Hitchhiking from Kazakhstan to Armenia

It all started when I came up with the idea to hitchhike to Georgia. But there was no one I could travel with. I was offering different people to join me in my journey, but they kept telling me I’m insane and that it’s impossible to hitchhike from Kazakhstan to the Caucasus. “Are you crazy?” At that time, I honestly thought I wasn’t crazy. But when for 3 months all you hear is people calling you insane, you start questioning your own sanity. Really. Hitchhiking is not a common activity in our culture.

Then one day I met Aybek and told him, “Hey, let’s hitchhike to Georgia!” To my surprise, he liked the idea. So now I wasn’t alone anymore, and it felt great. It was very important to me, because at first there was no one who would like to hitchhike together with me. After a little while, more people joined us, including Dana. She was dreaming about traveling, and when I offered her to hitchhike to Georgia with us, she got very excited. Then it all happened really quick. The next day we were already sitting in a cafe discussing our route.

Soon we were already 7 people, but only four of us completed the journey. The other three guys returned back to Kazakhstan after some time on the road. There was this very special feeling I had when we were in Chechnya, Russia. I was walking along the streets and thinking to myself, “Am I really in Chechnya now? Was I walking to this moment for 1 year? Now that I’m here, Tbilisi and Yerevan are so close!” Today in the morning I arrived in Yerevan, and I can’t help but exclaim, satisfied: “I did it!”