Day 3 - The south - or tick tick tick - or mud, mud, mud
Bright and early in the morning, Hagop Bedrossian headed off for Stepanakert to visit some more with his friend there, while we tried to get ready for our day. From Ara's compound we headed south past Fizuli to an unpronouncable village which sustained heavy damage during the war, and had no inhabitants. We were in search of a caravanserai, and the nearby soldiers did not recognize it from pictures. Although it was quite possibly destroyed, we decided to search a bit anyways. Wary of landmines, we stuck to a trampled path and after going a ways, I noticed a tick on my jeans, then another, and then I noticed I was covered with them! I quickly headed back to the road with the group and we started flicking the ticks off of ourselves, then checking each other like baboons. I had no less that 30 ticks crawling on my jeans, shoes and socks. They don't burrow right away so it was simply a matter of flicking them off.
From there we high-tailed it to the town of Hadrut where we visited the Spitak Khach Vank above town. It was a nice little church with a good view, and we followed it up with a nice khorovadz (bbq) in Hadrut.
From there we headed north as the hot day became cloudy and the road we were travelling on got worse and worse. Eventually Ara got us stuck in the mud, then the only other car on the road got stuck as well. Luckily we were near a village and in less than an hour, with a long rope and a lot of muscle power, we pulled our way out of that goop and headed on towards Togh Village, then almost to Tumi Village before heading up a beautiful mountain to the amazing, undiscovered gem of Gtichavank.
Aside from the horrible graffiti covering the interior of Gtichavank (yes, by Armenians) the architecture is absolutely awesome, and the views just as breathtaking. As we started to look around, the clouds started to pour rain on us and we began to worry that the completely dirt road which hugs the cliff would become muddy and unsafe. We could easily be stuck for days, but either luck or Ara's prayers stopped the rain soon enough and we hightailed it down the mountain.
Heading back towards Togh, on a sharp turn a wheel just fell off the car! In the drizzle and mud we teamed up to change the tire. I found one of the nuts that had fallen off of the wheel in the mud, and removed a few nuts from other wheels while Ara and Jack changed the tire. Thank goodness Ara had bought a jack on Day 2 of the trip!!! Now we were rushing as much as possible towards Stepanakert to pick up Lena, who was joining us late, when we managed to lose our way and end up near Fizuli. At this point it was very late and we had to put off picking up Lena till the next morning and headed to Martuni instead. Luckily for her she was waiting for us at the Hotel Nairi and the Australians there took good care of her. Once again I fell dead asleep and woke up bright and early for another day of adventure.
Day 4 - Yeritsmankants
We had to leave at 8am to meet up with Lena in Aghdam of all places, to pick her up on our way to Martakert. We were running late for our 9am meeting in Martakert when the police stopped us and hassled us a few minutes. When we asked what was wrong they said they were registering all the cars... well then why weren't they stopping all the cars??? "I am not a robot" was this genius' answer! We kept going until we reached the military base where one of the commanders (or generals, I don't keep close track of these titles) gave us instructions on where to go and who to meet. The were sufficiently vague that when we reached Mataghis we had to ask around and eventually made it to Tonashen village where we picked up our guide.
We were told it was not possible to see all 3 places we wanted to in one day, so we headed off toward Jraberd Fortress and Yeritsmankants Vank which did not require any hiking. The dirt road was surprisingly good and we did not have to share it with anyone. We were however, 6 people in a 5 seat car and I ended up with only one cheek on the seat. The scenery was incredible with sheer mountains completely covered in lush green forests. This whole region was like that and as a Southern Californian I enjoyed that very much. When we got to Jraberd, which is primarily a natural fortress with not a great deal of made made enhancements we had fun exploring and climbing the steep cliff. The ruins at the top had very recently been dug in and our guide told us that some foreigners had come with a map and dug up gold. Sounds unlikely, but who knows?
