Kurdestan, Azerbaijan (iranian part), Armenia

My last week in Iran was not much exciting, neither in a positive nor a negative way. I just drove from one "tourist place" to the next one. In Kurdistan these were mainly caves, more and less interesting ones. In one of them I could find a lift for my santoor from Esfahan direct to Vienna by car, what are the odds! The most beautiful cave was in Sahoulan , a grotto that was only accessible by boat, with very interesting rock formations.

Also in Kurdestan I stayed at the Zaribar lake, a Steppensee - I don't know how to translate it into english, it's a lake sorrounded by a belt of reed, with muddy water that has a natural smell not everybody likes, but reminded me of the lake on which I grew up, the Neusiedler See 50 km south of Vienna.

All in all I did not get enough in touch with the Kurds, to notice a specific caracter or customs or something like that, except that some like to watch south korean soap operas translated into kurdish.

The last big city I visited was Tabriz, the capital of the iranian part of Azerbaijan. It did not really enthuse me. I was not sure where to continue from there, I still wanted to go to the Caucasus to practice some russian and after it turned out that the azeri visa would take one week and cost 60 euro I decided to go to Armenia, that I already visited 3 years ago. I'd be also interested to visit Georgia but somehow the russian army was faster than me, and it seems like they want to stay longer than I hoped they would do.

On the way to Armenia , between Tabriz and Ahar I saw the most breathtaking landscape in Iran: soft shaped hills like I already saw them in Kyrgyztan, but not in purple and orange colours, wow! Maybe one day I will resolve my camera-trauma and return there to shoot some awesome photos. But somehow it's quite agreeable to travel and to know that nothing valueable can be lost anymore.

The border valley between Iran and Azerbaijan and Armenia was also nice to drive through. The border crossing itself took me some six hours. The iranian police, unlike I expected, was never suspicious during the month I stayed here, but then on the armenian border post there were two counters: one for visa application and passport control and the other one also for passport control, but: the wall decorated with a russian flag! obviously the young FSB - official did not like the numerous visas of arabic countries in my passport, and I had to give a long interview. But some time after I answered all his worrying questions ("are you al qaida?"), I could finally pass. On the international airport in Erivan there was not such a counter.

As the situation in Georgia is still unclear and there are no border crossings with Azerbaijan (Karabakh-conflict) and Turkey (no bilateral relations because of the genocide that the Turks still deny) I have no other (save) option than to leave Armenia by air. So I quickly (2 days for some 400km are very fast for me) went to Erivan to check a flight ticket, only with a detour to the "devils bridge", a cave formed by the Vorotan river, awesome place, I stayed there overnight.

To Turkey I've found only direct flights to Istanbul so I decided to pay a ticket to Aleppo, just on the border with Turkey, next Tuesday.







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