Dilijan is a town in Armenia’s Lesser Caucasus mountains, most famous for its position within the eponymous 240 km2 national park. The region’s alpine landscape and quaint towns have earned it the (slightly questionable) nickname of the Switzerland of Armenia. We were staying in Dilijan’s old town; a small collection of wood and stone buildings, separated by cobbled streets already draped in autumn colours.
Surrounding the old town were a real mix of modern residential and commercial buildings, alongside the crumbling Soviet concrete to which we were starting to grow accustomed. Within a stone’s throw from our hotel was a columned amphitheatre, an ornate stone staircase flanked by lions and a long abandoned building (all pictured below).
Dilijan also had its fair share of monuments. These included three chaps from the 1977 Soviet movie Mimino standing around a water fountain (left), and the colossal monument to the 50th anniversary of Soviet Armenia (right).
But the main reason we were here was to explore the Dilijan National Park on foot. With few circular trails available, we opted to take a taxi to Parz Lake; an understandably popular lake situated in the mountains, before walking a mountain trail back to Dilijan. This taxi ride was almost noteworthy for how straightforward it was. The driver opened fare negotiations with a price I’d read was typical online, which almost never happens. In fact, I rarely achieve the price I’ve read about online even after a stressful negotiation. On top of that, the vehicle was modern and largely undamaged, the driver was careful, and knew exactly where we wanted to go. It was all too easy.
Parz Lake
While I’d hoped the taxi ride would allow us to skip some of the elevation gain of the 12.5 km hike, a closer inspection of the elevation graph below shows that we only started 78 m above our end point, and we still had nearly half a kilometre of vertical gain before we reached the walk’s highest point. This all felt vaguely familiar – I’m sure one day we’ll find an easy downhill stroll!
Elevation graph: km walked shown horizontally, height gained/lost shown vertically
While the lake was fairly busy, we met very few other hikers on the trail. The path itself was relatively easy to follow despite the carpet of leaves which covered most of the mountainside. We popped in and out of cloud as we went, and the damp landscape was full of vegetation, including some shiny black fungi which caught our eye.
At the highest point of the hike, the forest ended abruptly at an alpine meadow, which I’m sure would have had spectacular views if we weren’t in dense cloud. To make matters worse, the GPS on my phone stopped updating, so you can imagine our relief when we managed to pick out one of the few-and-far between way-markers through the thick fog. Re-entering the forest on the opposite side of the meadow, we came across a sign warning us of wild bears, which gave us a new danger to look out for as the visibility had improved.
The route down to Dilijan was similarly autumnal, with both the trees and cloud ensuring that the town didn’t emerge until the final moment.
Just as we reached Dilijan we came across a crumbling concrete “rotonda”, which I believe was the predecessor to the columned amphitheatre pictured at the top of this post.
With our loop of northern Armenia nearly complete, we were ready to return to Yerevan, this time for three nights instead of our previous 60 minutes. Although it was our last stop in the Caucasus, Yerevan stole our hearts immediately, and was the unexpected highlight of our time in Georgia and Armenia.
They said it couldn’t be done. They were wrong – it just shouldn’t be done!
Of course, we’re talking about visiting the Debed Canyon (along with the UNESCO World Heritage Sanahin and Haghpat monasteries) in a day by public transport. With the barest idea of transportation timetables, we set off optimistically from the bus station in the industrial city of Vanadzor immediately after breakfast.
We had an early set back when we failed to negotiate breakfast in our guesthouse any earlier than 9am (I’m not sure what the lady said in Armenian, but I think it roughly translated to, “Impossible! There’s no way I’m getting up any earlier”), but we still managed to make the 10am bus by the skin on our teeth. Slightly embarrassingly, we displaced two people from their seats in the full marshrutka – we think this is because we were travelling further, but who really knows. We haven’t quite got to grips with the etiquette but no one seemed to mind or want to take us up on our offers of seats, so we sat down and enjoyed our front-row view of the extensively cracked windscreen.
We arrived in Alaverdi after a spectacular drive through the Debed Canyon and briefly explored the town on foot. Our later antics proved this rather unnecessary as we got to know Alaverdi intimately. The town is the site of a disused copper factory and sadly defunct cable car (used to transport workers to the factory), which combined with the rugged landscape, gave it a bit of a wild west feel.
We stopped at Sanahin Old Bridge, built in medieval times. It was apparently used by vehicles until the 1980s, but I have no idea how, since it was seriously steep! Legend says that when a real man crosses the bridge, the stone lions that guard it will come to life. Since they were so weathered that they didn’t even look like lions any more, it’s understandable that they didn’t notice Oli crossing the bridge.
