When I planned my series of walks and hikes for this year, I didn’t realize that Armenia would attract the most number of participants. I believed that a few people would ask about the trip, but due to the distance and obscurity of the country, nobody would actually come.
As it turned out, there were five of us. Isobel Tanaka and Yumiko Ichikawa was joined by Renald Gregoire, all current members from Tokyo. At the last minute, former IAC member Allan Miles took time out from his cycle tour of France, Spain and Portugal to fly to Istanbul and travel overland through Georgia to Armenia to join us.
I don’t think anyone quite knew what to expect. Modern Armenia suffers from extreme obscurity to say the least. Although it was once a large kingdom that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Caspian and Black Sea, and was an important element in the formation of much of European architecture and language, it was nearly obliterated at the beginning of this century during the Genocide, and then became a part of the Soviet Union until independence 14 years ago. While Armenia is famous throughout the countries of the ex-Soviet Union, most westerners couldn’t point to it on a map. Furthermore, it suffered a devastating earthquake in 1988, a terrible war in the early 90s with neighbour Azerbaijan, and a crippling ‘brain drain’ since independence mostly to Russia and the West.