Two by Two Into Armenia

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Our overnight train from Baku to Tbilisi started off very well. Picking up ticket from the on-line booking window was efficient. That evening -Wednesday - the train departed dead on time at 20:40. The compartment was cosy enough, though somewhat stuffy as no window could be opened. The carriage lady offered tea/coffee which she brought to us, with boiled sweets, in our cabin. And we settled down early as it was dark, so nothing to see, and the border check would be at 05:30.

From there on, Thursday went somewhat naff, to put it mildly (you don't want to know the words we considered rather than 'naff').

The crossing out from Azerbaijan took the hour, as timetabled. The entry into Georgia took nearly 2 1/2 hours, not the hour timetabled. As a result we only arrived into Tbilisi a few minutes after we were due to collect the hire car, but with money exchange and long taxi drive (from station to town centre) yet to manoeuvre. So we arrived at Avis around 40 minutes late.

But - they had no record of our reservation. This was looking to be a right pain. We showed the lady the Messenger correspondence we had had to make the booking. Phone calls were made. And then she discovered that what had actually happened was that she had our booking, but for Friday, the original date, but had not been informed by 'HQ' that we had changed pick up to Thursday.

Outcome - she could prepare a car for us, but as special paperwork was needed to take car across border into Armenia it would be 3pm, or 2 pm earliest before all would be ready. We left her to it and went for coffee and a people watch in the sunshine in Tbilisi.

2 pm we picked up car, 4 hours later than planned, which had an impact later on that evening. Our room booking for that night was at Sevan Lake in Armenia, around 240 km away. No need to be concerned yet, that drive should be around 4 hours or so, plus border crossing.

We plugged the route into MapsMe and set off. Sun shining and it was a nice day. But the roads got progressively worse. Initially, we mean REALLY bad. Even though it showed on the map as a numbered road what with potholes, cracks, etc etc, 40 kph was the best, but with slower sections than that.

Then ..... following the MapsMe blue line, and still on something numbered E117 we found ourselves on what was essentially a gravel/rocks unmade road. But it was the only route, so we ploughed on....and on......and on. Retrospectively we see that we did around 70 km on this road!! Then we reached the border!

First problem there was getting out of Georgia. The 'special paperwork' had the wrong date on it. According to that paperwork - written in Georgian and Armenian - we didn't have custody of the car until the following day, 3 May, original booking date. Avis hadn't prepared the papers correctly. With no Georgian language from us, and little English from them this wasn't looking good, especially as the worse scenario was back that 70 km if we wanted a Georgian place to stay that night. We showed them the booking contract, in English, which had 2nd May on it.

Don't know how it all eventually became OK for them but around 45 mins in they let us pass. Now to get into Armenia.

We've already told you that there is no love lost between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and what passport stamp did we each have in our brand new, otherwise empty, passports? Azerbaijan of course. To complicate matters further Pip had had to get out of car and go into the office, whilst Paul drove the car to an outside booth for car and passport checks.

Paul's questioning came thick and fast. Why in Azerbaijan? How long for? Where did we go? Why Tbilisi? Why Armenia? Were we booked up? Where? Did we have friends in the country? ..... you get the picture. Meanwhile Pip was getting the same inside, but made all the more difficult as it's Paul who makes up all the itineraries, bookings etc, and just updates Pip on a day by day basis. It's fine, it works well for us, but not when we get questioned separately. There were some English language digs from the officials about Pip 'doing everything your husband tells you to?". And even after we had gone through that, each, separately, after Paul was allowed to take car past the checkpoint he had to park up and go into the office, where document details were re-entered.

But we got through.......to find that (except for that 70 km of gravel road) the Armenian roads we were on to get to Sevan were worse than the Georgian roads. The main issue, aside from their general poor quality, is their strange process of road repair. It looks like there must be two, separately operating teams. The first team digs out a square edged, rectangular hole - covering we presume areas of rough holes. We actually passed a team hard at work doing this and blasting out debris from the bottom. The problem is that there is little sign of Team 2! That means there are thousands - no exaggeration - of these potential tyre killers waiting to be filled. Never has the expression "use all of the road" been more apt. Also strangely the roads within villages were in worse nick than the countryside.

