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“Please, just don’t sleep under the bridges,” a friend begged when we announced that we were leaving for our bike-trip through the post-war Karabakh in the southern Caucasus region. It was only after the trip that we realized it was a reasonable request.
The Karabakh is about an eight-hour drive from Yerevan, Armenia thanks to diaspora-sponsored good roads. Still, it’s not the first place an average person would think to bike through and call it a holiday. My girlfriend in this respect was extraordinary.
Inspiration of this sort can only come from those who have never actually seen the effects of war. My position during the civil war that took place on the streets of Tbilisi, Georgia was “bread buyer”. As the boy, I was responsible for supporting my family in any way I could. As a minor I ran a very low chance of getting anything but the occasional smack in the head should I get caught somewhere enroute.
Having come of age in an environment that went from a Town & Country version of the American Ward & June Cleaver to a war zone to (to use a pet phrase of developmental workers everywhere) a “transitioning” society, I am immune to the supposed romance of war’s wake. The prospect of being cut off from the world, however, in the company of a beautiful French woman does have its own appeal. So, I agreed.
There is no actual border between Armenia and the Karabakh. Nobody even checks documents on arrival. For those of you who don’t know, the Karabakh is a disputed enclave between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which is now a self-proclaimed republic. However, it has yet to be recognized by any state or respected organization. Ostensibly it is part of Azerbaijan. However, in reality it stands as a de-facto independent state and very much integrated into Armenia.
The Armenian route into the Karabakh is the simplest, as there is a lot of support for ethnic Armenians living in the Karabakh in their conflict against ethnic Azeris, particularly since Armenians have lain historical claims on the area. This has been a major sore point in their relations for ages, and as a Russian/English/French/Georgian-speaking couple on bikes, we did our best to avoid the re-hashing any old wounds.
We stopped near Shushi, the old Karabakh capitol, and decided to start cycling from there, as it is just 10 km above the modern capital of Stepanakert, so it would be a good start to enjoy an easy downhill bike ride. The weather was nasty and sad and we almost arrived in the town when the bike problems began. I realized I was stuck and couldn’t cycle further as both my bearings were broken. You see, to get to Shushi we had to first go up a couple of kilometers to get into position because the town is situated on a huge rock with an even wider gap along the other side. Going uphill, I recognized the sound as the bearings in my front wheel broke. It’s happened before. The bike had had to endure a rattling ride on top of the Yerevan-Stepanakert marshroutka. The route barely qualifies as a road. The bike was undoubtedly injured in the bumpity-bump of the ride.
We entered Shushi in vain, walking, hoping to find some garage or shop. It’s a dead city almost without inhabitants sad and frighteningly quiet. Endlessly drawn out calm after a storm that seemed even more depressing than the gale of war that died down quite a while ago. treets without people, cracking walls, a few people looking from the windows or passing by, sleepwalking, strangeLike a bad dream after which unpleasant feelings remain to haunt you during the whole day. Shushi was populated by both Azeris and Armenians before the war. Since both groups fled the conflict, there aren’t so many people living there now. The feel here was much worse than what we would encounter later in the ghost towns, where there at least existed a majority group of Azeris that kept it from being wholly uninhabited.
We managed to locate a fire station, where four men and a woman, a refugee from Baku, hosted us and helped fix the bike temporarily, just so that we could be able to reach Stepanakert. That done, we rushed off to the bus tation only to watch as the last bus to the capital left overloaded without us. Had the driver mustered he energy to re-shuffle the assorted wares that crowded his vehicle, we’d have been on that bus–bikes and all.
Instead, we continued on to Stepanakert under our own power. We took no small pleasure in keeping pace and eventually out distancing the bus, much to the horror of the same seated passengers who’d made no >effort to accommodate us. Stepanakert appeared to be a big city, with all kinds of services and fashionable girls. We were particularly impressed by the relative hustle and bustle after our time in Shushi, but we were also incredibly tired. The road to Stepanakert was uphill all the way and the incline only increases the closer you get to the city.
