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Published: September 18th 2023
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I Day 13 Armenia. Debed Canyon, Monasteries, Mikoyans and MiG 21s, and Fidel Castro.
It’s a two hour drive from Lake Sevan to Alaverdi, the Debed Canyon.
We savour our homely breakfast at the Lavash Teahouse. The selection this morning is omelette, frankfurters in a spicy gravy, pasta, dill salad (Marion’s favourite), tomato and cucumber salad, semolina, yoghurt, figs, stewed grapes and berries, quince in syrup, prunes, cake and bread. Lots of Germans in the restaurant this morning on a coach tour. It’s been a pleasant friendly place.
A hardworking team of men run the catering, a harder working and smaller team of women do the laundering and bedroom changeovers. An ever hungry posse of good natured dogs hang about and try to scrounge food.
We didn’t see a single cat in Armenia until six or seven days into the trip. But, although in the minority, there are some who do slink about here.
The initial plan is to retrace our route past the corn on the cob sellers of Dilijan. But then we will cover new ground up a wide glacial valley to Vanadzor then to the start of the Debed Canyon.
As we reach the canyon the mountains are covered in trees. There is no tree-line as such, the tops are as green as the lower slopes. It’s warmer here, too.
The canyon is a strange mix of industrial and natural. The railway to Tbilisi in Georgia winds it way up the gorge changing sides and elevation with the road as it goes. Rusty viaducts and bridges offend the eye, and brutalist concrete structures interfere with the natural flow.
But above it all to the west of the gorge is a thick layer of columnar stone like a pie crust on top of all the other geology. And it is stunningly beautiful. Rapid raft rides are advertised, and the river Debed is fast flowing beneath the road.
Our digs are the Iris BnB, and we get a fine welcome at around mid day when we arrive. Coffee and Armenian biscuits in the dining room and a chance to peruse booklets an leaflets about the area.
Sanahin Monastery is up a winding climb from Iris BnB. When we reach the town of Sanahin there is a diversion away from the main street so we are made to negotiate
rough roads past twelve storey high Soviet apartment blocks, all in bad repair on unpaved roads. The Sat Nav tends to confuse things at that point. But eventually we reach the very top of the town and the monastery. We park in a square with Georgian looking houses (we are close to the border here).
The monastery is different to everything that we have seen so far on our trip. There are a number of large buildings with arches holding up more complicated designs, and space for a congregation or a hearty fellowship of brothers. In the largest church there is a shaft of light is shining through the solemn smokey darkness accompanied by a recording of sacred chant. Very affecting, to romantic souls like ourselves.
Stones blocks on some of the elevations have been numbered in white paint. Is this in case of earthquake or more an archeologist’s cataloguing for the sake of study?
The view from the churchyard looking south to the canyon reveals that the pie crust is the edge of a plateau of level pasture land that is extensive and recently cut. Location, location, location. Those 9C monks knew what they were up
to.
Down the hill is the Mikoyans’ House Museum. It’s purpose built, so I’m not sure I would describe it as a house museum. The approach to the front door features a full size MiG 21 aircraft under a sculptural cantilevered concrete shelter.
It’s all about two brothers Anastas and Artem Mikoyan who were born and brought up in Sanahin. Although Armenians they both very much part of Soviet history.
The elder, Anastas, remembers his dad who was employed in the copper mining and processing industry here as a carpenter. At the start of the 20C he saw the terrible work conditions of ~1000 Iranians employed in the worst manual jobs, and Greeks who toiled as miners, and he became fired up as a Bolshevik in a search for equality of wages and conditions. As he group up he went to school in Tblisi, then as a young man in the Baku Commune he was imprisoned with many others during the Russian Civil War. Many were executed but he survived as one of the ‘Baku 26‘ who were to be much revered in Russia.
He climbed the ranks of Russian Government to be Minister of Foreign
Trade under Stalin. He is said to have introduced many new foods for every day folks to access. The exhibition shows a fridge full of products that he created, establishing processing and canning plants and distribution networks.
He survived a fallout with Stalin in the 40’s but is implicated in some Armenian executions that Stalin made him undertake, perhaps to test his loyalty.
But after Stalin’s death Anastas’s diplomatic skills were employed by Khrushchev to find a way of diffusing the Cuban Missile Crisis, with A. travelling to meet with Fidel Castro and then Kennedy over the thirteen days it lasted, even though his wife had just died.
His younger brother Artem, born in 1905, was the father of the MiG design group with all its aviation success, along with his colleague Mikhaïl Gurevich. From 1939 the pair designed and produced a series of new models of fighting planes, initially in response to German superiority in the air.
They were adventurous, producing the first jet fighter which led to the most groundbreaking of their planes : the MiG15, honed into the MiG 21 which broke the speed of sound, and was sold to fifty different countries
in the world.
He is said to have won a bet at a meeting at with Rolls Royce ....... it was said that they would give him help with his jet engine design ..... if he won a game of billiards with the RR boss. Whatever the truth of the tale, to Stalin's amazement, the British Labour government and its pro-Soviet minister of trade, Sir Stafford Cripps proved willing to provide technical information and a licence to manufacture the Nene centrifugal-flow jet engine. This engine was reverse-engineered and produced in modified form as the Soviet Klimov KV jet engine - Rolls-Royce later attempted to claim £207 million in licence fees, without success.
So, two Armenian boys The Mikoyans made it big in Soviet history.
Last port of call is the Haghpat Monastery on the next ridge going north. A UNESCO site, it features the largest church we’ve seen in Armenia, the Cathedral of Surb Nshan, which was probably begun in 976, was completed in 991 by King Smbat.
There are several other structures at the site as well. There is the small domed Church of St Grigor from 1005. Two side chapels were added to the
original church; the larger one built in the beginning of the 13th century and the smaller, known as "Hamazasp House", built in 1257. In 1245, a three-story tall free-standing belltower was constructed.
But it’s the refectory which impressed me, a big space for food preparation as well as dining with two holes in domes to let light in and smoke out.
Earthquakes in 1130 and 1988 as well as armed attacks through the centuries but it remains much more intact than the previous ones we’ve seen
We have a tyre that shows signs of a puncture. We travel past an immense, derelict industrial complex as we drive back to find help. It must be the copper mining industry of the Soviet times in the 20th Century.
A charming pair of grease monkeys take the wheel off the car, investigate possible punctures, and declare it fine. It’s pumped up again and refitted. £2 and a smile.
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