Day 31 Armenia - Goris, Tatev, Khndzoresk and Kornidzor

Today we started from Goris and first went to the Tatev Monastery. To reach it, you can drive on serpentine roads for hours or use the longest cable car in the world, which was the case for us. It was a really great experience to fly through the mountains like that. You somehow get used to the screams of pubescent Slavic girls...

The monastery itself is beautiful and has been renovated several times, including after a severe earthquake. But they don't really prioritize safety there. Holes in the ground are usually not secured, holes in the walls above cliffs are sometimes only secured with flimsy wooden constructions, some are just open. However, the purpose of the wooden constructions is only to show that you shouldn't go any further, they are not suitable for leaning or holding onto. You can't take your children here or you have to chain them to yourself. There was a little boy running around, which made my heart race. I have no idea why parents can have so much trust in a four-year-old child...

Right next to the monastery is the aforementioned serpentine road, where Iranian trucks, mostly American MACKs from the good old days, drive by every minute. I liked it, it reminded me of my favorite TV series from the 80s 'Auf Achse' with the main characters Franz Meersdonk and Günther Willers... That's exactly how it was back then, and it immediately reminded me of what my dream job used to be.

Then we took the cable car back to the base station and continued to Khndzoresk. Near Khndzoresk there is an old suspension bridge. To reach it, you have to drive a dusty stone/gravel road with huge holes and trenches for several kilometers. A real challenge for the transporter. But somehow, I had already stopped thinking about protecting the vehicle some time ago. Everyone has to die someday...probably the suspension's death first...

Suddenly, there were three Multicar M25 from Waltershausen in a yard. How did these masterpieces of German engineering make it here? Maybe they came together with the Fortschritt harvesters from Neustadt in Sachsen, which I have seen several times now?

The bridge itself was a great experience, you have a beautiful view of the countryside there.

Afterwards, we drove to Kornidzor, near the border with Karabakh. There, the aid organization 'All for Armenia' is renovating a house as part of their Kornitun project, which will house, among other things, a school for children from Karabakh. I had already supported this aid organization with various goods and supplies during my first trip in May/June. Now, I had the opportunity to take a closer look at their current project. To be honest, the project leaders there have taken on quite a challenge, as they plan to turn a total ruin into a finished house by November. I'm curious to see how they progress.

Afterwards, we drove back to Goris and had dinner at the top of the mountain with a beautiful view of Goris. There, we enjoyed delicious pear lemonade 'Noy', highly recommended.

Then we returned to the hotel 'Zanger', where the landlady welcomed us very friendly.

In the technical summary of the day, the transporter had intermittent power outages multiple times, but I noticed that if you take a sharper left turn, the power usually comes back. Here, my imagination is running wild again, wondering what could be causing this issue. I had already ruled out a clogged exhaust in Turkey, so now I'm thinking it could be a sudden lack of air for some reason... This sudden loss of power has been annoying me for almost 5000km now, and I see it as a challenge to identify the problem before returning home. Meanwhile, the exhaust is also making a very strange noise, but I don't care. Otherwise, the rear left blinker occasionally had failures, and at some point, I got tired of hitting the taillight as I had been doing in the past few days, so I just took it out, scraped the contacts a bit, and put it all back together. It's working again...

We covered a total of 128 kilometers today.