We were held back from taking advantage of the city’s “tourist” attractions–not that there are any–by the pressing need of finding someone willing to fix my bike. Though actually we were able to take in a surprising number of the sites as we peddled from one end of town to the other in search of an open shop.
We started off in a small garage, asking for some tools to repair the bike. Within half an hour there were about eight people around us energetically attempting to help repair the bike. All of them appeared to be specialists of bike repair and tried to contribute to improving the health of my ill-fated metal steed. Some of these guys were helpful enough about the bike-even managing to pry loose a wheel-while others turned out gallant enough to buy some chocolate and champagne for my girlfriend.
A little cold bubbly was more than enough (along with our obvious fatigue) to smother any desire we had to continue futzing with the bike. Without admitting defeat, we gave in to the hospitality of the crowd and made our way to a hotel. The next morning we were only a little disappointed to find that the bicycle fairy had not visited during the night and that I was still left with a bike that had me peddling with all of the grace of a Russian bear at a poor village circus.
Along with the wheel that had annoyingly veered to one side, the crowd had succeeded in first adjusting, then removing entirely the bike seat. I was trying to make myself feel better by strategizing: “Okay,” I thought to myself, “if I just tilt my torso and lean in with my shoulders for balance, riding with the threat of a seatless metal pole under meI won’t notice it at all!”
Lucky for me the bus driver who had rolled his eyes at our seat request in Yerevan chanced by and took an interest in assisting us. He took us to a guy who specializes in metal work. In fact, it turned out that this “finest craftsman” of bicycles appeared to also belong to an elite group of national war heroes of the Karabakh. He had made sights for weapons and military vehicles during the war. He laughed when I showed him what I needed. I felt like an idiot.
It was already past midday on Monday when we finished with the bikes and were ready to go. By that time the whole city knew about two strangers from Tbilisi who had come to with the mad idea of biking through the region. After getting the Halo Trust map of mines (probably the only prudent thing we did on this trip), we decided to leave for Martakert, a city about 60 km north.
We just had to register at the Foreign Affairs Ministry. “So you are the two biking tourists!” a girl at the ministry exclaimed, “and we’d thought you wouldn’t come.” I didn’t have the sense to be indignant, but just held my landmine maps to my chest to support my tenuous claim to respectability. They attempted to register us for an hour and a half before admitting that they didn’t know how to plug the information into the computer. They’d been stalling, hoping that their manager would arrive. It was only after they’d run out of coffee, conversation and cookies (in that order) that they admitted there was a problem.
So, we registered ourselves and showed the girls how to work the computer equipment. As a “thank you” we got stamped permission to travel anywhere we wanted. Score! We’d spent the toughest part of the day in a government office. This made the afternoon trip seem more like a gift because, with our pockets aglow with official documents, we had earned it.
An hour before nightfall we reached Agdam, a ghost city on the half way (35km) mark to Martakert. A woman living in a small house at the entrance of the town (the only inhabited place we saw there) tried to convince us to stay the night at her place and get a fresh start early the next morning. Why didn’t we listen to her? We politely refused once as is the custom, then twice more as cultured and friendly folk are apt to do, then annoyed her by continuing our refusals so long that she finally realized we were serious. I think we were so happy to have survived the labyrinth of soviet-style administration it made us feel invincible.
Resigned to our folly, she gave us detailed directions to a small village half way to the city, where we could sleep since we were “so determined.” It was growing noticeably darker as we peddled out of town. All we had was two small flashlights and miles and miles of flat wild fields and mountains on the western side.
We reached some kind of a bridge when it became completely dark. It was early. The moon was not out yet. As the darkness grew and the question of the mysterious “simple left turn” was answered by the silence of an expansive flat plain with no visible markers, we understood that we were lost. Before we could get a grip on what should be done next we heard the howling.
