18/7/2019 0 Comments meet georgiaOf a little over 4 and a half months on the road, almost half of this time was spent in Georgia (Acacia: 2 months; Jasper 6 weeks). Needless to say, we loved this country. We could’ve crossed it in one week, but that one week kept stretching on and on as we visited friends, made detours into the mountains, got immersed in volunteering, fell in love with Tbilisi, and had visits from friends and family. This country has everything and even after two months, we have missed so much. It’s hard to sum up why we fell for Georgia, but here are a few of the things that enthralled us the most and a few memories that stand out:
0 Comments
Armenia's claim to fame is that it was the first country in the world to adopt Christianity. So most tourists in the country are on a mission to see as many of the countless monasteries as possible. I have to admit that most of them are really worth visiting. If not always for the churches, then at least for the dramatic scenery they're set in.
Visiting Armenia I was also amazed by the nature, the food and the people, always friendly and welcoming. But this is not what sets the country aside from its neighbours. What I will remember the most is how the country seems largely untouched since the collapse of the Soviet Union with abandoned factories and cars and buses scattered all over the countryside. The result is that biking around Armenia is never boring. 16/7/2019 0 Comments It's complicatedThis is Karki or Tigranashen, depending on if you ask in Azerbaijan or Armenia, a little village of nothing in the mountains south of Yerevan. I camped for a night looking over the valley and it seemed like such a peaceful place. There's little that indicates that it's actually occupied territory. Officially it's an exclave of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, itself an exclave of Azerbaijan, but since the war at the beginning of the '90's it's de facto Armenia.
Living in Brussels we know a thing or two about complexity. The city consists of 19 communes each with their own mayor, and it is the capital of a country with six governments. But that's nothing compared to the tinderbox that is the Caucasus. Since the conflict that followed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Armenian borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey are closed, so that leaves the Armenians land-locked with only borders with Georgia in the north and a small strip with Iran in the south. What really made me think about how difficult the Armenian relationship with it's neighbours must be, is not the territorial dispute over some small village in the mountains, but my visit to the Armenian genocide museum in Yerevan. Never have a museum and a memorial made a deeper impression. Outside the building is a list of just how few countries recognise this genocide. 16/7/2019 0 Comments Drowning in a river of averageWhile Acacia did some volunteering in the desert village of Udabno in Georgia, I went on a two week and 800km tour through Armenia. As nothing is flat in that country, at least half of this was uphill. Several climbs took me well above 2000m and went on for 20km or more, so it often took me almost half the day to reach the top.
Something that crossed my mind regularly while I was suffering, was how the average gradient indicated at the beginning of the climb doesn't really say that much. As an economics journalist I write about averages all the time. Of course I know that they don't say anything about the extremes. I have been told the cautionary tale of the statistician who drowned in a river of average only one meter deep several times. But it is only after two weeks in Armenia that I fully appreciate how you can die multiple times on a climb with a gentle average gradient of only 5 percent. |
Archives
October 2019
Categories |