April 6, 2014
Please stop beeping!: It seemed like Armenia was one hell of a crappy place to live
In the morning I passed through the town of Gavar and, as with Sevan the day before, I found one of the most down-and-out depressing places in the world. From the outside there appeared to be absolutely nothing but dreary misery amongst the square grey-brown buildings and sorry-looking figures shifting between them. In Sevan I had tried my luck asking if there was anywhere that I could use Internet but from the responses that I got I might as well have been asking if there was anywhere I could use the Hubble Telescope. It seemed like Armenia was one hell of a crappy place to have to live.
What made things much worse during my entire time in the country was the infuriating horn beeping of passing cars. I had got plenty used to being beeped at throughout Turkey and Georgia, but the Armenians had taken things to a whole new level by beeping as loud as they could at just exactly the moment that they passed me. Quite what they hoped to achieve by this remained a mystery to me, I certainly tried to remain optimistic that their main objective was one of inspirational support. On this account they failed, instead inducing in me a state of sudden terror that made me jump out of my bicycle seat. Finally I got so fed up of this that I made a sign and stuck it to the back of my bike. Unfortunately it was too small and consequently was a complete failure. I resolved to make a bigger sign if I could ever find the necessary stationary.
I had better luck in the next town of Martuni. While the place still looked like crap, at least some of the people were very friendly, with one passer-by responding to my request for a place to use the Internet by leading me to a furniture shop. In this unlikely location I was welcomed in by a very nice man whose name, as ever, I can't really remember, but which I can confidently tell you began with the letter M and was definitely not Maxine or Matilda. Mr M not only let me use the Internet in his office he also brought me coffee and sat and talked with me. I showed him this blog, in which he took a great interest, and we talked, and finally I left having achieved none of the things I wanted the Internet for.
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Beyond Martuni I had to cycle over another mountain pass, which was to become very much the theme of the trip through Armenia. There was a lot of snow and the road was in bad shape with large sections encrusted in ice. A lot of the cars that were navigating their way through stopped to ask me what I was doing or to offer me a lift, in the friendly way that I was beginning to associate with the Armenians. I was also warmly greeted by a group of Dutch* tourists that were travelling through the country in a convoy of rented jeeps. I found them to be extremely kind and friendly people.
There was disappointingly no summit sign to mark what, according to my map, was the highest point of the trip so far at 2410 metres above sea level. The climb was not so tough though, because it had started at 1900m at Lake Sevan. The drop on the other side took me down much lower, a descent that went on and on through a rather annoying rainstorm. All the way down I was cursing at losing so much altitude, all of which would need to be regained for the next pass. I was consoled by a group of kids, a karate club that had chosen high on a snowy mountain pass as an unlikely location for a picnic. They were eating cheese sandwiches on a big rock and waved me over to join them. I maintained a safe distance, well aware of what a group of karate kids might do to me in such a remote location, and wished I still had that tyre lever. But they seemed friendly enough, and one brought me over a large white bread roll coated in a thick synthetic cheese paste. It tasted disgusting, but I ate it anyway, just to keep them happy.
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* Wait
Today's ride: 112 km (70 miles)
Total: 16,026 km (9,952 miles)
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