Armenia

July 2006

I purchased a $30 visa from Armenian immigration. When I said I only just wanted one for six days, he said “No, you get one for twenty one days. You will want one for twenty one days”. In retrospect, he was probably right.

The Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked mountainous country in the Southern Caucasus bordered by Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran. A former republic of the Soviet Union, Armenia is one of the oldest and most historic nations in the world and is the place where Noah and his descendants first settled according to the Bible. The country is an emerging democracy and because of its strategic location, it is in both the Russian and American spheres of influence.

Until independence, Armenia’s economy was largely industry based – chemicals, electronics and highly dependent on outside resources. Armenian mines produce copper, zinc, gold and lead. Most energy is produced by fuel imported from Russia. Once the Soviet Union pulled out, the economy collapsed for some time, as well as the effects of the 1998 Earthquake which killed 25,000 and made 500,000 homeless. But now there is some recovery with new sectors emerging– precious stone processing, jewellery, information and communication technology. Agriculture still makes up 20% of the economy.

As we entered the country, my first impressions of Armenia was of a poor country more run down than Georgia. We headed through the Debed Canyon through the Gugarats range. It was very scenic but pretty much your bog standard European gorge scenery. It could have been northern Greece, Macedonia or Bulgaria. The gorge petered out into a long sweeping plain, during which we had a rain downpour so heavy that the windscreen wipers couldn’t clear the water fast enough.

Six and a half hours after leaving Tbilisi, we arrived in Yerevan. I was dumped at a bus station on the outskirts of the city. I wasn’t sure where I was, but I asked at a garage and they pointed me East, where the city skyline was more obvious. I had no local currency so I started to walk along the busy highway where the traffic rushed past honking their horns.

When I reached the Marriot Hotel around 20 minutes, I got my bearings on my map. I walked into the Republic Square (Hanrapetutyan Hraparak) and found an ATM which gave me just a 20,000 Dram note. The bank cashier was nice enough to break it down for me. I found Puskin Street which had construction going on everywhere – whole blocks were being removed and rebuilt. At the far end, the Envoy Hostel was the first hostel in Yerevan. It was less than a year old and the staff spoke English. It was more expensive than a home stay ($17) but there were constant hot water, a fan in the four bed dorm room, breakfast was thrown in and it was very clean. It was nice to have the comforts. The clock had moved on an hour (which should have buggered up the workman who asked me the time as I left the bus station and didn’t know this at the time). After a hot shower, I went to explore.

Yerevan was a planned city in the 1920s so the centre is designed as a grid of blocks. It now has a 1.2 million population. The Cascades were a vast flight of stone steps and flower beds. It was a really impressive urban project which modern art deco facades with water passing from stone jars. Inside, I stepped onto static escalators which burst into motion and took me to each level where I could walk outside onto a vast patio with fountains and flowers.

The Cascades was still being finished and another two levels were being constructed. I walked up to the 50th Anniversary of Soviet Armenia Memorial which had a comical statue in the bleak plaza around it and then into a park to see the Mother Armenia (Mayr Hayastan). There were crappy fair rides and cafes and restaurants. The 23m towering statue on a tall column which could be seen from anywhere in the city below had tanks, guns and an anti aircraft missile launcher in the square and looked out towards the Turkish border.

A supermarket sold 8% Russian beer for 60p a can and three of these could wipe you out. I sat in the sun and wrote my diary. 40’c temperatures and endless sunshine made my stay very pleasant but very thirsty!

The easiest word in Armenian to learn was Merci (Thank you), an informal saying. Other useful words were – Barev (Hello), Khuntrem (Please), Ur (Where?)

My initial impressions of Yerevan for a city both rich (I even saw a Hummer) and poor, (there were beggars on the streets outside the hostel, women dragging cardboard boxes. Polite requests for money, then leaving you alone) but rapidly rebuilding itself. It was more expensive than Georgia and not as intimate as Tbilisi, but it was ok with me. After eight rapid days on the road in baking temperatures, I think I was suffering from fatigue – long hours travelling, not eating, beer diet, heat.

