Armenia

Next morning I pick Brian up, shake him about, squeeze him tight and check him for damp patches. Some of the jobs I have to do .. anyway, it seems he’s holding water and he’s ready to ride.

Get some fuel from another petrol station with one attendant and a dozen ‘in attendance’ sitting round chewing the fat.

We’re retracing the sinuous roads we went on yesterday and they’re just as delicious in the opposite direction. Except there seems to be more cake shops on this side of the road.

The trouble is they put sweet and savoury next to each other and you end up just buying blind. I end up with a super sweet filling in one roll and a disgusting dead dog’s dick in the other. I should have just gone for the mushroom.

I saw this bloke unloading and he had some real monsters. I was pointing and laughing .. then he went into the front seat and casually pulled out this MASSIVE porn star mushroom. If this one is magic I’m going to be flying all the way to Armenia ..

I just cannot stomach the dog’s dick so I stop in the first lay-by where there are a couple of dogs waiting for a bus. Again, no ears poor things. He doesn’t even look at the food, he just swallows it before his mate even makes a move.

Stop for fuel .. maybe I can just suck it all up from the forecourt. The bloody place is awash with the stuff. Only trouble is its diesel. Probably ok for a BMW tractor but not for something with the two big chesticles banging about under my bollocks.

This trip is an odd one when I think about it. How many long range travel motorcycle groups don’t include a GS of some sort? Not many I bet. Still .. at least that means we can cross a weak bridge if we come to one.

And here is the culprit for the diesel. A knackered old tank with the flow control of a woman with 50 children.

We head on through the town to the Armenia border. Last time I was here the road was a shit fest and looked more like a Red Bull special stage than a highway. Its all mended now though .. easy peasy..

Georgia exit is still just a tin shed, but its a quick and simple process to leave. Blimey..we’ll be into Armenia and Yerevan in time for lunch .. perfect..

Or not. As spanners go.. someone routed about, found the biggest fuck off one they could find from an earth mover, took 3 people to carry it to the Armenian customs post and just threw it in the works about 10 minutes before we arrived. She was about 5 foot tall with by far the worst case of OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHCD I have ever seen.

I’ve been through here before, as proven by the fact I was detained at immigration saying the bike was still in Armenia and had never left.. ummmmm.. so that took a while to sort out but wasn’t the actual root of our problem.

The process is simple. You pay a fee of about $15 as a temporary import duty and the bloke gives you a slip. You take the slip, and you fill in a customs temporary import form. The exact same form you fill in on the Russian border. Simple form. Not much to it at all. Even the Russians only take 10 minutes to process it.. but not here. Not today. Not when inch high do or die is on duty. There are 5 of us. An hour tops but no. This woman is checking .. double checking .. tripple checking.. every single line then when she gets to the bottom she goes through it all again. And again. She really has a problem and it’s obvious to everyone. First form takes about 45 minutes to do and the queue is building up. Second form.. 50 minutes… people are getting seriously pissed and traffic is really building up outside even though this border sees hardly any traffic. Someone with a big hat on eventually comes in and sees the problem, grabs someone from another room and drags him through to man another desk. Trouble is inch high has started another one of our forms .. she’s started so she’ll finnnnnnnniiiiiiiiiiiissssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. And now she’s passing her forms to the other bloke for him to check them too. FFS!!!! There is going to be a riot very shortly. We’ve got a bit of a ride to Yerevan and the sun is beginning to fall. We should have been out of here ages ago. 4 hours after we started, we’re all through, insured and on our way. All I have to do is follow the pink line to my bed. I have to follow the pink line because that is the only thing on my GPS. No other roads, nothing at all. Just a pink worm. WTF is that about. I’ve never seen that before ..

Still, we’re in. Let’s go. The roads near the border are surprisingly good. They look pretty new and they twist and roll south over the landscape like a racetrack. A racetrack with no barriers and no direction arrows or warning signs. I come to the brow of one hill and within a millisecond I know I’m in big trouble. My brain has assumed the road goes straight on but someone decided a sharp left turn would be better at this point. I can see a slither of black going left and a big drop into a field straight ahead. So its the field then.. thats decision 1. Sit upright and ride/fly into the field. Probably exit the bike in a disorderly fashion and arrange my bones across the scenery with a trail of blood and guts someone can follow to collect all the parts and put them in a bag to send home and be put in the compost bin.

