It was a windy road along the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan that guided us to Kapan. We saw on google-maps that there should be a “ARK-Eco-camp” in Kapan. Not knowing what that would mean, we reached in the afternoon an area looking somehow like a garden in a suburb of Munich. The “garden-manager” Armen welcomed us in his camp. Tiny cabins, fitting exactly two air mattresses, were the place where we would spend the upcoming night.

Armen tried his best to help us with arranging something to charge our car. Even though the Eco-camp has itself not much electricity (a thin, one-phase connection, that allowed us to charge 1kW at only 9 amperes), we managed to charge overnight about 15kWh. That would have been fine to reach Meghri, a town very close to the Iranian border. In Meghri, we should have better found a three-phase outlet though, to have a fully charged car before entering Iran. Of course, we had no information if that is possible. Considering all of this, I was happy, when Armen came the following morning to the camp and told us, he found three-phase electricity in the village. A furniture-making factory would be happy to let us charge.

Charging there was one of the greatest experiences of hospitality and help. The owner of the workshop helped Benedikt to set everything up (we put the three phases and the neutral wire directly on the cable outlets of the fuse box – see picture). While the car was charging 22kW at 3 times 32 ampere, he invited us for tea and Armenian sweets. 1.5 hours later we left Kapan with a 99% charged car. I wish, it would work always just like this.