I’m not sure if it was the local water, beer, diet, Turkish meal or whatever, but the next morning my arse exploded like a Molotov cocktail three times. It was so bad, I wondered if I’d be able to sightsee without shitting myself. The hostel provided breakfast – a basket of fresh bread, cheese, cherry jam and butter and hot coffee.

I walked four blocks to a bus stop and caught a decrepit bus to Echiadzin, 21 km west of Yerevan – the Armenian Vatican. I first visited two churches on the outskirts – Surp Shogahat and Surp Hripsime before walking two km to the main complex. Mayr Tachur was the main cathedral. The interior was very beautiful. In the Treasury I saw the supposed remnants of Noah’s Ark (which looked like marble), the Crown of Thorns (just a tiny piece of wood encased in a gemstone) and the Holy Cross (ditto). Clergymen walked around in long flowing black robes that looked like Batman capes. It was very peaceful. Gardens full of flowers. There was a large grey memorial to the Papal visit of 2001 and various other memorials

I caught a bus to the ruins of Zvartnots Cathedral which was nothing special. Another bus took me back to Yerevan where I walked up past the National Stadium up a steep hill to Tsitsernakakaberd (Memorial to the Armenian Genocide). A 40m spire stood next to a circle of twelve basalt slabs with a flame in the middle. Piped melancholy music added atmosphere. There was an excellent view over the city.

The Museum was underground in a grey stone hall. There were lots of emotionally moving photos of the Turkish atrocities with English translations. There was a room with glass counters of certificates and letters from various cities/countries who had named ‘Armenian Genocide days’. I was a little taken back when I saw one from California which stated that April 24th was Armenian Day there and it was signed by none other than Governor Arnold Schwarzanegger. Four giggly girls in attendance saw me and practiced “Excuse me” in English. When, I turned, they laughed expecting me not to understand and looked embarrassed.

Walking down the slope back through the clothes market by the Stadium, I tried the Ararat Brandy Company for the well publicised tour where there was none available. Across the road, the forbidding grey walls of the Noh (Noah’s) Brandy Company stood. I eventually found a reception where there was no indication of tours, but a security guard fetched a petite lady called Anna, an ex English teacher who gave me a personal tour of the complex. It had originally been the Yerevan fortress which had been destroyed by a Nineteenth Century earthquake and where a brandy distillery had been set up in the early 20th Century. Churchill used to get his brandy from this company and when the quality fell in the 1930s, he contacted Stalin who discovered that the distiller responsible for the excellent brandy had been exiled to Siberia. Stalin had him brought back and Armenian brandy was saved!

The complex was restored in 2003 so no guidebook mentions it. After visiting the museum, I was taken underground 50 metres by Anna and the Head Distiller, a rotound man who had worked here for 33 years in an old elevator to where the barrels are stored and where the temperature is constant between 12 and 18 degrees all year round. It was the original basement of the castle. You could hear the sound of dripping water. The barrels were huge and visitors could write their names in chalk so ‘Huge G. Rection’ is now in an Armenian Brandy cellar. I was given three glasses of wine to taste, from 1944 (Madeira) , 1924 (Porto) and 1913 (Malaga). It was all beautiful wine. I wondered how much they could sell the 1913 wine for. Around $1000 a bottle. So how come the visitors get it? “Because we have so much of the stuff laying around from the past”. I couldn’t believe I was drinking wine produced before World War One.

Back on the surface, I was taken to a tasting room where a glass of 40% 10 year old brandy was poured. Anna explained how you could tell a good brandy if you swirled it at 20’c around the ‘Tulip’ glass and the brandy stuck to the sides to see ‘women’s legs’. There were three smells: 5cm from the nose, nose to glass lip and finally the nose inside the glass. Then I tried a 20 year old brandy. I am not that keen on brandy but there were chocolates and mineral water to help me. Anna was not allowed to drink the Brandy on duty.

