The marshrutka to Yerevan got in around 4pm. This was my first interaction with the marshrutka system. You go to a place at a time, wait until a bus fills up completely – however long that takes (hours) then you leave. This did not turn out to be my favorite mode of transportation.
(pretty nice landscapes heading south from Tbilisi to Yerevan)
I still had a few more daylight hours after arriving so I wandered nearby the hostel.
Not knowing anyone in town, and the hostel relatively empty, I decided to check out couchsurfing.com and see what was going on. My luck! There was a couchsurfing meet up later that day!
The meetup was something like 15 people, half local, half tourists from different places: Ukraine, USA, Kosavo/Switzerland, India/America, and more. We got to know each other over beers in the basement of a coffee shop. It was great and I met so many nice people!
When the crowd started to peter out later in the evening, a number of us decided to check out some local bars for one last beer together before parting ways.
By the evening’s end, I had plans for the next day to meet my new local friend Artur to hitchhike to some attractions nearby, dinner plans with another new local friend Vahe, and a tentative idea to go to a region recognized by Armenia as its own country by not by anyone else, Artsakh, with an Indian-American tourist Sandeep, two days hence.
The next morning, I met Artur by where the meetup had been. We took a bus to the outskirts of the city, where we met some Dutch sisters going to the same town, Garni, just outside of Yerevan.
Garni has an old Roman temple that is well preserved.
The Dutch sisters were planning to take the bus there, so got off at the bus station. We, on the other hand, took the bus to its last stop, and started hitchhiking.
I would stick my thumb out, and Artur would do all the talking (in Armenian).
Immediately, we were picked up by two guys. The driver offered to Artur to show me around, Artur translated, and asked how is she supposed to know to trust you, and he said, I’m a normal guy with an American family. It was a nice offer, but one which I politely declined (for many reasons, including the language barrier). He let us off before turning away from the road to Garni. Sticking my thumb out again, we were immediately picked up by a family: father driving and mother with child on lap in back. They drove us the rest of the way to Garni. Thanks!
En route into the temple, there were women selling preserves. I saw the walnut preserve that Merek had been talking about incessantly , so i picked it up. (I didn’t end up eating it until I met up with Merek again in Istanbul, over a month later, but when we shared the jar I learned that it was indeed delicious, and immediately regretted not buying more/trying it earlier).
Getting into Garni, Artur and I wandered around the Roman ruins, which were impressively preserved.
Wandering around the grounds, we ran into the Dutch women that we’d met on the bus. They asked us what we were up to next and Artur mentioned that there was an awesome walk not to be missed down into the gorge, something called the ‘symphony of stones.’
The four of us walked down from the ruins towards the geological formation. Some of the walk down passed through people’s fields (with wild blackberries, cultivated fruit trees, tons of puddles and spiky plants).
After 10-15 minutes of walking, we hit a gate. Artur asked the person who was guarding the land behind the gate if we could pass through. Apparently, he guard was there to make sure that no one contaminated the water supply that ran through the owned-by-the-government land.
The guard let us pass through the land, gave us some of the most delicious apples that were growing on the land and a few fresh walnuts, and showed us an outlook over the water supply that ran through the gorge between the symphony of stones! It was truly impressive and shat geghets’ik (very beautiful)! We enjoyed the apples together before parting ways with him to go deeper into the gorge.
(view the guard showed us)
(Artur and I)
(the guard and I)
We kept going down into the gorge and found ourselves beneath the symphony of stones.
So cool! It was a huge formation.
We hung out there for a bit, before taking another route up, through the town of Garni to the bus station.
(There were water fountains everywhere as we went up with some of the most tasty water I’ve ever had.)
Artur had been there a million times before and knew all of the cool things. He pointed out a a tiny church in the town with roosters, old gravestones, slabs of stone that had carvings, and fresh walnuts lying on the ground from nearby trees.
(church)
(intricately carved stone)
(graves)
In fact, there were lots of villagers collecting walnuts from their trees. I really enjoyed seeing that (having previously not known what a walnut tree even looked like)!
We found the bus stop and decided to check out another Artur-recommended place: Geghard monastery a medieval monastery and UNESCO world heritage site. The Dutch sisters joined us and we took the bus to the last point before we’d need to hitchhike or take a taxi to the monastery. With four of us, we decided to take a taxi, which cost something like $8 and included the round trip and the driver waiting for us for at least 30 minutes. Nuts!
(monastery)
(close up)
(monks caves in here)
(wall details)
(between buildings at the monastery)
There I found and bought gata, the crazy bread that Merek had also recommended, it was delicious!
(inside the bread)
The monastery was cool, carved in stone into the mountain, the acoustics were impressive and the monks caves nearby were also extensive.
We wandered to a point that overlooked the monastery and caught a great view of the whole area before deciding to catch our taxi back to the bus to Yerevan proper.
I spent the evening chatting with some other people that I’d met at the meetup group the night before, had some of the best warm meat-stuffed grape leaves ever, served with yogurt, and made plans to meet Sandeep by Yerevan’s bus station the next day to catch a marshrutka to Stepanakert, the capital and largest city of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh/independent country of Artsakh.
songtreetravels 