Formalities completed we steered our hire car left, right, up, down and around just to get out of the car park ! Leaving the city introd us to the Armenian style of driving that was to plague us for the next few days. Fast, tailgating, overtaking anywhere .. add in really poor signage and it took a few attempts to escape into the countryside
Immediately the scenery picked up. Our first stop was at Khor Virap a stunningly situated Monastery perched on a hill facing the massive figure of the 5,000 + metre mountain of Mt Ararat once in Armenia but now just over the border into Turkey !
Some beautiful driving followed as we climbed over a Mtn pass with snow still evident. Our descent though revealed a few places at the bottom of various hills with massive potholes. So big in fact that cars and trucks would take their own chaotic routes to avoid.
Eventually we took a beautiful Gorge road to visit the amazing Noravank Monastery perched high surrounded by red sandstone hills. This Monastery was an important position for trade and wealth on one of the nearby silk roads.
Our last bit of the day was a ridiculous descent on shocking roads into a gorge just short of Tatev. This had Henley using every expletive in the book ! Almost unbelievably the ascent was on perfect winding bitumen !
Tatev was another story ! This small non descript village exists entirely on muddy narrow unsigned roads. We circled the town 3 times trying to find our accommodation always ending up back at the towns Cemetry !
After ages and speaking to persons with little undertanding of English we found our B&B and collapsed into our luxurious room absolutely stuffed after a long day on the road. We were way too tired to go out searching for food instead settling on an ice cream from a local shop ! What a day !
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| Noravank Monastery |
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| Khor Virap with Mt Ararat in the distance |
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