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And across the border to Armenia

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" The day started full of promise" We started off out of Tbilis ready to head down the road to the border crossing. There were two crossing to choose from.  The decision was taken out of my hands as we missed the turn off to the first one. 
 

We follow the "M6". It is not quite the standard of the M6 in the UK!  The road gradually deteriorates 

 

And gets worse 

 

And worser!

 

After two hard hours we arrive at the border crossing. It is shut!  There is a power failure so no computers. "How long?" A shrug of the shoulders. We wait two hours. Occasionally the power comes on and off again. Still nothing happening. We decide to cut our losses and backtrack for two hours to the turnoff to the other crossing 

We get there at 3 pm. 7 hours on the road and we are 70 km from Tbilisi !  Not good. Then a difficult 2 hour border crossing. They do not like the paperwork for the bike. Virtually no English spoken. We get thru by 5 pm. Then it is a difficult ride on very very rough and broken roads thru a tight valley 

 

A scary tunnel with a dirt floor and no lighting 

 

Abandoned factories everywhere and deserted apartment buildings. A general air of decay, gloom and despondency. Light starts to fade.  Will we have to pull over on the side of the road and put the tent up? 

 

We arrive at the town of Sandzador just on getting fully dark  and find a hotel. Even the hotel seems run down but ut still a welcome shelter from the thunderstorms that arrive just after us 

Next day dawns more promising. We head down to Yerevan - capital of Armenia. The weather looks passable ! 

 

We by pass the centre of town and soon we are riding close to Mt Ararat. It has a bit of a cloud cover today. 

 

Pope Francis was obviously a bit of a hit when he was here 

 

The roads  get better and the scenery gets better 

 

We go over high passes 

 

And we head to the town of Goris where it is time to find a hotel and stop for the night 

Tomorrow- 150 km then the border crossing to Iran 

We are not sure if this blog site works in Iran. If not then we are off the air until about the 20 th September when we arrive in Dubai on the ferry from the bottom of Iran 

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