At first it was one or two isolated calls but in a few minutes it had grown into dozens and then hundreds. “Jackals,” we realized and stopped, not knowing what to do. The lady in town would have been a lot more convincing had she added in the part about jackals. We went back across the bridge and continued straight on in the hopes of peddling the jackals out of range.
Nevertheless, the howling was getting closer so we changed direction. Again. We rode with jackal-inspired enthusiasm, on the verge of panic. We still couldn’t find the damned turn and at this point we couldn’t see the road either. It was dark. Calming down (tired out? Adrenaline has a way of peaking rather quickly. I guess our fight or flight genetic hardwiring short-circuited.), we decided to seek refuge in our tent and mindful of, well, mines, we chose to make camp next to the bridge.
We had been explicitly warned that though the roads are clear of mines in the Karabakh, it was dangerous to take even one step off the beaten path in search of a less visible spot to answer nature’s call. But, we figured a bridge would count as an exception. Mines were an abstration at that point, but the jackals, they were real.
Despite the energy spent on our attempted escape and the tasks that kept us busy setting up the tent our minds were still very much on the howling around us. We were tense. Luckily we did one very important thing before leaving to Martakert we bought a bottle of vodka. After the first glass we sat down in the tent and congratulated ourselves on having set it up so well, and under such conditions. After the second glass of vodka, we decided if it were true that God protects children, drunkards and fools, then we were all too happy to be all three for a few hours.
Midway through the bottle we took to the belief that jackals are far too timid to attack people and we would already have exploded if there were a mine under our tent. In half an hour we were drunk but starving. Salvation came in the form of two Snickers bars we’d bought in Stepanakert.
The next morning we woke up early in what turned out to be a foundation pit, a former battlefield full of trenches and padded tanks and armored troop carriers. We packed as fast as we could and left. The road we camped on appeared to be just a track beaten by a tank or other heavy military vehicle.
The sound of a caravan of trucks was coming nearer Karabakh soldiers were getting provisions to the border guards. We realized once again that we were lost, but the road was good and we decided that it undoubtedly lead us somewhere so we continued straight on under the bridge.
After a few kilometers we realized that what we saw in the distance wasn’t anything we’d hoped to run into. It was the border guards point on the border with Azerbaijan and occupied territories. We were alone on the border and it was too late to turn back. If we could see them, they certainly had spotted us. The people of the Karabakh are generally very suspicious of strangers. More to the point, foreigners aren’t allowed in the occupied territories. The soldiers had every right to arrest or deport us for getting as close as we did to the occupied area. Fortunately, everything went well. The soldiers were too surprised to see two strangers on bikes. Familiar with the way, we turned back.
Martakert – Surenavan or the town of Suren
The soldiers along the road pointed out the crossroad we missed during the night. So we had to go back about 12 km to get to the proper road to Martakert. We cut through fields where the land had been cultivated, which was a good guarantee that there were no landmines left. After about an hour we appeared in the small village we’d been seeking, hungry and cold. The woman near the house was the only living soul in the area.
We took it as a good sign (and yet another blessing) when she informed us that she was also a shop owner. But were not entirely surprised to learn that the only food she had on hand was Snickers bars. It’s a good thing that Snickers really satisfies, heh? Energizing our athletically hung over selves with power-packed chocolatey goodness, we also benefited from the kindly old woman’s offer of a cup of coffee–on the house of course.
So, completely jacked up on every conceivable form of sugar, we were all too ready to continue. The first thing we did on arrival to Martakert, was go to the restaurant. Ah, sugar rushes-the highs are highs and the lows wreak sheer madness on even the most even-tempered. This term could not be applied at this point to either my charming companion or my smelly self. We needed real food and the simple fare of bread and cheese with salads was by far the best and the biggest dinner we had had in a long time.
