Wilderness Camping

You pitch your tent before the sun drops behind the ridge. In half-light, pegs reliably end up in the wrong ground, and a tent that has to be moved at eleven at night keeps the whole camp awake.

This is camping with a vehicle. Tent, stove, water cans, cool box and chairs travel along, and that changes everything compared with a trekking route: you carry nothing, you have room in the evening, and on day two you can decide that yesterday’s site was better. In exchange you stand where a vehicle can get to, and those are not the most remote places in the country.

The site is chosen for wind, water and drainage. A shallow saddle looks good and is the draughtiest place for miles at night. A stream bed is level and dry and can stop being either within an hour on a stormy night. So we usually stand uphill behind a spur, with the entrance turned away from the valley.

Cooking happens outside and at a distance from the tent. A gas stove in the porch is the classic route to carbon monoxide poisoning, and tent fabric burns faster than anything else in camp. Whatever smells — leftovers, packaging, toothpaste — goes into the vehicle overnight.

Herds stand on the summer pastures of Syunik and Vayots Dzor, and livestock guardian dogs stand with the herds. We choose sites away from folds and water troughs, and if somebody comes past in the evening and says something, we move. It happens rarely and has been right every time.

In the morning the inner tent wall is wet. Condensation is not a leak, it is the night standing in the fabric, and it goes if the tent sits open in the sun for half an hour. Pack it damp and you will smell it the next evening as you pitch.