It is easy to make a living from adventure in the UK.
The industry is established and growing. Work opportunities are replete. Job boards are filled with placements; gear and apparel retailers are multiplying; adventure tourism has rarely been more popular. And if the idea of employment doesnβt float your boat, you can simply become a self-employed adventurer by following these ten easy steps.
The point is this: whatever you might choose to do in the adventure scene, it will be possible primarily because of the fact that there exists an adventure scene to be part of.
Now, imagine β just for a second β that there isΒ no βadventure sceneβ. That there areΒ no outdoor stores or online retailers. That there areΒ no hillwalking or mountain-biking or travel magazines on the shelves. That there areΒ no walkingΒ trails or bike routes or watersports centres. That nobody isΒ interested in hearing your talk or seeing your photos or buying your stupid book. That the idea of heading out of town toΒ sleep on a hill isΒ unheard of; that the only people who want to do such things areΒ foreigners with weird ideas.
Got that image?
Welcome to my life in Armenia.
It is impossible to overstate how differently my daily life plays out in Yerevan, as compared to when I come to the UK.
As I set foot on British soil, I feel pulled in by a kind of gravitational field surrounding the broad concept of adventure, which increasingly seems to spout from every billboard and poster and TV ad, as well as manifesting itself in a thriving subculture, and by virtue of my work and associations I seem to drift reluctantly towards its central region as some kind of βpersonalityβ within that world.
Back in Yerevan, I am some random Angliatsi who married an Armenian girl, speaks the language badly, and never has a satisfactory explanation for what his job is. End of.
This is sometimes nice β I hate being the centre of attention anyway and preferΒ to choose my friends carefully β but since Tenny and I made the decision this year to move to Yerevan full time, I have found this general absence of interest in anything adventure-related to be frustrating.
Partly itβs because of a change in how I perceive my role there. I felt in the past that Armenia wasΒ a place to live a relatively low-key existence while seeking adventures in other parts of the world; certainly not a place for the kind of adventure-related work I could do in the UK. And so the lack of an adventure βsceneβ in Armenia didnβt really bother me that much. I could sit around writing books and blogs, being nicely anonymous, while getting my adventure kicks elsewhere.
But this allΒ changed lastΒ summer as I was trekking in the mountains of ArmeniaΒ β a wild back-countryΒ hike through mountains, forests and plateaus at the height of summer.
It was my sister-in-law Victoria who caused the upheaval. Originally from Haleb (Aleppo) and of Armenian descent, she had been living in Yerevan for a couple of years. Sheβd originally come to the Armenia with her family for a two-week holiday and then, by virtue of the road to Aleppo International Airport being suddenly blown up, had had her visit extended β indefinitely. Not to be downtrodden, she rented a flat, got a job, and becameΒ one of Yerevanβs most active Couchsurfers β which is how sheβd met my brother.
Gregarious and spontaneous, the first thing Victoria had done when Iβd tracked her down this summer was to volunteer me to teach documentary filmmaking to schoolchildren at a summer camp in the village of Akhpradzor. The project was run by Nanor, another Syrian-Armenian who was now based in California and came every summer to manage volunteering projects in this tiny village, where Victoria had been helping manage this yearβs effort. And so twenty or so of us laid out our Therm-a-rests in the empty classrooms of the old Soviet-built school, where we lived while running the classes (and building a new outhouse and playground for good measure).
It wasnβt my usual kind of thing β not at all. Neither was it the kind of thing that any of the other volunteers did in their βreal livesβ. Yet there was something intensely powerful and fulfilling about the whole experience, the source of which mystified me. And to think Iβd almost opted out because I had βbetterβ things to do in Armenia.
After it was all over,Β Victoria (and her 3-legged dog Tatev) had decided to join me for the long-awaited hike β along with my wife, Tenny, who had first come to live in Armenia in 2003.
The vistas we encountered were nothing short of staggering.
And while walking through this wildΒ landscape,Β we talked aboutΒ the source of that intensity, which had been no flash in the pan because it had stayed with me and was now playingΒ on my mind.
It seemed thereΒ were a few discernible elements at work. Chief among them was the group effort, the shared experience β everyone working towards a common goal, personal differences taking a distant back seat. There were challenges aplenty, yet it had been fun to overcome them, because rather than being motivated by financial rewards, the rewardΒ was intrinsic. Everyone was there out of choice; no recompenseΒ other than the satisfaction of being part of a greater whole.
The other obvious thing was that it was tangible, practical, hands-on, in-your-face, rowdy, utterly human β no digital abstractions, no screens (except in the IT classes), no emails or social media; heck, no electricity for half the days. To get water, one wandered across a cowpat-smeared track to where a bit of plastic pipe emerged from the dirt. Food? Get one of the villagers to dig up some potatoes or slaughter a sheep. Simple, makeshift, reactive, and immediate; punctuated by the realities of subsistence living, and surrounded on all sides by the bleak, dramatic beauty of the high Armenian plateau.