From Jraberd you can already see Yertismankants and as we drove towards it we stopped to photograph the forest canopy surrounding us. A 4.2 kilometers after that stop Jack realized he had forgotten his video camera on the front bumper of the car, but there was no way to turn around and look for it. We decided to go on with our trip and hope for the best. Yeritsmankants is a very interesting monastery which was built by Caucasian Albanians and was the center of their church when it was built. They use the Armenian script for their language, but of course I couldn't understand it since I do not know Caucasian Albanian (Aghvan in Armenian). The architecture and decorations were similiar, but noticeably different from the usual Armenian monastery. We headed a little past the monastery to a spot by a stream with a spring to have our picnic lunch. During lunch I noticed another tick on my pants, and flicked it off... this wouldn't be my last encounter with them. On the way back from the monastery to the village, Jacks amazing luck held up as we spotted his videocamera sitting completely unharmed in the dirt. We stopped for a break while Ara bathed. The commander of the area sent a car to find us and a messenger informed us we were invited to his house for dinner to celebrate his birthday. We headed over and the toasts and eating began. After plate after plate of delicious meat was brought out and consumed, a call came informing the commander that a circus had come to visit the base... a kind of birthday surprise for the commander too. Our eating was cut short and the massive pot of crawdads was not to be tasted by us.
The circus performance was in the mess hall (cafeteria) of the base and it was quite crowded with new recruits who were tired of marching for the past 6 weeks. A clown, a contortionist, a gymnist, a ring/rope magician, a juggler, a monkey, a snake and a "Ringmistress" entertained the crowd for hours. The soldiers absolutely loved it and we headed headed back to our car very late to set up our tents and camp on the lumpy moist ground. The party going on nearby at the commanders house was very loud and kept us up past 3 am, but there was nowhere else to go and we had to try to sleep a bit in preparation for the next days hike.
Day 5 - Yeghishe Arakyal - the "short-cut"
Waking up with the sun and very little sleep, we got ready for the hike. At 9am we set out and were hiking by 9:30. The hike was meant to be an hour and a half to two hours, so we decided not to carry our lunches with us and just eat when we got back. We had not had a chance to eat breakfast either, but did take a little bit of water with us for the hike and eat a couple of candy bars for energy. Ara and the guide had previously decided to take a "shortcut" without our knowlege and I grew more and more suspicious that something was wrong when there was just no sign of a trail, which the guide kept saying would show up soon. On top of the fact that we were completely blazing our own trail, taking a "short cut" that takes much longer than the normal trail and I believe is longer as well, the guide got lost. Needless to say, after hiking for 4 hours to get to the monastery through deep forest and bush down the entire steep and muddy side of a mountain and halfway up another, without having eaten and even without enough water, we were exhausted, grumpy, and even exploring the large monastery compound seemed to require more energy than we had. The complex was quite nice, and well worth the hike... if we had only taken the right trail! Tired of bushwhacking, we insisted on taking the trail strait back to the village, and getting a lift to the car. This clear, fairly level path took us less than two hours and when we got into the village the guide spotted an extremely dangeroud "G'rzo?" snake. He had been boasting that he could catch these things and decided to show us. We tried to convince him to skip the show and not risk it but he proceeded to catch the thing and show us its fangs before squashing it to death. We continued through the village, picking some of the first ripe mulberries, since we were starving and dehydrated. They tasted absolutely fantastic! We stopped at a little shop and ate lots of junk food while Ara and the guide went after the car. Upon their return we bid our guide farewell and I once again could place both of my butt cheeks on the seat on the ride to Stepanakert.
The hike had taken so much out of me, that I assumed the next day I would be in no shape to travel the bumpy roads and hike around, so I planned to return to Yerevan with Lena and Zabel. We checked into a room at the Karabakh hotel ($3/person for a regular room, $5/person for a luxury room with its very own toilet) and headed to a pizza joint to refill our bodies. The food was great (although probably anything would have been delicious at this point) and we became a tourist attraction on the walk back to the hotel in our filthy exotic condition. Ara left us and headed home, while we settled in. While preparing for bed, I discovered a tick had lodged itself in my ankle, and I dug it out. After a nice shower (75cents) which was a small story in itself, we slept like babies.