It was gradually getting darker, which made spotting holes more and more difficult. We arrived at the hotel marker on MapsMe, in darkness at around 8.30 to find..... nothing. There were some buildings but they looked deserted. A couple of times we went around via dual carriageway and u-turns only to end up back at the same spot. Seeing that there appeared to be some light Paul went in. He found 2 old ladies sat in a large kitchen. No English of course, why should there be? But Paul, using the booking confirmation from Booking.com meant that one lady seemed to understand the issue, and made a call on her mobile. Handing the phone over to Paul it turned out that it was the owner? manager? of our hotel at the other end. They had let out our room, and were full!

Also, shortly before this moment 3 blokes, with dogs had entered, and as Pip was outside waiting and Paul had been quite some time, she was starting to fear the worse and had come looking.

The resolution? The owner, intermediating via the old lady and her phone, said he would/could book us an alternative. It was slightly higher cost but they would sub the difference. It was barely a km away, on the other side of the dual carriageway. We could see it on MapsMe. But, the old lady had enough English to indicate, when we finally cottoned on, that her son would drive there. And so he did - he, and a mate, backed out a car and off we followed. To reach a modern building, closed but with some light upstairs.

We waited there, with the 2 blokes, in the dark for around 10-15 minutes for that hotel owner to arrive.

He couldn't have been more friendly or helpful. Again there was a telephone exchange with someone with better English. He sorted out a heater for our cold room, a kettle and a couple of mugs. Made sure the water heater was plugged in. And confirmed what time we wanted breakfast. We asked about payment, with some written notes established how much incl breakfast but he had no change for the large denomination notes we had from the ATM. But he was fine with that and we concluded that in the morning would be fine.

Too late to contemplate going out, in the dark, to look for food, we settled down for a well welcome night's sleep, enjoying a fresh peach & some biscuits which we'd bought earlier.

Next morning, Friday, when we went down breakfast was ready. Fresh bread, and cheese, bratwurst sausages, salad leaves, hot boiled eggs, damson compote, tea, sponge cakes. And he also now had his wallet with him so we could pay and get change.

A real shame we didn't get to our original hotel in time. We had a room with balcony overlooking the lake booked.

First priority on Friday was into Sevan for some more cash - we had only got a smallish holding amount in Georgia - and some car provisions - water, biscuits, fruit. Both we accomplished and set off for our first day's exploration. What a beautiful setting. The surrounding hills are still very much covered in snow. Wild spring flowers abound.

Lake Sevan, the shore of which we drove alongside for the first 50 km or so that day, is the largest lake in the region by far. It occupies 1/6 of Armenia. On the road we passed an imposing monument to the victims of the war in Karabakh ( border with Azerbaijan to the east ).

Lake Sevan has Armenia's only beaches and is where the capital's - Yerevan - population come to escape the searing summer heat, in the 40s.

By contrast, winters are long here. Lake Sevan sits at 1900 metres and there are surrounding mountain ranges, all still well covered in snow. To get to our next stop we headed southish from the lake over the Vardenyats Pass, 2410 metres. Some of the snow cover on the way over the pass edged right up to the road, and in some places even, still, encroached by half a road lane.

This was the route of the Great Silk Road, something we seem to have come across regularly on our travels. At the top is the Selim Caravanserai, a solid basalt built hunk of a building dating from 1332. From the outside it looked like an enormous, stone tiled, ridged barn of a building. But inside it had a central arched hall, with an arched 'apse' either side. A wonderful survivor. How welcome it must have been for those 14th century travellers.

Lots of wild crocus, aconite and scilla flowers out in the sunshine.

