So, the title is somewhat clickbait, albeit unintentionally. Perhaps the story is generally a bit underwhelming when actually explained in more depth, though it certainly felt that way in the moment. Not long after crossing the border from Georgia into Armenia, we reached a point in which we began to ascend and descend throughout the many mountains of the country. Though something had changed that I had not remembered being there the last time I did this trip: a large wall followed by some barbed wire. This area was an outcome of Azerbaijan's demands for land and Armenia's poor leadership in simply handing it away. In the middle of nowhere, far from the Azerbaijan nation itself, and this is oddly where things went south for us. As is the case here, many people travel through minibus. Crammed together into a small car and driven hundreds of miles across borders and to neighbouring cities. It's cheap, but I wouldn't say it's that fast. But there isn't much else to choose from: trains don't operate all year and flights tend to be a bit more of a hassle with higher pricing per ticket. I've done far too many of these little bus trips as of late, and this one was probably the biggest sign to stop for a while.
At this odd 'demilitarised' area that Armenia had strangely succeeded, our bus driver decided to suddenly stop. We all had to get out, to which it became immediately clear that deep in the mountains we had suffered a puncture, well, numerous in the end. The car's tire was completely flat. He had no spare. Though he did have a strange device that looked like it had been thrown together by himself in his garage to deal with this type of scenario. We all stood and watched as he attempted to pump air into the tire to find out where exactly these punctures had taken place. It was cold, snow surrounding the region entirely. It wasn't clear how and when those punctures would've occurred, but all we good do was stand there in the cold and watch. The sound of the tire relieving more and more air as he found new punctures, trying to plug them manually in attempt to keep the tire somewhat stable to get us somewhere down the road that could deal with things for us.
At this point none of us really knew where we were. We didn't have any Internet access and our previous sim cards weren't working. The oddity of this area we were stuck in hadn't yet made itself clear until later on when we finally did drive higher up the mountain to which we saw the Azerbaijan flag on the opposite side of the wall. While standing out in the cold, we saw how European Union delegates were driving up and down the road for some reason. That was a confusing sight to us, as we had no idea as to what they were doing in the area. A simple wave on their way back down and away. At this point, we didn't see that many cars passing through. And the cold air was starting to feel stronger, the time feeling like it was passing faster. What had been a super fast border crossing was now becoming a lengthy journey stuck in the mountains as the remaining light was already starting to disappear into the horizon. After a while our driver had managed to patch things up as best he could, to which he had us all jump back into the van and continue our drive up the mountain. It wasn't the most confident moment of my life, that's for sure. You could hear and feel the lack of air in the tire in the back, and those icy and bending Armenian roads with large drops suddenly felt more threatening.
Somehow we managed to make it across the mountain, and just on the other side was a rustic shack to which our driver would drop us off and spend another hour at, getting the tire entirely replaced. More standing around in the cold. More time disappearing as it got colder and darker. Still aware that we could be stranded there all day, and possibly going into the night. I think we were incredibly lucky that wasn't the case in the end. We managed to buy some snacks at a market while we waited. And we were fortunate enough that these regions are riddled with mechanics by the sides of the road. We still made it to Yerevan many hours later than we were supposed to, but fortunately we didn't end up there the whole night. I think it's time to slow down on the bus rides, though.
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