Day 11 - 14.9.23 Ararat climb to Camp 1

Breakfast is early because the bus is in front of the hotel at 8 a.m. We check out, have to hand in the Bulli key at reception and pack our backpacks. Our mountain guide Assad welcomes us. We pick up our cook Ibrahim by bus, then we go to the horses' meeting point. Here we hand our backpacks to the horse herders and the climb begins. The pace is very high and we have difficulty keeping up. It goes through a moon-like lava landscape and steadily uphill. The loaded horses overtake us. There is a 10-minute break every 45 minutes. Luckily, our mountain guide and the cook smoke. After 3.5 hours around 1:30 p.m. we reach Camp 1 at 3300 m altitude and move into our tents. We snack on the packed lunch and take a short afternoon nap. Already at 5 p.m. there is dinner with starter soup and rice with tomatoes and 4 chicken legs and a steak. We found it very ok. The cold creeps up the mountain, we hide in our sleeping bags, I read something and fall asleep at 8 p.m.