Self-Drive Offroad

You are the one driving. That is the whole difference, and it is bigger than it sounds.

Ahead of you runs a vehicle with a guide who knows the route and shows the line. What you need comes over the radio: where the ford is shallow, which ramp is taken in first gear, when it is worth letting air out of the tyres. The rest is on you. After two days you read the track differently than you did on the first morning, and that is the real reason people book this version.

The routes run through Syunik, Vayots Dzor and Aragatsotn. Gravel, corrugations, washed-out gullies, stream crossings that reach the hub depending on the snowmelt. There are days of forty kilometres and days of two hundred. The forty are usually the long ones.

Before the first stage there is a briefing at the vehicle: low range and differential lock, the hand signals for the convoy, the gap to the car ahead, and the recovery strap — the wide webbing band one vehicle uses to pull another out of mud. If you have never driven off-road, you get the first kilometres on easy ground and nobody pushing from behind.

What we do not do: talk you into a section you do not trust yourself with. At difficult places the guide will drive your vehicle across if you want that; it is part of the arrangement. The reverse also holds: ignore the line you were given and you spend the rest of the trip behind us.

Nights are spent in guesthouses, on the longer routes in tents as well. In the evening the vehicle stands dusty outside the door, and you know where every scratch came from.

Refuelling is part of the plan. In Syunik there can be two hundred kilometres between petrol stations, and the last one before a highland stage is the one that counts. Spare wheel, jerrycan and compressor travel with you; if you listen during the briefing you will know by day three where they are without asking.

A class B licence is enough. Off-road experience is welcome but not a condition. Patience is.