Back down the southern side of the pass, a more vertiginous, hair-pinny descent compared to the steady climb from the lake, we headed for Noravank Monastery. Founded in 1105, it has wonderful carvings eg Christ flanked by Peter and Paul, and above that God + Adam. In the smaller St Karapet Church there was once a "treasured piece of the Cross stained with the blood of Christ", acquired from 'a stranger'.

Lots of excellent cross-carvings on the external walls, known as Khachkars. Dated from the Medieval period they were venerated by pilgrims and believed to cure ailments.

Our overnight on Friday night was the wine village of Aveni, where we had a guesthouse stay. And very nicely we arrived by 3pm, which was nice after the previous day's travails. And the guesthouse was delightful. We were met by the owner's mother who rabbited on and on in Armenian as if she thought we would understand. But with signs etc there was enough communication for us to settle in.

The lady owner, professional lady with good English, came 5ish and we were also able to select food from a home cooked menu. Presume frozen but delicious when we ate later.

After an equally delicious breakfast, and a farewell gift of a bag of dried fruit from the garden, Saturday we set off towards Yerevan, the capital city, on a day when the Grim Reaper seemed to be never far away.

As we entered the Khor Virap Monastery complex we saw an elderly man, 60s/70s?, prostrate on the floor, being given mouth to mouth and chest compressions. The face and hands looked well grey and we assume it wasn't a good outcome.

Khor Virap has a wonderful location quite close to the Base of Mount Ararat (which after the last boundary change is now in Turkey ). The first chapel dates to 642 AD, and with continuous changes the latest building dates to the 17th C.

The pagan King Trdat III imprisoned St Gregory in a 6 metre pit here for 12 years . But he was kept alive secretly by ladies lowering food and water down to him. You'd think the King would have noticed!

The King was later cursed by madness, miraculously cured by Gregory and converted to Christianity.

Interestingly, Armenia is considered to be the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as its state religion, in 301 AD.

Khor Virap Monastery is an important pilgrimage site and people often visit for baptisms or after a wedding to perform a sacrifice - sheep or chicken we hasten to add - which keeps the priests busy at weekends!

As is common at many of these religious sites - it's the same the world over - there were many stalls selling all manner of 'tat', but here, with an allusion to the story of Noah, the Ark, and the releasing of a dove, here was a merchant selling a dove for you to release. Surely they must be trained to return to owner!

Surrounded by vineyards and poles topped with stork's nests we drove past the Armash Fish Ponds and Bird Sanctuary, an important stop for migrating birds.

Stop 2 was Geghard Monastery - Paul had already warned Pip that we would see a lot of monasteries on this trip (as opposed to mosques or temples).

On the way we passed what we took to be an important funeral. There were hundreds of people in black, and cars. Not sure we saw any women though.

Geghard is named after the holy lance that pierced Christ's side at the crucifixion (allegedly), which was once kept here. Founded in the 4th C by St Gregory of pit fame - are you picking up yet that they do really old Christianity here? The chapels are extensions of caves that are in the mountainside and were the original monks' early dwellings, reached by ladder or rope. The setting is stunning. Another relic supposedly here once was a piece of Noah's Ark.

Inside the Monastery walls Geghard's two main churches date from the 13th C. In one chapel is a spring, of course containing holy water. Splashing some of the water on your face is said to keep you looking youthful. Pip decided that there were too many 'Russian' ladies queuing for their own facial improvement, so she resisted.

On to our final stop, Garni Temple, a quite plain Hellenic structure (basalt blocks, almost like breeze blocks) , dedicated to Helios, the Roman god of the sun. Built by Armenia's King Trdat in the 1st C, it became a summer house for Armenian royalty after the Christian conversion in AD 301.

It was then a fairly short jaunt to our Yerevan hotel, for a 3 night stay. Location is naff. But the room.....bedroom is enormous, across our own large entrance hall is an equally sized bathroom, outside and enclosed terrace, leading to our own sauna (which you could have quite a party in!), and its own shower room. And breakfast.. And for less than £30 per night.

Couple of days in Yerevan, so next blog.

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Photos

Guesthouse
Rough exterior but modern interior