Iranian border

Imagine: warm evening light illuminating a rugged, extremely dry mountain landscape, a valley with a winding river, on one side a village of square houses in the same tones as the mountains, a mosque with blue tiles topping the minarets, all this in a batch of lush green by the river. On the other side a Soviet-looking village, a few rundown industrial buildings, an overgrown railway line, a road lined by electrified barbed wire and high lookouts every few hundred meters. Iranian and Russian-built Kamas trucks huffing and puffing along the road, leaving a trail of thick black fumes behind them.

That's the scenery around the strategic Armenian-Iranian border post Agarak on the very southern tip of Armenia.

Fascinating, strange, totally untouristic.

We arrived there after a long but smooth ride from Yerevan in a American built maxi taxi on Monday evening, which took us through various Armenian cities (Eghegnadzor, Sisian, Goris, Kapan, Meghri) and over several high mountain passes up to 2500 m. To imagine that in the nineties this was the road which helped Armenia survive thanks to the link with Iran!

Now, back to our border post in Agarak. I always find borders an interesting place, but this one is extraordinary. Formerly the southern border of the Soviet Union and therefore heavily fortified (and if I'm well informed, closed), it's now the border between Christianity and Islam, the Europe and the Orient, the West and the East. With just one bridge across the Arax river linking the two.

Furthermore, just a few kilometers further west starts Nakhichevan, an enclave belonging to Azerbaijan. Since now Nakhichevan is off limits for Armenians, the people from Agarak and the rest of Syunik region are even more cut off from the rest of Armenia, since they have to travel this same road as we did to Yerevan, instead of taking the much faster route through Nakhichevan. In many ways we really had the impression that we were at the end of the world....

During our early morning walk along the border on Tuesday we were stopped by a Russian border guard with his two Armenian helper guards, who asked us what we were doing there and very firmly reminded us of the rules: NO photographing the Other side, NO approaching the electrified barbed wire (as if we dreamed of doing this!), and especially NO exchanging of hand signs with subjects on the Other side (on this one we tried hard not to burst out laughing, as if we wanted to provoke the "enemy" by waving hello). We promised to abide by the rules, they saluted us and we continued our way.

So no photos from this experience :-)

Another interesting encounter was that same morning during breakfast at the hotel across the road from the horrible B&B we stayed at. Two English engineers were there to check the functioning of the truck scanner of the Armenian customs. I didn't even know such machines existed! Obviously one can even see the amount of gas in the reservoir, not to speak of the content of the trucks and possible people hidden somewhere...

After breakfast we decided to move on to Meghri, just a few kilometers back on the road. See next blog entry...