to another and eventually ended up at my destination I wandered around for a while thinking that this place was much less beautiful that I had thought it would be, so I asked someone if this was in fact Allaverdi. They pointed to the top of the massive gorge that we were standing in. I had to get on another bus that slowly wound its way to the top. From atop the gorge the view was incredible down in to the valley below. Again I stayed in another huge cold and empty hotel with no heating and no running water. The town was full of half built soviet condos and dilapidated buildings. There was even a whole building site that had been abandoned with all of the cranes and equipment left there to rust away. The other half of the town was all old wooden farm houses with animals living on the ground floor and people living above them. The "main attraction" of the town is an old monastery which was quite cool as it was still an active church, but still old and falling down.

I had wanted to get the cable car down the gorge to the bus stop the following day but as it was probably older than Lenin I decided against it. My last night in Armenia was spent under five blankets wearing all of my clothes, again, and still cold.

Allaverdi gorge

The border with Georgia was a huge bazaar at the end of which was a small hole in a wall where hundreds of people were all pushing and shoving to get through. I too forced my way through nearly crushing the poor rabbit to death in the process, only to be told that this was not a legal crossing point for foreigners, so I had go now force my way back against the tide of people.

Eventually after huge shouting match with a retarded soldier I managed to get directions to the foreigners crossing point where again I had to smuggle my long eared companion in to a strange land.

 

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