Nearly Neutral Travel

We’d read lots of nice things about Yerevan and it’s been on my to-visit list for a while, but I was still a bit surprised to find that it turned out to be one of those rare places we’ve visited where we both agreed that we could happily live.

We arrived from Dilijan on our wedding anniversary without any firm plans but with a few restaurants in mind for a fancier-than-usual dinner that evening, and immediately found out that even Monday evenings in Yerevan are lively! We eventually found a table at Abovyan 12, another excellent recommendation from our Tbilisi – Yerevan train friends, and proceeded to order half the menu. I was pretty confident we could handle it all until the waiter finished writing down our order and then asked whether we were expecting anyone to join us. Whoops! Anyway, it was a really nice meal and we washed it down with a bottle of pomegranate wine, an Armenian speciality.

The next day, we set out to explore the Cascade complex, a rather unusual area of central Yerevan that combines an enormous flight of 750 steps, terraced fountains, and an underground art gallery. Dotted around the whole complex are a huge number of art installations, and from the top there is a panoramic view of Yerevan, and on a clear day, across to Mount Ararat. In typical style, we didn’t make it to the top until fairly late in the day, and the afternoon haze meant we could only see a faint outline of the mountain. Still, it was an excellent view and a fun area to explore.

We spent the rest of the day walking around central Yerevan and appreciating the beautiful rose-coloured stone from which much of the city is built.

At one point, we found ourselves in the English Park. We’re still not quite sure what gave it its name (confusingly, it is sandwiched between the French and Italian Embassies) but I did lose Oli for a minute…

On our second full day, our main agenda item was to visit the Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial, which sits on a hill overlooking the city. We spent a sobering few hours learning about the events of 1915, the historical context that lead up to the atrocities, and the events following. It was truly horrendous and there are many lessons that we still need to learn today. Like visiting other similar museums and memorials around the world, it didn’t make for a fun morning, but it did feel like a very important part of understanding Armenia and we were glad that we had taken the time to visit.

Anticipating that we would need some mood repair, Oli had planned a very different activity for the afternoon, and so we made our way to the Yerevan Brandy Company for a tour and tasting. Planned is actually quite a strong word, since it turned out that we should have booked online, but thankfully the staff took pity on our sad little faces when they told us this and managed to squeeze us onto a tour.

The tour itself was super slick and I really enjoyed it, but everyone knows these kinds of attractions are all about the tasting, so imagine my alarm when I discovered that I really, really don’t like neat brandy! I think Oli was ashamed to be seen with me and quickly finished off my glasses as well as his own.

Our flight to Aktau was departing after midnight so we had lots of time to kill on our third day. We began at the Blue Mosque, Armenia’s only remaining mosque. We’d read that neighbouring Iran has been given access to restore and run the mosque, and in a reciprocal arrangement, Armenia has been able to restore several churches that sit on Iranian soil. We were welcomed warmly and even met a couple of resident cats in the beautiful garden courtyard.

After a lunch of Georgian khinkali (we just can’t get enough), we headed on a walk through the Kond Pedestrian Tunnel to reach the Hrazdan Gorge. Based on what we’d read, we were expecting lots of couples out for romantic strolls, but actually it was just quite dodgy! It was very dimly lit, the sides of the tunnel were bowing slightly and there were some small areas where it had actually caved in – I was very pleased to get out the other side.

Once again, Yerevan surprised us here. As well as the rushing river and autumnal trees in the gorge, we came across the Children’s Railway, a miniature station building, trains and track that were built in Soviet times to allow children to learn about engineering. Like many things in Armenia, it embodied faded grandeur (or maybe in this case, more like faded fun) and was in need of some love. But still, it was an amazingly inventive facility and apparently is still in use during the summer months, despite being a little rough round the edges. We certainly had a great time nosing around the train carriages, admiring the bird-themed stained glass windows in the station building and wandering along the track.

Finally, after some drinks and dinner at the lovely Mirzoyan Library and some time watching the dancing fountains in Republic Square, we reluctantly headed to the airport (we genuinely were not very enthusiastic about the thought of flying after a relaxed few months on ground transport).

Joining the ranks of stupid things that formerly frequent flyers have done at airport security post-Covid (I’ve heard a few good stories from people), Oli unintentionally brought through a Swiss army knife AND a full picnic cutlery set in his hand baggage. The security staff were not impressed (unsurprisingly) but somehow in the end didn’t confiscate them! I can’t say this gave me much confidence for what else people might have been able to bring onto the flight…

Luckily, as you can probably guess, we lived to tell the tale and were very excited to be off to Central Asia! First stop: Aktau, Kazakhstan.

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.

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!

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.

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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.

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.

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?!

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