Abandoning your car in Armenia or Georgia
 

Dear all,

I am planning a road trip from Amsterdam to Yerevan or Tbilisi, planning on driving an old car and leaving it behind there. I came across a couple posts that said that a car will be stamped into your pasport in Turkey, Georgia and Armenia. I see two problems:

1- What if the car breaks down? Nothing unusual for an old car of course. Can I then get a paper of proof of the car being declared broken and fly out of these 3 countries?

2- What if the car brings be towards the caucasus? How can I then fly out? Can I bring it to a junkyard and get a proof on paper that lets me free to fly out of the coutry?

Does anyone here have experience with this? And how does the car stamp in your pasport work? I read something of someone leaving the car in no mans land between the Georgian-Armenian border, but I hope there is a better way to do this.



Thanks in advance!

Kind regards,
Sven

As a general rule, especially applicable for when you're using a carnet, is to talk to the local police, explain the situation, and get them to write a letter certifying the final disposition of the vehicle. I haven't heard of any unsolvable situations. Just do it all legally and there should be no issue.

Hi Sven

Welcome to the HUBB

Generally, if your car is stolen, wrecked, dismantled - it is still imported.

Turkey makes a note in your passport last time I was there (2018), so you will need to go through customs and do things officially.

Armenia is now part of the Russian Customs Union and whilst no note is made in your passport, it is made in a central customs system. I visited Armenia before this was implemented, but I once got a letter from Russian customs asking for proof my vehicle had left Russia (which it had, but had not been correctly recorded I guess). I sorted this when I next entered the country.

Georgia, certainly in 2015 when I last entered, was pretty lax about cars. From memory I got no paperwork for the car and (unlike when I entered in 2010), no mark was made in the passport. So if you want to ditch it with minimum fuss, this is where I would aim to do it.

Remember though that if you don't do things legally, this might have future repercussions when you enter the country again.

EO

I have no direct knowledge about cars and Georgia/Turkey/Armenia, but here is a similar situation in the same neighborhood:

My riding partner's bike went up in smoke in the middle of Uzbekistan....

https://hosting.photobucket.com/albu...370&fit=bounds

Burned up most of the wiring harness........
https://hosting.photobucket.com/albu...genchUZ007.jpg

We were unable to even find rudimentary tools (soldering iron? wire?) in the area to try to fix it.

We talked about just pushing it into a ditch somewhere and leaving it.....
..........but I must say: I would not be happy with the traveler who just left their junk car or motorbike in the ditch in my neighborhood or along my highway.

The Uzbek government would not let him leave without it. He had to crate it and fly it back to Holland. A huge hassle and a lot of money, but he did fix it at home and got many more years of use from it.

...................shu