When we returned to the town centre, we spotted a marshrutka headed for Haghpat Monastery and smugly jumped on board. Surely this was our most difficult transport connection of the day nailed, since it would take us to the further of the two monasteries, in a village up a mountain around 10 km away.
Haghpat town hall
We spent about an hour exploring the monastery complex and admiring the views. Given that this is one of Armenia’s better known attractions, it felt like a real treat to explore it with so few other people around.
We didn’t have a lot of information to go on, but these holes in the floor look very much like they were there to house karas (for wine making)
When we emerged, we found that we’d just missed the 1pm marshrukta back to Alerverdi, and had an hour to kill until the next one. We picked up some fresh bread for lunch and fed it straight to the local dogs because they asked so very politely.
We re-explored the monastery, finding a refectory hidden away that we were sure wasn’t there before, and also explored more of the village including a cemetery with a spectacular view across the valley.
Eventually, we caught the marshrukta back to Alerverdi, feeling pretty happy about our progress so far. At this point, things started to unravel. After a long wait (and with the help of several other people at the bus stop), we got on a marshrutka that took us to Sanahin, which was crucially in an entirely different direction to Sanahin Monastery. At the end of the line, we owned up to our mistake to our marshrutka driver, and Oli had a conversation with him consisting entirely of them both holding up three fingers at each other multiple times and doing lots of nodding. We weren’t at all sure whether we were catching the number 3 or whether something was happening at 3.30, but it was clear that the driver had a plan for us. We re-boarded the same marshrutka and began the journey back to Alaverdi (for the third time).
By this point, we’d had our fill of touring Alaverdi and were ready to hop off and find a marshrutka back to Vanadzor (since we’d read they stopped fairly early in the day). Unfortunately, explaining this to our very helpful marshrutka driver was well beyond what Oli could communicate in hand gestures and the driver was determined to keep us on board, so we shut up and followed his instructions! We completed another pass through Alaverdi and back out the other side, before he put us in the care of another passenger who was also changing bus, and she shepherded us on board in case we tried to do another runner.
It turned out that bus number 3 was an ancient yellow bus – surely one of the oldest vehicles I’ve ever travelled on. Departing bang on 3.30, it chugged its way back through Alaverdi (our fourth visit) and then wheezed up the steep hill to Sarahart, where the monastry was located. I’ve never heard a vehicle struggle quite so much on a hill, but we made it at length. It was at least a refreshing change from some of the wild rides we’ve had on other vehicles!
By this point, it was pretty late in the day to be finding public transportation back to Vanadzor, so we set ourselves the target of catching the next bus back to Alaverdi to give ourselves the best chance. We all but ran the kilometre uphill to the monastery, and as we arrived Oli announced that we had seven minutes to explore. Seven minutes?! It was a massive place! We panted from room to room and building to building. It was much bigger and more impressive than Haghpat Monastery, but unfortunately my main thought was how little time we had and how much I needed a wee!
On the way back to the bus, Oli managed to run ahead and got a picture of the MiG aircraft that is kept at the nearby Mikoyan Brothers Museum. It wasn’t quite the relaxed museum visit I’d hoped for, but there was NO TIME! We made it back to the bus in the nick of time, red faced, sweaty and panting loudly, to curious stares from fellow passengers, and bounced back down the hill for our fifth and final visit to Alaverdi.
We eventually found a marshrutka back to Vanadzor (thankfully, they ran much later than we’d read) and laughed the whole way back to Vanadzor about our piss poor planning. If you’re ever thinking of a similar trip, may I suggest spending less than two hours at Haghpat Monastery and more than seven minutes at Sanahin Monastery?!
Vanadzor
What we should have done
On a serious note, if you really are planning a similar trip, these would be our main tips:
Consider whether you are really as stubbon as us – a taxi tour can be easily arranged and gives much more flexibility (but crucially is more carbon-intensive!) If you do want to stick to public transport like us, start as early as you can from Vanadzor
Check what time the marshrutkas are running their return trips so that you have some certainty of timing (taxi drivers will consistently tell you there are no more marshrutkas running that day, which is rarely true, but other marshrutka drivers and fellow passengers were very helpful to us). We generally couldn’t get the actual timetables to tally up to what we’d found online, so it is worth asking
Consider walking between the two monasteries – it is apparently a very nice 8.5 km hike and would have saved us a lot of hassle
To cross into Armenia, we took the brand new sleeper train from Tbilisi to Yerevan. Booking our tickets all the way to Yerevan was another in a series of slight miscalculations – we’d so easily booked last minute accommodation in Georgia that it came as a bit of a shock to find that there was barely anything available in Yerevan, and anything that was available was very expensive. We made some friends on the train (who had moved to Armenia from Moscow, but some months ago) who explained to us that Armenia had seen an influx of Russian citizens in recent weeks because it was one of the few countries where it was possible to travel on a national ID (since apparently many Russians don’t have full passports), and this might explain the shortage of accommodation.
