We only spent five days in Armenia, for several reasons: (i) Georgia was so great that we ate into a significant amount of time allocated to Armenia; (ii) the main attraction of Armenia is its monasteries, and we were fearful of suffering monastery fatigue – which was already threatening in Georgia; (iii) any other activity which involved spending much time outside was off the cards: it was 40 degrees C every day; (iv) it’s very difficult to get around Armenia as an independent traveller unless you have your own car; (v) Armenian driving is euphemistically described by Lonely Planet as “erratic”; (vi) both our arrival and departure dates were dictated by the infrequent transport from Tbilisi and to Astana. However we saw a lot in those five days and really enjoyed our time in this country.
We took a small tour from Tbilisi (the capital of Georgia) to Yerevan (the capital of Armenia) so that we could see the sights in northern Armenia which we would inevitably be going past if we took public transport. A small hostel chain, Envoy, ran a tour from their Yerevan hostel to their Tbilisi hostel every Friday and then did the return trip every Saturday (somewhat surprisingly the third hostel in the chain is in Phnom Penh…). So on Saturday 5 August 2017 we jumped in a minibus with our excellent guide, a young Armenian woman who spoke great English having spent an academic year in Colorado as a teenager. She was a recent university graduate who knew a sufficient amount about her subject, was keen to share it with us and even keener to enjoy the company of our international group. After a dearth of Americans (which Chris normally likes as he then feels special) we found ourselves in the company of four, including two Peace Corps volunteers who were taking a short holiday in Armenia before returning to teach English in Georgia. Most of our conversation was either with these two guys or our entertaining guide.
After only an hour or so we were at the border. This was my first ever controlled land border crossing and it was pretty straightforward, although there was inevitably a decent amount of queue jumping, including the border guard allowing some people to come to the front.
Some of the differences between these two neighbouring countries were immediately apparent when we crossed the border. Not only was it hotter and drier in Armenia but we immediately became a lot richer (£1 gets you about 3 Georgian Lari and about 600 Armenian Dram). Given the differences in the value of the currency it’s probably unsurprising that the difference in wealth between these two countries was pretty clear to us. Armenian roads were of a lower quality than their Georgian counterparts and were far emptier. Both countries have their own language and their own alphabet, which they are understandably proud of and contributes significantly to their national identity. We were therefore surprised to see shops and petrol stations in Armenia with signs still in Russian – I can only presume that the owners haven’t had the money in the last 26 years to get a new sign made in Armenian. Another relic of the Soviet Union was the sheer number of abandoned factories (these were present in Georgia, but not on this scale). Northern Armenia was apparently one of the most industrialised areas of USSR, but now productivity is 30% of what it was in those days. Demolition costs money and some large factory towns had been all but abandoned. The unfortunate timing of a major earthquake in 1988 can’t have helped matters.
Pretty great location for a derelict Soviet factory.
Impacting our tourist experience most directly was the difference between Georgian and Armenian churches. As was hopefully apparent from our previous posts the Georgian Orthodox Church plays a significant role in the lives of many people, the churches were therefore all in excellent condition. The Armenian Apostolic Church has not had the same resurgence after years of Soviet oppression and churches that have been damaged by invasions, earthquakes and forced conversion to other uses remain damaged. Some of the monasteries we saw were no longer functioning churches, none of them were working monasteries. Even the most celebrated monasteries had birds living in them and greenery growing out of them. We weren’t charged to get into any of the monasteries we visited, which seems like a missed trick to get some finances for the much needed restoration.
Haghpat monastery and foliage
Despite all this, we saw some pretty great medieval monasteries in Armenia. Each had a gavit (large entrance hall, in one monastery this was about as big as the church itself), a cemetery with khachkars (carved stones, with unique patterns, frequently used as a gravestones), holes in the ceiling for light (at least it doesn’t rain much in this dry country), crosses carved in the walls to mark the burial of someone in the parish, and hidden storage space for valuable manuscripts during an invasion (of which there were many).
Hole in the ceiling (I’m sure there is a more eloquent word for these…)
Khachkars, our guide was 90% sure that the missing middle one is in the British Museum. I have not been able to verify this claim.