I chatted to Anna and another girl about the state of Armenia and I felt their excellent English would be of great benefit when a major tourist industry got going. Anna had never left Armenia, because she was scared of flying. She said that Yerevan was rebuilding itself and hopefully some of the eight million Armenians living abroad would return to help rebuild the country along with the current three million people. She told me that it had been 40’c in Yerevan for days and it was unbearable. Tell me about it. It had been nice to have a personal tour and for 3500 Dram, I thought it was excellent value. (The Ararat Brandy Company has only been around since 1950 so the Noh tour has historical value too). Very recommended if you ever come here.

Suitably refreshed, I visited a vast fruit and vegetable market inside a giant hanger. It was full of peaches, watermelons, huge flat bread, sticky sweets, cakes and nuts. The Opera House looked very impressive and the surrounding area was one large mass of outdoor cafes and restaurants. It seemed that half the town was sat here drinking beer and wine and enjoying the sunshine. It was also packed in the evenings until well after midnight. I drank beer in the sunshine, glad that my bowels had survived the sweltering day.

I found the Armenians shy but friendly. They would help you if they could but many could not speak English. They would leave you alone if you did not make any advances. In five years, this will be a happening city, full of tourists. It was getting a real makeover. Since it was still suffering from a Turkish/Azerbaijan trade embargo, I wasn’t sure where the money was coming from, but they were really doing the city up - painting bridges, planting gardens, new museums, finishing projects and starting new blocks of construction. It seemed to lack the typical ugly Communist remnants of architecture and was in the centre at least very European in atmosphere. The cars rushed around, and were the obvious status symbols in town, (petrol was an expensive $1 a litre compared to 20p in Azerbaijan) but the backstreets were quiet. The girls dressed fashionably and in this heat, wore as little as possible. They were pretty, thin but had hairy backs like the men! Cheap internet cafes too.

A tour group of young American teenagers turned up at midnight and on a different body clock ran around the hostel until 4.30am. I ended up reading on a couch until 5am and grabbed an hour’s sleep before getting my shit together to leave at 7am. A local bus finally turned up to take me to the western bus station where I had arrived.

There was a half full minibus leaving for Stepanakert in Nagorno-Karabakh. I got a cramped backseat next to Tom, a twenty two year old Armenian medical student off to visit his girlfriend. He’d nudge me every time he wanted to say something which appeared to be every two minutes. All I wanted to do was sleep.

We headed south east from Yerevan, out into the plains passing Mt Ararat with its peak covered in snow, over to the right, in the distance (which was in Turkey) and at 5165m the tallest mountain in ‘Asia’. I had passed close to it on the way to Iran in 1999 and had discovered that you had to bribe the Turkish soldiers hundreds of dollars to be allowed to climb it.

We stopped after three hours for a break and where I bought fresh peaches and grapes from a local. The plains turned into a mountain range where the road was twisty and slow but relatively empty. The mountain scenery was beautiful with yellow grass (background). Beneath us lay the town of Golis which had a wonderful location in the valley.

Eventually we reached the Nagorno-Karabakh border which was just a small concrete hut where someone sat inside. The driver got out to do whatever it was he did. No one came out to inspect us, but it is technically Armenia anyway. I had discovered that I could get a visa in Stepanakert when I got there, whereas until recently, you had to get one in Yerevan.

The twisting road and stupendous mountain scenery which towered around us continued. The landscape was almost devoid of civilisation apart from cows, sheep and goats crossing the road. We descended into Stepanakert via a series of hairpin bends ninety minutes later around 2.30am. Even with a population of 40,000 it looked tiny when we were above it.

