Climbing Mount Ararat: Borders, bears and rockets

AFTER Cyprus, I was planning to go to Iran.

But I wasn’t just going to fly into Teheran. I wanted to go overland via the western Iranian city of Tabriz, like the hippies used to. That meant going back to Turkey, with the prospect of more adventures on the way.

Above all, I planned to climb Mount Ararat, the national mountain of Armenia, though it is just inside the Turkish border these days. Mount Ararat is at a triple point where Armenia, Turkey and Iran all meet. Climbers mostly set out up the southern sunny face of…