Yerevan to Goris

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We packed and left the Moscow boutique cinema hotel this morning, breakfasted as normal on delicious pain au raisins at Baguette & Co just round the corner, then made our way to the enormous Ayn Savid Hotel to pick up a hire car. And so began our rather epic journey over mountains to the southern town of Goris.

Satnav said 254 kilometres and 3 hours 45 mins.

We found our way bit by bit out of the traffic hotspot of Yerevan. Then trundling along for some time on E117 until directed off up into the hills and mountains, higher and higher, my ears popping. The hills initially seemed like brown scrubland, deprived of rain... and then it rained. We seemed to go from plains to hills, to valleys to hills to craggy mountains to cloud land. The sun shone, the sky was blue, the views were stupendous for a good time. Hunger came upon us and we turned off onto a small side road towards Yelpin to find a shop. A small general shop stood by the side of the road. We entered and looked for suitable food stuff. A smiling woman asked us what we wanted, I explained in rudimentary Russian that we need a sandwich, bread and cheese perhaps. She was delighted to offer us a cup of Turkish coffee and a sit down to drink it in the dark concrete passage at the back of her shop. She introduced us to her son and explained she had 2 other girls and a boy living in Yerevan.She had lived in Yelpin all her life.Also she gave us cheese,apples, sweets and bread. We bought a small knife to facilitate our picnic which we ate by a lake holiday complex beside the road. The last bit of the journey, for about 20 kilometres,was through dense cloud, like a London smog, crawling along with our hazard lights on, just seeing the white lines at the edge and middle of the road . Quite hairy. As we gradually descended the cloud lifted a little so we could make out the town of Goris, looking grey and gloomy in the rain.

All along the road there were people selling their produce under makeshift stalls: watermelons, peaches, plums, beans, sweetcorn. By the side of the road were many abandoned sheds and small buildings created from breezeblocks with corrugaged iron roofs. Private enterprise.

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