Nagorno Karabagh means mountainous black garden. It is a self declared republic; poor, well armed, proud and very welcoming. Stalin separated Karabagh from Armenia in the 1920s and made it an autonomous region within Azerbaijan. With a 75% Armenian population, it declared independence from Azerbaijan in 1989 and hostilities commenced until 1994 when, with Armenian support, they held out against the Azerbaijanis. The entire 500,000 Muslim was forced to flee to Azerbaijan joining 150,000 from Armenia. Supported by Armenia, it remains a sore point with Azerbaijan. They want it back and noone wants to go.

Stepanakert, the self proclaimed capital is a town of 40,000 with a parliament, presidential palace, ministries and a national museum. The economy survives on agriculture. Entering this autonomous republic, I was no longer covered by foreign embassy representation.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I had really only come for a ride to say I had visited Nagorno-Karabagh and I wondered if I could get a minibus back out to Goris that same day. A local girl who spoke English said that there were no buses to Goris until tomorrow. I’d have to stay the night which meant buying a $40 visa. So I walked up a hill to the Foreign Office, a few blocks from the bus station and got a five day minimum visa for 11,000 Dram. After I got the stamp in my passport, they then told me that there were buses still running to Goris.

Back at the bus station, there was indeed a minibus waiting to fill up for Goris. I had to make an executive decision. Write off the visa and get out or try and find somewhere to stay, so I decided that I might as well give the place a chance. It was, after all, my one hundredth country/autonomous republic.

I had a couple of addresses of hotels and I asked a local for the number of the minibus heading for the Hotel Lotus (the cheapest option in town according to the out dated Lonely Planet guide). He pointed at one and I jumped on, able to use the Armenian Dram currency. I found the Hotel which had been renovated and was now a nice place, so nice, it was booked up with a tour party. The receptionist rang around a couple of places. I was surprised when the next place was also full. Finally she called the Nairi Hotel which had one single room left.

I jumped on a minibus back into the centre and down near the Nairi Hotel which had a cute but hardly indigenous Kangaroo on it. It was a large white affair with lovely views across the valley. The cute receptionist was a shorter version of Sandra Bullock. There were no single rooms left, but she gave me a discount on a large double. $40 got me a huge two bed room with large en suite bathroom, endless hot showers, air-conditioning (I couldn’t remember the last time I had this – Japan?) and local TV. The hotel was owned by an elderly Australian- Armenian whom I had met when I checked in. He and his wife spent the summer here and the winter there.

I caught a bus back up into the top of the town to the Government Building area where the only ATM was based. It only took Mastercard and I had Visa. Doh! But I had US Dollars and Euros so changed some Dollars at a exchange office. This allowed me to buy some nice cold beer from the only small supermarket in town for the hotel room.

While I was getting the Visa, I had met a Japanese guy, Kishi and when I arrived at the Nairi Hotel, he had also got a double room, so we arranged to go out for dinner. I was surprised to see virtually no eating places – at least not around the bus station area, but we saw one restaurant with only a menu in English though the phrases were unfamiliar. I ordered an Olive Salad, which came with 1 olive! The rest was mixed veg in mayonnaise. Then a sausage and mushroom pizza which was different but excellent. Kishi had ordered a kebab and it arrived as huge chunks of pork on a plate with some flat bread in a basket. Armenian beer washed it down. We ate outside, where a few locals drank beer or ate light meals. Someone lit a fire next door and smoke poured over the fence. The waitress moved us to the other side of the ‘garden’.

Kishi was an interesting Japanese guy and pretty untypical for Japan. He was 45 years old and lived in Chiba, in the prefecture next to Ibaraki where I had lived. He was a High School maths teacher and had made various trips to Europe. This was his second visit to Armenia but first to Nagorno-Karabagh. He was very thorough in his travels and in a country lacking tourist infrastructure, though his English was pretty good, he had been forced to pay for taxis to see the far flung and isolated monasteries. My attitude was that if I couldn’t get to one via a local bus, I’d just move on.

