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Published: September 14th 2023
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The Sun ain’t up, the sky ain’t blue, what on Earth should we both do?
The morning breaks. We remain positive about an extremely hard mattress and a bit of lost sleep and prepare ourselves fo breakfast. The hôtel table is laden with local food. Cottage cheese and feta, tomatoes, peppers and cucumber, parsley and spring onions, eggs, apricot jam, and butter. Only the frankfurter sausages look out of a tin. The bread is a fresh squidgy confection - delicious.
The low cloud still clings to the mountains around us. We decide to explore this ancient town of Goris on foot until lunch then drive to the gorge of Khndzoresk, 10km away.
The monastery of Tatev, perched high on a mountain, is the main site in the area and the reason we are here. But until the mist clears there seems little point in going there.
Largely, Goris has survived earthquakes and the Soviet bulldozer. Painted tin roofs protect single storey houses built much in the style of Eastern Europe but in stone rather than wood.
The pavements are full of trip hazards where they exist at all on the streets where we are
based. Each road is edged with a foot wide x foot deep drain to cope with winter rainfall.
We step our way through the rubble to the
Aksel Bakunts House-Museum It is a private house in Goris typical Syunik style of 19-20th centuries where the great prose and screenwriter Aksel Bakunts (1899-1937) who was born and grew up here.
Set in a garden of trees and sculptures the main building features an wide balcony leading to the front door. Inside, is a kitchen with an interior very like the those we’ve seen Charente. A rack for food suspended from the ceiling (to resist mouse attack), oak beams and furniture. There’s a butter maker like a slit log drum: a hollowed section of tree trunk making a cylinder hung by ropes at each end. The pendulum swinging turns the milk into butter...... but I couldn’t work out how you would get the butter out....
Through a main room now lined with display cabinets detailing the writer’s life........ to his study / bedroom with desk and bed.
The curator, in a suit, spoke to us in French. Goris is twinned with a S.E. French town, Vienne, (not the one
close to us) so perhaps that is why he has the language. On arrival, when we summoned him (we were the only visitors) he was behind closed doors in his own attached house, and military men were with him as if sat in conference. .......
There are similar houses built all around the hillsides with their own kitchen gardens.
Above them are pinnacles and crags of rough sandstone. We now head off to find troglodyte caves.
It’s customary, at least once in a holiday, for a stray dog to adopt and accompany us for miles, as if it were a guide. That day has come. She’s a slightly loping terrier mongrel, a splash of dachshund in the mix which means that her back legs don’t seem to be fully in accord with the front. She leads us over the river and up to the grave yard where each shiny black marble stone has the image of the deceased. One has a picture of a modern motor coach: I imagine the guy was a bus driver. Memories of Romanian grave headings in timber come back to me, painted royal blue with images in red, green and
yellow....... one or two depicting drownings or car accidents.
Just above the carefully railed and gated graves are ancient caves hewn from the ochre rock. Inside are level slabs presumably beds, seats or tables and smaller window holes. It feels damp but sheltered.
The whole craggy mountainside is covered with such cave sites, some at a much higher altitude than this. Imagine surviving the winter.......
Our dog friend then takes us the central Goris Square and Park, past a tacky kids funfair, which must open up on special days, and then gives up on us ...... as we enter the churchyard of St Gregory of the Illumination. There’s a ceremony under way so we don’t go inside. It had its renaissance in 1989 with independence, used as a granary in Soviet times from 1920.
After lunch, we’re in the car on the way to Khndzoresk. It’s a short ride and even if the cloud cover remains, we will have tried.
Past another barracks in the town, with soldiers milling about, is a sign saying
‘Khndzoresk Swing Suspension Bridge’ with an arrow pointing downward. We take on the challenge of the dirt road,
freshly mudded with the rain.
It’s about 3km of ruts, hairpin bends and steep descents, but we complete the task with the car intact.
The gorge is 150m beneath us and a 100m pedestrian suspension bridge spans it to deliver the plucky crosser to a small chapel. There’s a rickety stairway down the the bridge but we decide the spectacular view is enough reward. It’s below the cloud line here, so we get a full butchers.
Anxiety levels rise with the prospect of the climb in our automatic sedan car. But I keep our speed up and tackle each twist and turn with due attention. We reach the main road by the barracks.
Chuffed with our success, we decide to ignore our foreboding about the weather and to drive to the ancient monastery of Tatev as well. It’s about 30miles away.
But, Khndzoresk has prepared us, only in part, for the ride. The mist blocks our view, huge Iranian fuel tankers, local stone hauliers and the largest articulated lorries I’ve encountered are sharing the road. It’s all very scary. The road surface has been well and truly mashed by these giants over the years, especially
on each of about 30 hairpins down to bottom of the gorge above which the sacred complex is built. And it’s the same up to top on the other side.
At our destination, we can’t see the monastery, though it is only metres away. There is a car park but we can’t find blue P signs anywhere......as I do three point turns in the path of the giant vehicles exhaling black smoke. I park outside a snack bar.
Eventually, on foot, we’re past the tourist-tat ladies and entering the grounds.
The Tatev Monastery (Armenian: Տաթևիվանք, romanized: Tat'evi vank') is a 9th-century Armenian Apostolic monastery located on a large basalt plateau near the village of Tatev in the Syunik Province in southeastern Armenia. The monastic ensemble stands on the edge of a deep gorge of the Vorotan River. Tatev is known as the bishopric seat of Syunik and played a significant role in the history of the region as a center of economic, political, spiritual and cultural activity.
Tatev Monastery has been described as the best-known Monastery in Armenia. Founded in the 9C it became a university, a place of learning in the 14C.
There is
a legend telling of an event that is tied to the construction of the main church, where an apprentice secretly climbs to the top of its steeple intending to place a cross of his own design. However, the apprentice is spotted by his master during his descent. Shocked by his discovery, the apprentice loses his foothold and falls into the abyss as he calls upon God to grant him wings, which, in Armenian is: "Ta Tev". ...........and presumably he gets off Scot-free.
There are a number of chapels. A death defying drop is beyond a barrier which lacks a spoke (see photo) but I suppose wings will be granted if a small child ventures through the gap.
Really the best bit of the visit is the precarious and altitudinous location........... but only on a sunny, or even clear, day. Oh well.
I’ll spare the reader the toil of the journey back but the car is in one piece and we had a pleasant meal in the Delux Lounge, near the park. The only Yerevan style Gastro Bar in town....... not first choice perhaps but the restaurant in our hotel is holding a function with Armenia disco at
high decibels
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