My life in Syria

My journey to a new land, a new people, and a new me.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Caucasian Vacation Part I: Leaving for Armenia

I never in my life thought I would attempt a liesurely road trip through the Southern Caucus states, and yet Chris and I made a bum rush through three countries in seven days. Unfortunately we were unable to fit Azerbajian into our limited time table, but tune in next year for our trip of "The Five Russian Stans."

We started out originally planning to travel by bus into Turkey, through Eastern Turkey to Lake Van, up into Norhteastern Turkey, and then across the border into Georgia. We were then either giong to take the bus or the night train to Tbilisi from Batumi, depending on the cost of travel and how much time we had left on the clock. From Tbilisi we deffinitely planned to travel to Yerevan on the night train, view local Armenia by bus, and fly home by plane. Ambitious I know, but deffinitely do-able.

First I must say that what Chris and I lost in forward planning, we made up for in zeal. We had both done limited reasearch on visas and travel to each of our destinations. Knowing that it was a possibility to travel with very little planning, we basically left our critical planning for when Chris arrived in country(Syria), from where we could arrange flight and visa detail. The first problem we ran into was the Armenian Visa. You can apply for a transit visa for cheap, but they would need your passport for a week. Not possible. They can expedite the service for a wad of cash, but one of the reasons for this trip was that it was affordable. So were not paying for chochky service. You can cross the border into Yerevan with no trouble, but the visa is turning out to be sticky (pricey) business.
We then looked into flying into Yerevan instead of leaving from Yerevan. To be honest the reason we didn't want to fly into Yerevan in the first place is becuase we knew we would get lazy and enjoy the "Western" culture after being in Syria, and end up just hanging out and drinking for a week. But now we didn't have a choice. As it turned out, we could fly in and get a three-day transit visa at the airport for just twenty bucks. The problem was that we had to leave the evening of the day after we wanted to begin. So we can get a cheap visa, get into the country, but we lose at least a day. Better than nothing!

Materials: we had a Lonely Planet guide to the Middle East, the first ever printed Lonely Planet guide to the Caucasus(this is the worst travel book I have ever seen - rare for Lonely Planet), and no phrasebooks of Turkish (Chris can say a few words), Kurdish (I can say please and thank you), Georgian, Armenian (I know random numbers and yes/no), and Russian. Obviously I have watched "Red Dawn" a million times and feel I know Russian extremely well. Chris has decent French, I have passable German, and between the two of us we can get by in Arabic.

Budget: Not including the airline ticket, we wanted to spend no more than thirty dollars a day - gifts not included.

Reason: Living in Syria you have no shortage of Armenians telling you Armenia is the most beautiful country on the face of the Earth. To hear them tell this conjures up images of angels on high over giant rolling fields of happy frolicking people. We decided to put this illusion to the test and see Armenia in all of it's failed communist glory. Unfortunately my Spring Break is only one week long so we had a decision to make. We could either tour just Armenia and come home, or take a peak at Armenia, and also take a peak at Georgia and Eastern Turkey. We decided it would be better to turn the trip into a "Caucasian Roadtrip," rather than just visiting Mother Armenia.

Final Plan: We now have seven days to visit Yerevan, Sevan, Georgia, Batumi, Erzerum(maybe), Dogubyzit(maybe), Van, Lake Van, and Diyarbakir, before we return to Syria, on only thirty dollars a day minus airfare.

Ready, set, go!

We went to the airlines and reserved the tickets, went to the money changer and got the official reciept for changing money for the tickets, bought the tickets, hashed out a schedule of where we wanted to be on what days, looked up some cheap hotels/hostels, and got our visa and money out, stuff packed, and got our minds ready to go. Actually, then we went to a friends house...and then a bar.

This was Thursday evening after school...we left for the airport in twenty hours.