We continued walking. My brother Ben, visiting from Canada, joinedΒ us forΒ the second stint of the trek.
The scenery turned from staggeringΒ to jaw-dropping.
Iβd been wanting to walk the length of Armenia for years. The idea had simmered; andΒ now here I was.
Through all my previous years living here, Iβd always known that the wild backcountry of the Caucasus was jam-packed with potential for all manner of adventures; real exploration of a country whose regions remained uncharted since Soviet military cartographers during the Cold War era made the 1:50K topographic maps Iβd recently got my hands onΒ copies of. Why had I left it so long?
Part of it was the perceived inaccessibility of it all. Those maps were almost impossibleΒ to come by. Military personnel still got in trouble today for making them available. Yet they remained the bestΒ topo maps available.
If only someone would go out and make digital maps ofΒ some of these trails, I thought.
There was another reason being part Nanorβs volunteering project had inspired me. SheβdΒ come here andΒ created something from scratch.Β I realised that I too could just as easilyΒ decideΒ to stop treating Yerevan as a retreat, and instead choose to dig where I stood.
After all, I was going to be living here for the next several years. And if my unplanned volunteering experience provided any kind of insight, it was that working with others to achieve something tangible was where inspiration, lasting bonds, and ultimately meaning could be found β rather than continuingΒ to playΒ the blogger/filmmaker/author/anti-adventurer on an extended hiatus from where he belonged.
But whatΒ could I create? And how? Looking forΒ a job seemed futile, as my conundrum would beΒ the same as in the UK: I was unemployable. And anyway, my strongest skills were operating outdoors, planning expeditions, building camps, reading maps and finding routes, and going on expeditions; together with the digital skills of managingΒ websites and social media, and the creative stuff of writing, photography and filmmaking.
What kind of projectΒ would combine these things, get other people involved, result in something tangible, beneficial to the world, and be meaningful and fun to those participating in it?
And how on Earth would it be funded?
This was the nut Iβd been trying to crack for years. As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, Armenia has no outdoor or adventure scene. Sure, thereβs a Facebook group of mountain bikers posting endless images of disc brakes and suspension forks, and an Alpine Federation whose dingy office in an even dingier part of town doubles up as the nationβs sole outdoor equipment retailer (though nobody knows the address and the website has been under construction for years).Β But thisΒ is not a scene or an industry. Itβs a tiny handful of outcasts, doing their thing, ignored by society, with seemingly no interest in getting anyone else involved anyway.
Tough nut.
It was almost as if someone needed to do something β something big and newsworthy β to put adventure on the map in Armenia. For it is surely a place of immense untapped potential in this regard. Not to mention the fact that an increase in adventure tourism or so-called ecotourism, delicatelyΒ managed, would be of real benefit to many of the country’s more impoverished outlying communities, as was already happening in neighbouring Georgia.
Ben and Victoria decided to go hitch-hiking, leaving me to continue walking withΒ a retired Frenchman named Theirry.
Thierry was on a journey entirely for his ownΒ reasons. He had walked from France to Armenia, departing two and a half years previously, and wound up at Victoria’s house, as most Couchsurfers seemed to do on their way through the country. He was heading for Iran.
His journey reminded me of my own, the one I’d made by bicycle many years ago, which had also brought me here β meandering, slow, unpredictable, and motivated by nothing more than selfish curiosity as to what might happen if I did it. That had been fine; indeed, I believe that a wholly selfish journey canΒ be a key instructional exercise inΒ a person’sΒ development and growth, whether before or after a lifelong career.
But for me to do moreΒ such journeys had feltΒ increasingly self-indulgent. This was why my last two major expeditions had had a biggerΒ purpose to them. Each had involved collaborating withΒ manyΒ other people and creating something that would hopefully make for a tiny bit of change in the world.
As a result, they had been that muchΒ more rewarding in the context of having learned most of what I ever would about myself byΒ simply wandering alone through the world.
Perhaps that was why I’d stalled so long on hikingΒ the length of Armenia, I thought. Perhaps the idea of doing it alone in pursuitΒ of the usual spread of trite and inward-lookingΒ goalsΒ was one borne of habit. Dreams age; people move on.
PerhapsΒ what I reallyΒ need to do isΒ findΒ a way to help other people explore Armenia.
Then the universe crystallised, and all was clear, as if delivered by some unseen messenger.Β And I knew exactly what I was supposed toΒ be doing for the next few years.
Building Armenia’s first long-distance hiking route.
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