Option 1 is considered for a fraction but then right at the last minute the little autopilot in my head decides he likes his ship just the way it is and decides to try for option 2. Hard on all the brakes and push the bike onto the floor with my boot keeping it steady. The lean angle ABS pulsing and ‘stuff’ scratching on the road I think I’m out the seat for a second road surfing with my boot and holding the bars and then I’m round. Spit out the mouth full of adrenaline and let my eyes deflate back to their normal size. Fuck that was close.. Perhaps the best lesson I was ever taught. Target fixation. Don’t do it, much easier said than done. Look where you want to go, even if whatever you’re on is going in a different direction. If I’m honest I don’t really remember exactly what happened except the panic, the ABS, the boot on the floor and the scraping noises .. I think Brian behind me just thought I was showing off.

Follow the road towards Yerevan .. the pink worm .. still no roads but the satnav still seems to know the way. The country is obviously down trodden and backward but is making steps towards modernity. Lots of new petrol stations at least. I guess they can’t easily convert the newer (still old) cars to LPG so easily. The landscape is impressive and different to Georgia too. Let’s see how good the coffee is.

And the answer is fucking disgusting. If it wasn’t for the lady with the almond shaped eyes smiling at me I’d have spat the lot on the floor.

Fuck.. I’d only just got used to the other squiggles in Georgia. Now I’ve got a whole lot of new squiggles to learn.

Yerevan is a big city. It has roads everywhere. Big roads little roads side roads fast roads roundabouts and all the other stuff you usually expect to see on a sat nav, but I still just have the worm and nothing else. I’m in front as some of the others have lost mapping altogether. So in we go. Trying to follow a line with absolutely no references through a big unknown city is quite tricky. The traffic is a BITCH too. All the bikes are getting very very hot again and as we get close to the hotel the roads are full of very bad men wearing their black shiny Mercedes and Range Rover coats. Touch one of them and you’re likely to be polishing the exhaust manifold with your tongue. We get to where the GPS says the hotel is and there is a hotel there, but it has a different name. Its in a nest of tiny residential roads and alleyways and footpaths that we follow for a couple of minutes before admitting defeat, stopping, and hunting on foot, only to discover that the original place is actually where we’re staying but that it ‘shares’ its name with another hotel, but whose name is nowhere to be seen.. which is nice. And Brian decides to lay his bike down for a rest too. It did look very tired to be fair. We all go round collecting our senses of humour from the floor where we’ve thrown them and track back through the maze to check in.

Its pretty late now and we’re all ratty and hangry so we go out to the street with the biggest concentration of bad man mobiles and just pick the first place we find.

Fried Khokhob .. ok then ..

A quick wander round near the hotel to find an ATM

and a few bottles of beer to help me sleep ..

I wake up early and go for a wander. I like to see a city rubbing its eyes and stretching before its overrun with people ruining the views.

I didn’t know birds had mortgages ..

Yerevan is a money box like any capital. You live on inside its not so bad. On the outside you just throw your money in and never see any come out. The hotel breakfast is good but the coffee is shocking so I go out on a hunt. Bastard.. this looks my kind of place. The barista is from Palestine and hoping to make her way to Europe, and I reckon I’m paying for half her journey by giving her £4 for a coffee..

Back at the hotel my GPS seems to have slept well and remembered where it put all the roads. I copy the card to all the other XTs and as if by magic they all pop into life. Thank fuck for that.

As we’re leaving they send out an ‘all-tottie’ email and tell them to come to reception and sign my helmet .. which is nice

They’re a really nice bunch. All speak perfect English too. The education system must be doing something right round here.

We’re heading south today to Goris. As you ride out the city your eyes are constantly drawn to the west where Mt Ararat sticks its head above the clouds and soaks in the morning sunshine

Its no surprise there are lots of churches round here, and one in particular was built with a front seat view

There is another well known church across some mountains and there is a decent cafe close by so we head over the pass where the clouds are not fluffy and white, but black and smoky coughed up by ancient trucks struggling to stay alive. The views are worth it though

The road up to the church is all in a state of destruction. Its been ripped up tarmac is being laid but there is a section of nasty loose rocks like a ball pit which I try and the bike decides to turn itself 180 degrees on. Decision made.. fuck that shit. I’m going for lunch. A couple of the others make it but young Brian decides his bike needs 2 quick lie downs before he can have lunch.

The ride to Goris is like watching a strip tease from mother nature. Little signs of very attractive views appear and disappear. Mountain ridges and low clouds conspire to confuse you as you get closer and closer until you suddenly fall down into Goris and the landscape hits you in the eyeballs

Goris is quite a big town but the money knife has spread the wealth very thinly. I really like these places though. They’re properly characterful. They are just for locals and if you come here you do so on those terms. Take it leave it. Like it or loath it. And I like it.

Its cash only at the hotel so I have to go on an ATM hunt. I find one that isn’t working then another that will only give a small amount then another by a supermarket where there are loads of people watching while I take out 2 weeks wages in a big wad. I don’t feel threatened thought. Maybe my spider sense is broken but this place feels quite welcoming.