A 3 hour tour, a 3 hour tour...
The week-long trip to Karabakh ended yesterday a bit early due to exhaustion. Saturday was so grueling that we decided to head back one day sooner than planned, even though we felt back to normal on Sunday morning. I felt like we were redefining the term adventure travel.
Day 1 - Getting there
It all started last Tuesday morning when the Marshrutni (mini-bus) which goes from Yerevan to Martuni, Karabakh once a week pulled up with Ara Manougian in it at 7:30am. Hagop Bedrossian had already come to our place to join us and Jack Majarian pulled up a bit late in a cab, only to have the Marshutni take him back to the exact spot near the Opera that his cab brought him to our house from. Even more random coincidences were in his future. Another passenger got on board and the long ride started at about 8am, picking up and dropping off people along the way. The guy in front of our seats had moved to Lachin (Berdzor) and was involved in some interesting projects. At the pit stop before Yeghegnadzor he bought some Tomatillo seeds and was asking me what they were, so I explained and then gave him some Armenian cucumber seeds which I had brought along.
We arrived at Ara's house late afternoon and got settled in as well as did some shopping. His never-ending vast house construction project was much vaster than it was 3 years ago when I saw it last, but probably even further from completion than ever. As long as the pool gets done, the rest doesn't matter to me. That night we ate at his contractors house, a great baked chicken with fresh tonir bread. Hagop and the contractor did shots, while the rest of us enjoyed watching and listening to their under-the-influence toasts.
Day 2 - Stepanakert errands
Wednesday was an almost complete, but necessary waste of time. From Martuni we drove to N'ngi, a small village with a ceramic facility that is trying to be revived. Along the road I spotted a flock of goats which were mostly resting on the green grass, and thought it would make a nice photo (which it did, along with many of the other 892 pictures I took during the trip). We stopped and after a few pictures, Jack noticed the shepherd and decided to take some shots, thinking the guy looked familiar. After a few words, it became obvious this was the son of a shepherd Jack photographed in 1995 and published the photo in both a year 2000 calender and his brand new beautiful book of Armenia & Karabakh photographs. When the guy saw his father in Jack's book tears came to his eyes. Jack will soon be back to visit the whole family. Back on the road we got to N'ngi and cut across some very bad road to get to the cemetary, at the end of which was the re-opened ceramics plant, run by an American guy named Jeff. No electricity, no running water, just a building. The clay was dug up there, the wood was chopped to fire up the kiln, a horse mixed the clay, and the spinning wheels were spun by foot. Not even a light bulb, completely back to the basics. Jeff worked at a similiar place in Kentucky, except that it had electricity, which makes a huge difference. From there we headed to Stepanakert.
In Stepanakert we ran a bunch of errands. We stopped at the foreign ministry to get permission to visit some off limits areas, and were deflected to the ministry of defense. I believe it is their job to interface with the ministry of defense for us, but they sent us off anyways. The ministry of defense was not quite sure what to do with us, and it seemed like a game of come-back-later was about to commence when a friend of Ara's came to the rescue. His first question of course, was why didn't the ministry of foreign affairs handle this for us... good question. Well after some talking and explaining he said he was pretty sure it would be ok, and we should come back in 2 days. Ara eventually confirmed by phone and with other friends in the military that the situation at the places we wanted to see was safe for us, and we had an appointment for Friday morning in Martakert. In between ministry visits, we hit the new Hotel Nairi, which opened last fall in Karabakh. The owners are Australian and are one of the sponsors of Jack's one-man walkathon. It was a very comfy looking hotel, and a few of the partners were visiting and interesting to talk to. Now is where Jack's luck with coincidences really impressed me. Completely by chance, and unrelated to the morning run-in with the son of the guy whose photograph he had earlier taken, some other relatives of the guy he had earlier photographed showed up at the hotel on an appointment with the partners in order to pick up a copy of the large calendar with the old shepherds picture in it. Everyone enjoyed this additional chance encounter with that man's family and I look forward to hearing about the next encounter. We ate at an underwater/fisherman themed restaurant I like across from central market. The Ukrainian woman working there speak much more Armenian than her mom who usually cooks there, but still had trouble not switching to Russian. She had fun trying out some of her English on us also, and although her level of knowlege was not advanced, her accent was quite good. Hagop's internet friend joined us for our meal and then we split up to head back to Martuni on the good road, which takes over an hour. It was so late that I fell as sleep the instant I got back and my head hit the pillow while some of the others stayed up and had pasta.
The interesting parts are yet to come in the continuation...
