Offroad Expedition

The day starts with a map on which the route is only roughly drawn. Fords, washed-out ramps, corrugated gravel, cooled lava fields — what lies between the lines is on no sheet of paper.

You sit in the vehicle; someone who knows the track does the driving. That is the difference from the self-drive option: you do not have to find the line yourself, so you can look out of the window. The rhythm is demanding all the same. In Syunik, in Vayots Dzor and on the way up to Mount Azhdahak, stages of four to seven hours are normal, and the last ten kilometres to a destination regularly take longer than the hundred before them.

We stop along the way. At a pass, because the view demands it. At a spring, because the water is cold. At a monastery that has stood in the same place for a thousand years and whose access road is worse today than it was thirty years ago. There is rarely a restaurant at midday, so there is bread, cheese, tomatoes and whatever the next village has.

On remote stages we travel with two vehicles. A single vehicle in a region without mobile coverage is a hope rather than a plan. Satellite communication is on board, so is recovery equipment, and both have been needed before.

Packing happens in the morning, at the vehicle. A camera on the back seat becomes a projectile after two hours of corrugations, so loose luggage rides in the boot and not beside you. By day three you hear from the suspension which surface is coming before you see it.

It gets dusty, it gets rough, and on some evenings you are tired without having walked a step. People who prefer tarmac should tell us beforehand — then we rebuild the route instead of pushing it through.