For example, I had planned to visit Tatev Monastery from Goris. Kishi had been there the day before and had found no local buses going near it. He had rented a taxi to take him there and back. While he enjoyed the visit, he felt that it wasn’t worth the taxi ride. Given my limited time frame and literally hundreds of monasteries that I have seen around the world, his report convinced me to now skip it

He was one of the best travelled Japanese people I had met, especially as an independent traveller. He told me that no-one could relate to his travels at his School. I wondered why he would come back to Armenia. The cost of flights must have been a killer. I was also interested to see that he travelled with a cheap manual camera. I didn’t know that there were any left in Japan. We had a good night out and I was glad that I had decided to stay. Its always nice to meet new people.

Breakfast was thrown in with the price (omelette, salami, cheese, honey, bread, sweet black tea). The restaurant was full with a tour group. Yesterday, Kishi had arranged a taxi to pick him up at 9am and give him a tour of the whole republic in one day. The cost was $130. Kishi felt that this was more economically viable than doing it by public transport and having to pay for accommodation for 2 nights. I was tempted to split the cost and do the trip with him, but having seen the first two hours of mountains and the capital, there seemed very little to see apart from even more mountains and maybe some ruins from the Armenia/Azerbaijan war.

So I opted to return to Yerevan, skipping Goris. A minibus left at 8.30am. I had a back seat and crushed knees. Our ‘Driver from hell’ drove as fast as possible and overtook everything going up and down hills, and around blind bends. I couldn’t believe it when he overtook three trucks at once on a blind bend. We went around the hairpin bends so fast, I thought we’d go over the edge of the cliffs which had no barriers. We would had, had a tyre had blown out. There was the added entertainment of missing the cows and donkeys on the road. We passed the village of Tex which had old cave houses in the cliffs. The scenery was still spectacular with views for miles across the mountains. Another minibus had broken down. We stopped and the driver got out to fix it. It gave me the chance to take a few photos of the views. It was still very hot.

We arrived in Yerevan, thankfully, six hours after departure. This was thirty minutes faster than the trip there, including the repairs, a lengthy break and border procedures. I was just glad to get there. I caught a minibus back to the Envoy Hostel, dumped my gear and took off a final exploration of the city. It was still piping hot and I decided to wear my shorts. I just couldn’t be bothered with decorum. Some of the girls gave me strange looks! The new Museum of City History would not let me in with 15 minutes to closing time.

I met Klaus and Johann from Sweden and a couple of Norwegians at the hostel. They all spoke faultless English. We went out for a meal at a popular local café. I had excellent onion soup and beef ‘hedgehog’ with chips and Ukrainian beer. Klaus was great entertainment. He was a short stocky guy who was a road manager for Swedish punk bands, finding them concerts in Eastern Europe, Russia and the Baltics. He joked that we must be related because the Norwegian Vikings had all come to England hundreds of years ago and had their way with the local women. He’d sing ‘Immigrant Song’ by Led Zeppelin – “it’s about Vikings coming from the Land of the Midnight Sun” and burst into song. The previous week, Johann had arranged to meet Klaus in Baku and, ironically, they had chosen to stay at the Velotrek hotel, where I had also stayed. Johann had arrived during the day and found the hotel with no problem. Klaus had arrived late at night from the airport, caught a taxi whose driver failed to find it in the dark. He was then driven around for two hours looking for it. When he finally did, he was presented with a $90 bill. When Klaus got out to see where he was, he estimated that he was 100m from where he had climbed into the taxi to start the search! How we laughed. We were all getting on so well, that we decided to head for Lake Sevan for a night. “Perched at 1900m above sea level, the great blue eye of Lake Sevan covers 940 sq km and is 80km by 30km at its widest. But when I got up at 7am, a thunderstorm started a downpour that did not let up all day. The roads flooded and we couldn’t move. Well, at least it made no sense to head for a sunbathing tourist area in this weather. It was like all the humidity that had built up with the 4’c temperatures over the previous fortnight came down as water in a few hours. By 11am, it was obvious that we were going nowhere. The hostel was booked full that night and we all had to be out by midday. The Norwegians got the receptionist to find them a guesthouse. Klaus and Johann had already booked a train back to Tbilisi the following night, so they had to stick around as well and booked in with the Norwegians. I was completely flexible. Originally, I had planned to visit the Sanahin and Haghpat monasteries, both UNESCO classed, which lay near the Debed Canyon around Alaverdi. The Lonely Planet said of Haghpat “Words fail me; this place has atmosphere and architectural splendour in abundance. The views around the canyon alone are worth the trip”. The author had waxed lyrical about the canyon as well, but after I saw the canyon and thought “well its ok, but nothing brilliant”, I began to suspect that I had seen a few more sights than him, or he was trying to build up the place.