The week-long trip to Karabakh ended yesterday a bit early due to exhaustion. Saturday was so grueling that we decided to head back one day sooner than planned, even though we felt back to normal on Sunday morning. I felt like we were redefining the term adventure travel.
Day 1 - Getting there
It all started last Tuesday morning when the Marshrutni (mini-bus) which goes from Yerevan to Martuni, Karabakh once a week pulled up with Ara Manougian in it at 7:30am. Hagop Bedrossian had already come to our place to join us and Jack Majarian pulled up a bit late in a cab, only to have the Marshutni take him back to the exact spot near the Opera that his cab brought him to our house from. Even more random coincidences were in his future. Another passenger got on board and the long ride started at about 8am, picking up and dropping off people along the way. The guy in front of our seats had moved to Lachin (Berdzor) and was involved in some interesting projects. At the pit stop before Yeghegnadzor he bought some Tomatillo seeds and was asking me what they were, so I explained and then gave him some Armenian cucumber seeds which I had brought along.
We arrived at Ara's house late afternoon and got settled in as well as did some shopping. His never-ending vast house construction project was much vaster than it was 3 years ago when I saw it last, but probably even further from completion than ever. As long as the pool gets done, the rest doesn't matter to me. That night we ate at his contractors house, a great baked chicken with fresh tonir bread. Hagop and the contractor did shots, while the rest of us enjoyed watching and listening to their under-the-influence toasts.
Day 2 - Stepanakert errands
Wednesday was an almost complete, but necessary waste of time. From Martuni we drove to N'ngi, a small village with a ceramic facility that is trying to be revived. Along the road I spotted a flock of goats which were mostly resting on the green grass, and thought it would make a nice photo (which it did, along with many of the other 892 pictures I took during the trip). We stopped and after a few pictures, Jack noticed the shepherd and decided to take some shots, thinking the guy looked familiar. After a few words, it became obvious this was the son of a shepherd Jack photographed in 1995 and published the photo in both a year 2000 calender and his brand new beautiful book of Armenia & Karabakh photographs. When the guy saw his father in Jack's book tears came to his eyes. Jack will soon be back to visit the whole family. Back on the road we got to N'ngi and cut across some very bad road to get to the cemetary, at the end of which was the re-opened ceramics plant, run by an American guy named Jeff. No electricity, no running water, just a building. The clay was dug up there, the wood was chopped to fire up the kiln, a horse mixed the clay, and the spinning wheels were spun by foot. Not even a light bulb, completely back to the basics. Jeff worked at a similiar place in Kentucky, except that it had electricity, which makes a huge difference. From there we headed to Stepanakert.
In Stepanakert we ran a bunch of errands. We stopped at the foreign ministry to get permission to visit some off limits areas, and were deflected to the ministry of defense. I believe it is their job to interface with the ministry of defense for us, but they sent us off anyways. The ministry of defense was not quite sure what to do with us, and it seemed like a game of come-back-later was about to commence when a friend of Ara's came to the rescue. His first question of course, was why didn't the ministry of foreign affairs handle this for us... good question. Well after some talking and explaining he said he was pretty sure it would be ok, and we should come back in 2 days. Ara eventually confirmed by phone and with other friends in the military that the situation at the places we wanted to see was safe for us, and we had an appointment for Friday morning in Martakert. In between ministry visits, we hit the new Hotel Nairi, which opened last fall in Karabakh. The owners are Australian and are one of the sponsors of Jack's one-man walkathon. It was a very comfy looking hotel, and a few of the partners were visiting and interesting to talk to. Now is where Jack's luck with coincidences really impressed me. Completely by chance, and unrelated to the morning run-in with the son of the guy whose photograph he had earlier taken, some other relatives of the guy he had earlier photographed showed up at the hotel on an appointment with the partners in order to pick up a copy of the large calendar with the old shepherds picture in it. Everyone enjoyed this additional chance encounter with that man's family and I look forward to hearing about the next encounter. We ate at an underwater/fisherman themed restaurant I like across from central market. The Ukrainian woman working there speak much more Armenian than her mom who usually cooks there, but still had trouble not switching to Russian. She had fun trying out some of her English on us also, and although her level of knowlege was not advanced, her accent was quite good. Hagop's internet friend joined us for our meal and then we split up to head back to Martuni on the good road, which takes over an hour. It was so late that I fell as sleep the instant I got back and my head hit the pillow while some of the others stayed up and had pasta.
The interesting parts are yet to come in the continuation...
posted by Raffi K. at 7:35 AM
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