Mount Ararat is in Turkey; we were sixty kilometres away, near Garni in Armenia, on the ‘road’ from Garni to Artashat.

That road wasn’t the worst we drove along in Armenia, but our hired Lada Ziguli coped pretty well – plenty of ground clearance and robust suspension. In some places it looked as though we might get stuck for lack of four wheel drive, but I managed to keep going.

Mount Ararat isn’t really flying of course. It’s simply that the snow above the snow line is bright enough to be seen through the intervening atmosphere, whereas the darker foothills are hidden by sunlight scattered in it.

There’s a wide, fairly flat-floored valley between the hills we were on and the foothills of Ararat. The valley bottom is a little under 1000m above sea level; the summit of Mount Ararat is at 5,137m.