Armenia: Paradise for Motorcycling. Part I
To any local, this kind of title will most likely sound insane or sarcastic at first. But I want to make it clear before getting started: the title is serious.
Armenia is a wonderful country for motorcycling. Of course, perhaps like all other countries in the world, it has its pros and cons. But I think that pros in Armenia far outweigh the cons. Also, I’ll try to come up with ways to eliminate some of the cons. This will be a thorough analyze of Armenia as a country for motorcycling, and in 4 series will conclude the subject. It will later be continued with standalone posts containing thoughts or incidents that make further difference in the subject.
So since this is the first article in the series, I’ll come up with the list of all the points that matter, to be discussed in detail in later articles.
Pros:
- Long season, season opens at early March and rides to late November, that is almost 9 months of riding, which is three quarters of the year!
- Wonderful scenery. Despite being currently small, Armenia does have really diverse scenery, and if you also easily join Karabakh, the diversity becomes eye-popping!
- Police attitude. Police in Armenia simply does not notice single motorcyclists, to their own advantage.
- Fuel. Despite the efforts, vast majority of motorcycles in the world run on petrol. Petrol in Armenia is quite affordable. And motorcycles spend much less than any other vehicle!
- Good roads. 1993 is long gone and all major roads of Armenia are in an excellent shape.
- Girls love motorcycles, even in Armenia.
Cons:
- Lack of culture among people, this is a broad and important subject and will be covered in a great detail below.
- Traffic police corruption, which results in a great amount of irresponsible drivers with lack of basic driving education and ethics as well as unpleasant clashes with traffic officers.
- Lack of maintenance services and parts for non-USSR motorcycle model owners.
- Lack of quality petrol for complex engines which equip the majority of non-USSR bikes.
