KNOCKING BACK VODKA shots with a group of beekeepers as skewers of pheasant crackled on an open flame wasn’t what I’d expected to be doing that evening, but it made a change from dehydrated meals, eaten in solitude. But then, nothing about my experience of trekking across Armenia proved to be as I’d expected. It’s difficult to have preconceptions when you’re part of the first cohort to tackle a trail.
The newly-opened Transcaucasian Trail (TCT) spans 1500km across Armenia and Georgia, and, political situation permitting, will one day double in length when linked with Azerbaijan too. It’s been a work in progress for seven years, a collaborative effort between Tom Allen, Ashot Davtyan, Meagan Neal and Paul Stephens, four trail planners scattered across the Caucasus. Two years of lockdowns and travel restrictions are hardly conducive to building a transcontinental thru-hike; but as I bushwhacked through foliage taller than me, it was clear that Covid-19 has been far from the only problem when mapping a route here.
I caught the bus from the capital Yerevan to Meghri, the lowest town in the country at 610m above sea level, virtually straddling the country’s southern border with Iran. For northbound hikers, it’s the rattled and lurched through the nine-hour journey, the landscape became increasingly arid, as though a malfunctioning hoover had suctioned up any drops of liquid and spewed out dust chaotically in its place. I chatted to an Iranian man heading home, who was perched on a milk crate next to me. As I relished what would be my last social interaction for some time, an almighty bang punctuated our conversation. The driver skidded to a halt at the side of the highway, pulling over long enough to retrieve part of the bus roof that had fallen off, and threw it at our feet. We recommenced the bumpy journey, this time with a skylight.