They could also only be reached by taxi. Stefan, the German, I met in Yerevan had visited them for a $25 ride and thought they were “nice”. But it would have meant spending a night in the mining town of Alaverdi and Stefan was also adamant that the cheapest place – Hotel Debed - in town was the “shittest” he had ever stayed in. “I was bitten everywhere. Don’t even go there.” I decided to see what was going where when I got to the bus station.

The downpour turned to drizzle and I made a run for a minibus to get to the western bus station. By the time I got there, it was raining heavily again. I had to wait three hours for a minibus heading to Tbilisi to actually become available and fill up. I had written off the day, but the driver was the most relaxed I’d met. We left half empty, but the passengers were friendly. Weighing it up, I preferred to skip the monasteries and spend my final day in Georgia where it might be drier.

En route, the driver saw lines of beehives in a field by the side of the road and a table with jars of honey on it. ‘Does anyone want any honey?’ he asked. So we stopped and a bunch of us piled into one of those old gypsy caravans pulled by horses. An old lady on our bus spoke some English and could tell me the price. I had Armenian Dram to use up and bought a large jar with some of the honeycomb still in it. The honey was harvested by a couple of women with protective hats on. They were obviously nomadic bee farmers moving to different locations during the summer to allow the bees to visit all the wild flowers. Half the bus including the driver bought fresh runny honey. It tasted wonderful.

Then we stopped for dinner. A log fire was already lit and large chunks of fresh pork in different sizes were offered for selection and stuck onto skewers. When the meal arrived with bread and salad, I sat with two men and the old lady. The men produced a bottle of vodka and asked for three glasses. During the delicious meal, we did four toasts (to health, death of loved ones, birth and good luck). The bottle soon disappeared with four shots each. Each was washed down with lemonade. The old lady translated for us all.

We set off through the Debed canyon again past herds of cows on the road until we reached the border. It was one of the nicest trips I had made in a long time and nothing like the ‘driver from hell’ yesterday.

Armenia, like Georgia, will become a major tourist destination in the future. Its only problem is that the Turkish and Azerbaijan borders are closed so Georgia or Iran is the only overland route into it. Most backpackers I met had flown to Yerevan with Georgia as a side trip, though I think Georgia has more to offer overall. Armenia is very safe and as the first area/country in the world to accept Christianity and international sympathy for the Genocide, and the fact that four times as many Armenians live outside Armenia, should guarantee plenty of visitors. Only the continuation of problems with Azerbaijan will put people off, though there seems to be a ‘de facto’ state of affairs with Nagorno-Kavanagh.

Maybe I’ll return in the future to see all those monasteries I missed, when a tourist infrastructure exists such as car hire! There are already organised tours to all the places I visited, but you can do them all using public transport. I get the feeling that Armenia has a lot of unpublicised, hidden gems that would need proper exploration if you had the time and inclination.

Travel - £20.90
Accommodation - £46.22
Food - £27.28
Other - £22.10 (inc £13.2 Nagorno-Kavabagh visa)
Total - £116.50
Grand Total for trip (excluding flights) - £341.38