August 8 -Things around Tatev

I loved waking up to a slow and sunny Monday morning, the scenery reminded me of the Alps. I took my time getting packed up, the caretakers were very friendly, they offered me coffee and croissants. While this was definitely not a camping, I used the impeccable facilities to clean up. After all, the cable car was an Austrian-Swiss cooperation.

Mountains around Tatev

...could be in the Alps...

For Armenian time, it was still early when I started rolling down the steep road, none of the few restaurants were open for breakfast. Just before the deepest point on the road, I met Jan, a Belgian (the fifth or so) biker making his way up the hill, he was riding from Iran.

At the bottom of the road is something quite special. A river flows thru a narrow gorge, this is not the highlight. There is actually warm thermal water flowing into the river from a cave system - getting better - and one can actually swim in this. Well, getting in there was not easy - it included climbing down a whacky steel ladder, balancing on slippery rocks and squatting thru narrow passages - but it was worth it. The thermal water carved beautiful bath tubs ofv whitish color, before the warm water merged with the river. It came streaming down, so it was a real warm bath, I was quite happy to have made this adventure. A guy was actually guiding me - think I'd have gotten lost otherwise. My only regret was that I had left my camera with the bike, it'd sure have gotten wet.

After my morning swim, I met Dutch and French followers, by the way, this place is called the Devil's Bridge. The road became unpaved, and I jumped into a car two Ukranian hitchhikers were getting out of - the driver did not have a lot of choice. He took me up the steep road to the Tatev monastery and I was sort of happy not to have made the trip on bike - it was a bit of a disappointment compared to e.g. Noravank. Maybe due to the fact that it was destroyed by an earthquake at the beginning of the twentieth century and had to be rebuilt, maybe because it was a bit touristy, or I has simply seen too many of these monasteries.

This is Tatev

On the way down, a Lada driver wanted 10Euros to drive me to the bridge, so I stopped the next car in which two Swiss hitchhikers were already crammed in and got in ad passenger no. 7 or so, but then who is counting.

Now came 18 km of uphill climb, I indicated to the few passing cars that I wanted a ride, to no avail. I soothed myself with a good kebab wrapped in lavash (a thin bread), and suffered to the main road, meeting two Polish hitchhikers. See, it's quite international (touristy?) there.

It was time to make a decision, to continue eastwards to Karabah or to return the road I came from. Now doing the same thing twice is not so much fun, so I decided on a hybrid solution: to go east to the last town before Karabah, Goris, thinking there would be some bus back west.

Somewhere in Armenia

It was a bustling town, I met Americans, Germans, but no sign of a bus service. I now murphed into a hitchhiker, think I'd be still standing there hadn't I stopped a taxi. We agreed for Eur 22 that he would drive me to Yeghergadzor, where I had sent the camping a few days back. He was a great driver, with his gas-driven VW Jetta we cruised thru the countryside and the mountain passes I fought thru. We stopped at the cafe for a brief while (from where my jeep adventure had started), they again offered vodka and food, then I met Jan, who was being blown up the mountain pass, him claiming this was his easiest crossing (hey,"that was my headwind!).

Heading back west in my taxi

At the camping called Crossway, I checked in for Eur 4, only to see that Michael, the German half-globetrotter had been there the night before. Small is the biker's world!