After that we decided to take a bus back to Stepanakert, then bike south. Missing the bus-again-probably contributed to this decision. We arrived back to Surenavan when it was getting dark. Our shop-lady was very happy to see us back. That night we spent at a Supra organized by Mrs. Shop Lady. A “Supra”-literally, it means “table” in Georgian (as I am Georgian), which is where you’ll be sitting/eating/drinking/singing/and forming life long bonds that last at least until the intoxicating dishes and copious amounts of homemade wine work their way through your punished system. It’s a real treat and the hallmark of hospitality in the Caucasus.
In addition to herself, the shop lady’d invited her neighbors-three men, one of whom was Suren. Suren appeared to be the father of the Interior Minister of the Karabakh and himself a national hero. We sang songs commemorating his bravery. Surenavan had been named after him-town of Suren. We ended up having a great dinner and drinking tutovka, a home made vodka widely popular in the Karabakh, talking about politics, war and peace.
We escaped sometime after midnight, leaving our new found friends to their merry making to camp in a beautiful grove next to the house. The weather was perfect and we even managed to sneak a wash in the spring, despite the fact that our hosts would have fallen into shock at the sight of us, enjoying the cold water on a relatively chilly evening.
Agdam Martuni
We had been granted permission to leave the evening dinner on the condition that we come in the morning to have coffee together and so we did. The bus going to Stepanakert didn’t take us so we had to cycle back. We didn’t have any hope to hitchhike, this way to travel is not really popular here, but the fact that we were strangers for local people played its role. We got safe to Stepanakert in a small milk truck with a very silent driver.
In the café in the city we met Halo Trust people and realized that we had to go back to Agdam to get to Martuni. So we took the way once again and the people on the way recognized us in every village. Martuni appeared to be the last town we visited in Karabakh. Mines, a special military control at southern occupied territories, lack of time and difficult landscape all conspired to keep us from continuing. We took a bus back to Martakert, then on to Yerevan.
Back to Armenia Tatev and Kapan
We stopped in Tatev, an old beautiful monastery in the south of Armenia situated along the Karabakh border. The mountainous road ran down at a convenient slope, which made for a pleasant ride until, that is, we reached the bottom of the gorge. The Devil’s Bridge and natural warm water bath awaited us, but the monastery itself and the accompanying village were up-uuup!-the mountain.
It was getting dark and again we had only two Snickers bars left to eat. Our only water bottle had a steady leak so we just dumped it. Half way up the steep road to the monastery we found a source of water and arrived at the village at dusk and as had become our habit, dragged our ravenous selves to the village shop only to find that they only had Snickers in stock.
We were too grateful for the chocolatey goodness to invest too much time in the conspiracy theory that had been developing over the course of this trip. With a nod to globalization, we kept on munching.
Luck was again with us, when during the final stretch of our tour we happened to notice eight men having dinner on the side of the road. One of the drivers recognized us and as a gesture of his great joy we were invited to join them at the table. We ended up staying for an hour with the truck drivers and lumberjacks, sharing non-chocolate food and vodka before attempting to finish the next phase of the journey that would lead us comfortably into Kapan, where we would spend our last night before taking the bus back to Tbilisi.
The last night
Someone had recommended a stretch of land by the river, which appeared to have at some point been an airport. Due to latest economic development, the airfield has not been used for years and the man logically assumed that it would be a quiet place for a young, spirited couple to spend the night. We switched off our flashlights and abandoned ourselves to the world around us, where camping out on an airfield made perfect sense and Snickers bars could be considered health food.
Wonderfully exhausted by the rigors of the ride, we gently set up our tent, had a simple supper, a couple of beers and the time to reflect on how in the end every unplanned moment had kept us somehow strangely on course. In the morning we awoke to the sounds of local farming women coming out into the field for a day’s work. Evidently, the former airstrip had been taken over by the local population for cultivation. An absurd ending to a wonderfully absurd journey.
Copyright © 2002 Julie Guyot
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