from Yerevan to Goris including visits to Chor Virap and Noravank - Caucasian summer 2024 - 15
from Yerevan to Goris including visits to Chor Virap and Noravank
from Haghpat in Armenia to Tbilisi in Georgia
Tbilisi and back home
30.07.2024 - from Yerevan to Goris including visits to Chor Virap and Noravank
Today we are heading south. However, we will not reach our final destination of Goris until the evening, as we will be making several stops along the way.
First one is Chor Virap [↗], a place very close to the Turkish border. If you're lucky, Mount Ararat [↗], which is already in Turkey, isn't hidden in the clouds. Already in Yerevan, we realize that we are among the lucky ones. After an hour, we reach the unofficial viewpoint where you can take a photo of the monastery with Ararat in the background.
The local agency told our tour guide yesterday that the summer is exceptionally wet and cold this year. At the moment we have 24°C, in other years temperatures can easily reach 40°C. I guess that's why we can see the mountain so well.
From the parking lot, you have to walk past stalls selling tourist stuff and climb some stairs to the entrance of the monastery. The area is not too big, but if you want you can climb down a steep ladder to see the dungeon where Saint Gregory was kept in prison, before he converted the king, making Armenia to the first Christian country.
Behind the monastery you can climb a small hill, to see the monastery from above - and of course, you're a few kilometers closer to the Ararat there than from the viewpoint before.
We continue our journey towards the Armenian wine region. In the small villages, you can see a stork's nest on every power line pole. Most of them are inhabited.
Politically, this area is tricky. At a roundabout, we have to turn left as in front of us is the Azerbaijan exclave Nachitschewan [↗], which we are not allowed to enter. Even the road we take goes through the village of Karkii, which belongs to this exclave and is therefore an exclave of the exclave.
Around noon we make a stop at the Areni winery for a short tour and a wine tasting. For ca. 2,5 Euros we get 10 wines (from grapes and fruits) and a schnapps (peach brandy or vodka). Some wines are dry, but most of them are rather sweet. Unfortunately, even the dry ones are not really my taste.
The Noravank monastery [↗] is very close by. It lies in front of some red-colored hills. Somehow the area reminds me of western USA. In theory, we're there at the worst possible light, but in one of the two churches, a bright beam of light is shining through the window. It's so clear and sharp that it looks fake even in reality.
The biggest challenge apart from the light is the amount of people. Like yesterday at the Geghard Monastery, we're the only tour bus, but there are also lots of other people in cars and vans.
Half an hour before we reach Goris, we make a stop at Zorats Karer [↗], the so-called Stonehenge of Armenia. It's a field of menhirs and reminds me more of Carnac. It's a prehistoric graveyard about which very little is known It is even unclear whether the stones were erected together with the tombs or at a different time. Obviously, this opens up the field for speculation and one of them is that it was used as an observatory. As this is also one of the explanations for Stonehenge, it wasn't long before the site was nicknamed the "Stonehenge of Armenia".
It's one of those places you take with you if you're in the area anyway. 3.50 Euro is the standard entrance fee in Armenia for any non-religious site. Same here, but compared to other places it's a bit much for what you get.
Our hotel in Goris [↗] is at the northern end of town. After check-in at the hotel, I decide to take a look around the village. I walk down one street and up another. There is absolutely nothing of interest.