Khachkar depicting the death of the deceased: Mongol horde at a wedding.
Khachkar depicting the death of the deceased: drunk fisherman steps on a snake.
Crosses on a column of Geghard monastery to mark a burial in the parish.
In fact manuscripts are so important in Armenia that the first Armenian manuscript depository (matenadaran) was built in the 5th Century. An unexpected outcome of the development of these structures was the increase in monastery wine as monks realised that the conditions required to store books were similar to conditions required to store wine and converted their defunct libraries into wine cellars. In Yerevan we visited the fascinating Matendaran and saw beautiful manuscripts from medieval Armenia and around the broader region. We also bumped into a Dutch guy we had met three weeks previously in Tbilisi – I have started compiling a list of the people that we have met a second time on our trip, it is surprisingly long.
Monastic library/wine cellar.
We visited three further museums in Yerevan. The History Museum of Armenia covered the full span of humanity in Armenia, providing some unusual commentary (“The making of tools was a peaceful and trustworthy dialogue of the prehistoric man with material to release and obtain the spiritual energy of the image enclosed in stone.”) whilst providing no English language signage in the presumable fascinating section on Soviet Armenia. The museum was a decent retreat from the heat, although the Cafesjian Centre for the Arts certainly had better a/c. The Soviet-designed building (“the Cascades”) was completed post-independence with funding from Mr Cafesjian, a wealthy Amenian-American, and houses his private collection of 20th Century art. Of course the most fascinating museum in Yerevan is the excellent Armenian Genocide Memorial & Museum, which is both moving and highly informative. It’s not the sort of place that can be usefully described in a travel blog, so I won’t. Make sure you go if you’re ever in Yerevan.
The final attraction of note is the only pagan temple in Armenia, Garni Temple. Armenia was the first country in the world to convert to Christianity (in 301AD) and the sister of the King who declared the conversion persuaded him to keep one pagan temple as a symbol of the country’s long history (it was apparently a mere coincidence that the temple she asked him to spare was the one right next to a royal palace…). Sadly this temple is Hellenistic in style and there is therefore no record of what ordinary Armenian pagan temples looked like. Further it’s a not a particularly good example of a Greek temple given that it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1679 and suffered from a typical Soviet “restoration”.
Garni temple, and the ruins of the palace that saved it.
Restoration, Soviet style.
Whilst we saw interesting sites, the real highlight of Armenia for us was Yerevan itself, where we stayed for the entirety of our trip. As far as we can tell all of the money in Armenia is in Yerevan. The city was rebuilt by the Soviets on a grid plan including wide tree-lined streets and plenty of open spaces, which have now been converted into large open-air cafes, restaurants and lounge-bars. These were a great place to escape the heat of the day and truly came alive in the evening. The people of Yerevan love going out, dress to impress, and even toddlers were still playing in the fountains at 23.00.
On our final night in Yerevan we were wandering the streets, hunting for a jazz club, when we heard loud folk/pop music coming from a bar 100m down the street. We walked past it, bemused, but wandered on to find our jazz club closed. We went back to the bar and saw the plush velvet seats inside and the tight dresses and high heels of the patrons and assumed we would not make it past the tight face control of expensive Armenian bars. However we decided to brave it and were surprised that we were let in, that the drinks weren’t that expensive, and that the music was great.
This place turned out to be one of Yerevan’s ubiquitous “show clubs”, where live acts performed whilst the patrons ate dinner/had drinks/danced. By the end of the night we were signing along to pop songs in Armenian and dancing with a group of middle-aged Armenian women who lived in Iran. The following day we discovered that the most popular of the three acts who rotated on and off stage were in fact well-known Armenian pop stars with a significant social media following. If you’re into Eurovision-style pop, you would love them.
So go to Yerevan, you will have an unexpectedly great time. When we go back, we won’t go in August (or July) and will either hire a car or a guide so that we can see parts of the country which are odd-limits to the public transport traveller. If he’s still in the business we’ll employ the services of Ruben Poghosyan, a hilarious and intelligent guide who we chatted to at the top of the Cascades whilst watching the sunset over Mt Ararat.
Mt Arart and Yerevan from the Cascades.