Jul 072011
 

Ok, so first of all, I lied. There, I admit it. I hadn’t planned another trip so soon after the Svalbard adventure, but with a very long weekend in honour of kicking King George out of the country, I decided it was time to check off a few more countries.

Playing around with schedules a bit, I decided to fly into Baku, Azerbaijan (GYD) and back from Yerevan, Armenia (EVN). Sounded like a good plan for a very long weekend, and would allow me to check off two more countries. Just one small problem…I neglected to check how easy it would be to get between them.

Very atypical for me…see, there’s a small problem. These two countries (while not actively shooting at each other at the moment) are still technically at war with each other, and the border is closed. Great. Oh well, I did what any (in)sane country collector would do: traveled between them via a third country! So, in the end, it ended up being three countries in five days, #92, #93, and #94 on my list.

Tickets booked, drivers and hotels set, and it was time to head off! Of course, there’s also a fair amount of drama in this trip, and unfortunately it was worse than the two trips above. When you pack so much into a very tight timeframe, there’s very little room for error should things go tits up, which unfortunately this trip did in a very ugly way. At least I’m trying to get most of the drama out of the way before the big trip in a few more weeks.