It’s almost surreal thinking back on the past two weeks. We set of from Oxford on the evening of the 17th of July, and are now writing this sitting in the shade of a few trees in a campsite in Southern Armenia. Between then and now, we have driven more than 4050 miles through 13 countries in our 1.2 L Skoda Fabia – and it’s handling both the mileage and the heat incredibly well so far (thank you Alladin’s Garage in Oxford!).
The has already been many highlights of the trip, but here’s just a few:
Wildcamping in a Thunderstorm in Dresden, Germany – July 21st
Only 3 days in to our road trip, we hadn’t figured out that campsites in Europe close for check-in rather early (who would have known?!), and so we were left to wild camp. While Sean and Ed set up our tents, Freddie started cooking. All of a sudden the wind started picking up, it started raining (Sean had jinxed it just 5 minutes earlier!), and we found ourselves in the midst of a thunderstorm. An exciting start on the rally!
The Transfăgărășan road in Romania – July 26th
We had all heard about this mythical road (…. that is, all but Freddie since he down’t watch Top Gear), so when the other rally teams started talking about taking it on, we were naturally in. And what a sight! At the time, this was by far the most incredible landscape we had seen since we set of from Oxford. And when three brown bears came out of the woods to greet us on the side of the road, we were blown away (and spent at least 2 seconds reconsidering our decision to wild camp 5 km south of where we’d met the bears). Continuing with the idea of wild camping brought us to a small patch of grass next to a massive lake just north of Dracula’s Castle. The road there broad us through the roughest terrain we’ve seen on the trip (even up until now), and a lot of straddling put holes was done to prevent wrecking our sump guard (and the entire underside of our car) – a discipline we now thankfully excel in due to Romania, Georgia and Armenia.
Visiting Istanbul – July 28th / 29th
Along with Teheran, Istanbul was the city we were looking most forward to visit. We decided to spend two nights there in an AirBnB right in the middle of the historic centre. Istanbul did not disappoint! For a day and a half we were walking through this beautiful, buzzing city enjoying the food and all the cultural sights. On our last night we met up with a bunch of other ralliers in a roof top bar overlooking all of Istanbul – absolutely incredible!
Climbing Mt Aragats – August 1st
Armenia has offered far more incredible nature than we were expecting. After hiking through the Kasagh George on July 31st, we drove up Mt Aragats and camped next to a lake in 3.1 km altitude. Getting up at sunrise, we started the day of with a warm cup of coffee (it was absolutely freezing!), before starting our climb to the southern peak of Mt Aragats. We quickly realized that the “paths” was definitely not organized by the Welcome Trust, as they suddenly just stopped and we had to scramble for a bit until we found another path, but it was so worth it! The entire hike offered absolutely incredible views of the landscape, with Mt Ararat (Turkey) looming in the horizon. And the view on top of Mt Aragats was second to none!
What now?
We are now in Southern Armenia, and will (hopefully) be entering Iran tomorrow. Due to the US sanctions, we will not be able to update our location our map (which you can find here: https://bearbones2019.wixsite.com/bearbones/route), but we’ll be right back on the live tracking when we exit Iran on August 9th!