White Peaks and Red Tape

We knew that as we headed out of Europe and into the Middle East and Cent­ral Asia, we’d be cut­ting through as much red tape as we would snow and ice. So maybe it was a good idea that we’d expec­ted it, as inter­na­tional bur­eau­cracy is becom­ing a big­ger pain in the pro­ver­bial than a brand new leather saddle!

Weeks ago, in Tur­key, we applied for our visas for Iran, after spend­ing count­less hours look­ing at other people’s exper­i­ences with get­ting their papers in order for a cyc­ling exped­i­tion across this part of the world. A few days ago, in Tbil­isi, we finally received these price­less stick­ers in our pass­ports, after trekking to and from the Ira­nian Embassy with pass­port pho­tos, doc­u­ments, and cash (no less than a hun­dred euros each). Cue much cel­eb­rat­ing and leap­ing about in the snow, to the won­der of bemused ped­es­tri­ans and secur­ity guards.

But the pro­cess itself bore no resemb­lance to the romantic idea of a sit down with the Ambas­sador in a lux­uri­ous office, hav­ing a chat over a cup of chai about the ins and outs of a visit to the Islamic Repub­lic. Nor did it bear any resemb­lance to the stor­ies we’d read of over­whelm­ing Per­sian hos­pit­al­ity. No — we were releg­ated to the patch of pave­ment out­side a small win­dow next to some extremely forbidding-looking secur­ity gates, arguing with a bored old man about our ‘let­ters of invit­a­tion’ (which we never saw), sup­posedly faxed ahead to the embassy, and get­ting cold and snowed-on.

Finally, after 3 days, we returned to col­lect our pass­ports, which were handed to us by an anonym­ous arm that emerged furt­ively from around the semi-opened mirrored win­dow, which was then word­lessly closed and locked. It felt as though we’d received some kind of clas­si­fied eyes-only doc­u­ment that would soon self-destruct in a dra­matic but harm­less ball of flame. (Thank­fully, this did not happen.)

At the Armenian bor­der, a day’s ride from Tbil­isi, we received visas quickly, but not without an unex­pec­tedly hefty charge of 15,000 drams each (around 50 dol­lars). This left us with the equi­val­ent of about 20p each in cash for the jour­ney to Yerevan. Luck­ily, we were fed and housed every night between the two cit­ies, by aston­ish­ingly friendly (and often slightly drunk) loc­als. The elev­a­tion began to increase and our route through the sparsely-inhabited area near to the Azeri bor­der was bar­ren and rugged, but beau­ti­ful — and eer­ily silent.

We decided to cycle seper­ately for a few days to have some of our own space and to exper­i­ment with solo trav­el­ling by bicycle. I had made it through incred­ibly pic­tur­esque, quiet and snow-filled val­leys as far as a quaint town called Dili­jan in the north-east of Armenia when I received some unex­pec­ted news by email. It was from my dear mother, who has been to the ends of the earth to try and get some proper winter sleep­ing bags out to us. The inten­ded recip­i­ent of the par­cel in Yerevan had received an unex­pec­ted cus­toms bill for the goods to be released. It was for 700 dollars.

In the grand scheme of things, that’s about 6 months’ worth of liv­ing costs for me as I cycle and camp every day in this part of the world, so I was under­tand­ably taken aback, albeit in true Eng­lish style, with plenty of mut­ter­ing and frown­ing and as little a dis­play of emo­tion as pos­sible. I resolved to lock my bike in the back room of a cafe in the town, and hitch-hike to Yerevan with noth­ing but the clothes I was wear­ing, my wal­let, pass­port, and camera.

This I suc­ceeded in doing, and I met up again with Andy. We are now embroiled in a silent battle of dip­lo­matic muscle — the out­go­ing Brit­ish Ambas­sador heard our story and inter­vened with the help of the Armenian For­eign Min­istry. We are now wait­ing in limbo (again) to hear of the out­come from our new friends at the Brit­ish Embassy, who are attempt­ing to get the par­cel released free of charge.

Incid­ent­ally, I met some young Amer­ic­ans who were work­ing here in Armenia with the Peace Corps, which I learnt is an Amer­ican organ­iz­a­tion to place young Amer­ic­ans in (mainly) third-world com­munit­ies as social work­ers, teach­ers and the like. Two of these people had just been put on a plane home to the U.S. after they over­stayed their vaca­tion allow­ance by a whole 3 days. That’s another example of petty bur­eau­cracy. We’ve heard that the Armenian cus­toms depart­ment is notori­ously heavy-handed, and this has been backed up by numer­ous anec­dotes from people I’ve met in the last few days.

So the winter rid­ing is not the only chal­lenge I’m facing. Let’s hope that I get a smoother ride for the next few weeks. Mind you, see­ing as the road ascends to above 2,500m elev­a­tion and con­tin­ues through moun­tain­ous ter­rain for sev­eral hun­dred kilo­met­ers on the Ira­nian side of the bor­der, I’m not expect­ing it to be easy.

Thanks for read­ing. You might also like these recent articles:

• The Long Road Back To Yerevan
• Rain, Train and Pain — Yerevan to Sochi
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