Georgia and Armenia VII/06
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Georgia and Armenia 14th to 27th of July 2006

Before the trip

We had been planning a trip to Caucasus for a long time, but we had had problems because of we couldn't find enough information about birding in the area (there aren't enough tripstories available in internet) but also local travel agencies had been far too expensive. First we thought to go Azerbaijan, but travel agencies there were totally unable to organize anything cheap. When we were in British Bird Fair in autumn 2005 we met Georgian Ramaz Gokhelashvili, who was easy to believe that he really could help us to organize a trip to Georgia. Ramaz gave us a book about birding places in Georgia and we also read all the tripstories we found in internet and we noticed that Georgia and Armenia would be a perfect combination for a birdtrip.

The next thing we had to do was to find a contact from Armenia. Surprisingly someone was telling about a good travel agency in Eurobirdnet, and when I contacted him everything seemed to be perfect! But soon our Catalan friend Oriol Clarabuch managed to get contact with an Armenian birder Vasil Ananian who told he had never heard about the person that was going to be our guide. Luckily I knew (thanks to Sandgrouse magazine) the only places for a couple of species in Armenia and I realized that even thought our guide has told us we could see these species we weren't going to those places! We had only month to our trip and we had already bought the flying tickets when we fired our guide!

We had now found out that Vasil was the person, who had been a guide in all trips that had tripstories in internet. So he was our only hope. He knew already that he couldn't be our guide but he told us to contact to Zhanna Galian, who had been organizing the trips he had guided. After all we managed to organize the second best and cheapest choice for us - we got a driver who had been a driver for all Vasils groups! So he knew all the birding places! At least now we had a better possibility to find the birds as we knew we were going to right places!

Everything seemed to be ok! In Georgia the visa is not needed and we found out that the visa to Armenia would be easy to buy (30$) from the border. In Georgia Ramaz had organized a mountaineer guide with a 4-wheel drive, who'd come to pick us up from the airport, would guide us for 5 days in Caucasus and Lesser Caucasus and then drive us to Armenian border. He would also have 2 tents, mattresses and a gascooker for the mountain days.

In Armenia there would be a driver waiting for us and also a translator, because the driver wouldn't speak English. In Armenia we'd do birdwathing almost around the whole country staying mostly Yerevan, but during 4 days trip also in other places. 2 last days were supposed to spend with Vasil Ananian and ring some birds. But there was a possibility that Vasil wouldn't be able to join us so we had anyway the driver and the translator booked. We could do something else if Vasil couldn't come.

The returning flight would be from Tbilisi so on the border there would be someone to pick us up and drive to the airport.

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