We decided to switch our itinerary to visit Gyumri first. This left us with two options:
Get off the train in the middle of the night when it stopped at Gyumri, knowing that Armenian cafes don’t open for breakfast until around 9.30am
Enjoy a full night’s sleep on the train, before turning around and travelling the three hours straight back to Gyumri
We opted for option #2, since arriving at 4am didn’t sound like much fun. It was also an excuse to take another train, only this time we’d be able to take in some of the scenery as we trundled along after leaving Yerevan’s beautiful station.
Gyumri is Georgia’s second largest city, but its name is still synonymous with the earthquake which practically levelled the town in 1988, killing 50,000 people and displacing even more. The reconstruction effort has been ongoing ever since, with ruined buildings and others undergoing repairs visible throughout the city, including the city’s old hospital (below right), which was rebuilt from scratch next door, leaving the ruins to be consumed by nature.
Still, those buildings that had been restored continued to use the distinctive black and orange tuff (volcanic rock), giving the city a unique architectural style.
The town is built out from Verdanants Square, a vast area flanked by the Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God at one end and the Holy Saviour’s Church at the other. The cathedral has been fully restored since the earthquake in black tuff, with two of its predecessor’s spires preserved in the cathedral’s gardens.
The exterior of the church at the other end of the square had also been restored, but inside work still continued. We were a bit surprised to be beckoned into the building site by the man who was working alone inside the church, but it was worthwhile to see just how much of a project it was to restore it to its former glory.
We also came across a picture of the church taken shortly after the earthquake, which was pretty staggering – there was very little left standing.
Our favourite meal in Gyumri was undoubtedly the lunch we ate at Gwoog Gastrohouse. The first dish to come out was heavily buttered scrambled egg with basturma, a type of salty cured beef (not pictured as we ate it way too quickly). Next up was chrov pilaf, a rice side with apricots, dates and raisins (we realise this was a slightly strange accompaniment to eggs, but that was on us!) Finally, a whole plate of lamb dolma arrived, complete with fresh lemon and sour cream. All of this was washed down with a sweet apricot and raisin Kompot, a drink we’d never heard of, but that went down a treat!
We also treated ourselves to a donut each from Ponchik Monchik. These are hollow deep fried dough balls, filled with either vanilla custard, chocolate spread, or jam, and dusted with icing sugar. After demonstrating how much the filling hole looked like a mouth, Sara then painted her nose white with icing sugar with her first bite. Absolutely delicious, and we could probably have eaten two each!
To burn off some calories, we took a walk out to Gyumri’s Mother Armenia – a colossal statue on the edge of town which somehow survived the devastating earthquake. She watches over Gyumri, with one arm raised to the sky and her back clearly turned to the Turkish border less than 10km behind her. Still, her view across Armenia was spectacular.
Just next door to the statue lies the Black Fortress, a military installation built with typical Gyumri black tuff, which has more recently been converted into a live performance venue. Both attractions were eerily quiet, with just the odd wandering tourist and a few local kids out exercising.
We took a short diversion on our way back into town through Gyumri’s Central Park. From the outside, this appeared to be a wild and seldom used park, but once inside, we found that the park was dotted with beautiful architecture and Soviet statues.
As well as yet another amusement park…
After exploring Gyumri’s main attractions, it was time to pay some attention to the increasingly messy matt of hair on my head. We headed to Lux Barber Shop, a traditional barbers filled with wood panelling, mirrors and metal and leather chairs. With my Armenian language skills stretching to “hello”, “goodbye” and “thank you”, I resorted to showing the barber a few photos taken shortly after my last hair cut. He gave the photos a passing glance before leading me towards a chair and picking up the clippers. Sara watched on from the entrance as I had one of the most tense hair cuts of my life, but at least I didn’t have to engage in the normal barber small talk. In the end, the barber did a great a job despite my lack of communication skills, and I left Gyumri looking much smarter than the state in which I arrived.
Our next destination would be Vanadzor, a typical Soviet town and the gateway to the Debed Canyon, with Yerevan now demoted to the end of our Armenian itinerary.
