Camping under the stars in Hell's Canyon!
But to get there we still had several mountain passes to tackle by bike. We crossed the mountains and the vast Lake Sevan in a long, intense, slightly hungover day with changeable weather. Down in the valleys at the foot of the mountains the sun warmed the air; but as we climbed, the mist and cold cut through our skin and settled into our battered kidneys.
On the way to Yerevan we stopped in Hrazdan, a Soviet-designed city where Joshua — an Ecuadorian raised by American hippy parents — was living for a while. His parents had decided to bring up their children in a more relaxed country, in a paradisiacal corner of the Ecuadorian jungle.
Joshua teaches English online, which lets him live anywhere in the world as long as the internet connection is stable and fast. In Armenia it's not just good — it's cheap.
The life of an American family in Armenia
What brought him to Armenia, and specifically to Hrazdan, wasn't chance — it was his sister. She'd moved there with her husband, a Texan of Armenian descent who wanted to reconnect with his roots, and their children, whom they wanted to educate somewhere different from America.
For a couple of days we enjoyed the company of the whole family — a wonderful experience for understanding what life in Armenia is actually like from the inside. Not just how local people live, but how someone from a Western country experiences it.
The standard of education in Armenian schools is pretty poor, at least outside the capital. So poor that after a year of experiments in the local school, they pulled the children out of the system and tried home schooling.
In English classes they teach the alphabet by associating letters with words: "A, from Apple…" — "A" is pronounced "ay" in English, but "apple" is pronounced "appol", right? In Armenia the apples are "ay-polls". One of the very few English words the kids know, and they learn it wrong. Brilliant.
The American mother went to the school to find out why her children — who had spoken English since birth — were getting bad grades. She ended up in a blazing row with the teacher, who clearly didn't know the first thing about English.
As a farewell gift we treated ourselves to an evening at the thermal baths with our host, drinking beers in the open-air hot-water pool under the stars and the cold night air.
Yerevan — a small Vienna
Pedalling into Yerevan (or Yerevan) we caught our first glimpse of little Ararat, and shortly afterwards, Ararat itself. The crown jewel of Armenia, the pride of the nation, a beautiful mountain visible from Yerevan… that today sits on the other side of the border in Turkey, to the sorrow and bitterness of the Armenian people.
After our previous Couchsurfing experience in Hrazdan, in Yerevan we stayed with a Bulgarian girl through Warmshowers. She works for a French company managing accounts and enjoying the Armenian countryside.
A week in Avrora's company was more than enough to build a solid friendship — particularly welcome since it was the time we needed to finish processing the Iranian visa.
We'd already obtained the letter of invitation (LOI — Letter of Invitation), but the paperwork at the embassy in Yerevan takes a full week unless you pay extra for the express process.
The centenary of the Armenian Genocide
If you heard about it, it was probably through the rows over athletes who publicly supported recognition of the genocide, then backed down when their sponsors criticised them for opening their mouths — or their Twitter accounts — against a country with as many football fans as Turkey. Dani Alves, for example?
Or maybe it was Kanye West — "Kanyé" as the Armenians were shouting — jumping, or falling, depending on who you ask, into the fountain near his concert stage? Or System of a Down's rain-soaked concert?
These things don't normally happen in Armenia. The reason for all of it was to draw the international community's attention and demand that Turkey recognise the genocide of the Armenian people one hundred years ago at the hands of the Ottomans. And there we were, right in the thick of it.
A holocaust planned by Governor Cevdet Bey to prevent the possible secession of an Armenian state. With the recent precedents of Romanian, Serbian and Montenegrin independence fresh in his mind, he engineered a plan to force the Armenian people into rebellion by arresting their intellectuals — thus giving him justification to besiege the cities.
It is estimated that one and a half million Armenians died during one black year in which they were confined to concentration camps, killed in their majority on the way there, and buried in mass graves across the breadth of the empire. More than half the Armenian population was wiped from the face of the earth.
Hey! Don't get angry, Turkish readers — facts are facts. Yes, it was a hundred years ago. Yes, it was the Ottoman Empire, not Turkey as such. But courtesy costs nothing — acknowledge that you wiped out more than half the population of your now-neighbouring country, with premeditation and intent.
Apologise, own the consequences and pay whatever compensation is demanded of you.
A weekend mini-adventure
No time for a long trip? Work, family or obligations chaining you to the sofa in front of the TV? Escape!
I'll accept "real life" as an excuse, and maybe your dream really is to travel the world but it's genuinely not possible right now. That doesn't mean you can't live an adventure.
The weekend arrived while we were in Yerevan and Avrora wanted to make the most of her days off and not spend more time within four walls or bar-hopping. What can we do? Let's climb the highest mountain in Armenia! Off we went, persuading a friend of hers to come along — and provide the car — and hit the road towards the base of Mount Aragats.
Our plan was simple: drive to the lake at the end of the road, grab our makeshift backpacks and explore the area while climbing to the 4,094-metre summit of Aragats. The problem? Snow covered everything and the road was blocked.
Now what, with our mini-adventure in tatters? We took it in our stride, ran around in the clouds and headed to the next thing that came to mind: Hell's Canyon!
A couple of hours later we were exploring the riverbank running through the canyon, scrambling up the surrounding mountains, pitching tents and building a fire to spend the night under the stars with friends.
No time for anything? The moment you finish work, grab your backpack and head to the nearest mountain with a tent. Spend the night outdoors and take a dip in the nearest river on the way home the next day. One night in a sleeping bag opens anyone's eyes.