Day 6 - The return trip
The four of us had breakfast in bed (total bill, $2) and called a cab to take us to Yerevan as we had not patience for public transportation at this point and with three of us sharing the cab it wouldn't be too expensive. Well this was the slowest taxi driver I have ever seen and we had to tell him three times to speed up. It took forever to reach Yerevan. He came to a complete stop for many of the potholes, I think his vision was quite poor too... in Yerevan he seemed not to see any of the traffic lights and we had to shout directions to him in order to prevent an accident... I wonder how he would ever made it out of the city in one piece. After downloading well over 100 e-mails and typing up a bit of our adventures, discovering and removing another tick, and showering, I went to finally went to bed.
I will have to post pictures and links to where we went later... typing this much up took forever.
Bright and early in the morning, Hagop Bedrossian headed off for Stepanakert to visit some more with his friend there, while we tried to get ready for our day. From Ara's compound we headed south past Fizuli to an unpronouncable village which sustained heavy damage during the war, and had no inhabitants. We were in search of a caravanserai, and the nearby soldiers did not recognize it from pictures. Although it was quite possibly destroyed, we decided to search a bit anyways. Wary of landmines, we stuck to a trampled path and after going a ways, I noticed a tick on my jeans, then another, and then I noticed I was covered with them! I quickly headed back to the road with the group and we started flicking the ticks off of ourselves, then checking each other like baboons. I had no less that 30 ticks crawling on my jeans, shoes and socks. They don't burrow right away so it was simply a matter of flicking them off.
From there we high-tailed it to the town of Hadrut where we visited the Spitak Khach Vank above town. It was a nice little church with a good view, and we followed it up with a nice khorovadz (bbq) in Hadrut.
From there we headed north as the hot day became cloudy and the road we were travelling on got worse and worse. Eventually Ara got us stuck in the mud, then the only other car on the road got stuck as well. Luckily we were near a village and in less than an hour, with a long rope and a lot of muscle power, we pulled our way out of that goop and headed on towards Togh Village, then almost to Tumi Village before heading up a beautiful mountain to the amazing, undiscovered gem of Gtichavank.
Aside from the horrible graffiti covering the interior of Gtichavank (yes, by Armenians) the architecture is absolutely awesome, and the views just as breathtaking. As we started to look around, the clouds started to pour rain on us and we began to worry that the completely dirt road which hugs the cliff would become muddy and unsafe. We could easily be stuck for days, but either luck or Ara's prayers stopped the rain soon enough and we hightailed it down the mountain.
Heading back towards Togh, on a sharp turn a wheel just fell off the car! In the drizzle and mud we teamed up to change the tire. I found one of the nuts that had fallen off of the wheel in the mud, and removed a few nuts from other wheels while Ara and Jack changed the tire. Thank goodness Ara had bought a jack on Day 2 of the trip!!! Now we were rushing as much as possible towards Stepanakert to pick up Lena, who was joining us late, when we managed to lose our way and end up near Fizuli. At this point it was very late and we had to put off picking up Lena till the next morning and headed to Martuni instead. Luckily for her she was waiting for us at the Hotel Nairi and the Australians there took good care of her. Once again I fell dead asleep and woke up bright and early for another day of adventure.
Day 4 - Yeritsmankants
We had to leave at 8am to meet up with Lena in Aghdam of all places, to pick her up on our way to Martakert. We were running late for our 9am meeting in Martakert when the police stopped us and hassled us a few minutes. When we asked what was wrong they said they were registering all the cars... well then why weren't they stopping all the cars??? "I am not a robot" was this genius' answer! We kept going until we reached the military base where one of the commanders (or generals, I don't keep close track of these titles) gave us instructions on where to go and who to meet. The were sufficiently vague that when we reached Mataghis we had to ask around and eventually made it to Tonashen village where we picked up our guide.
We were told it was not possible to see all 3 places we wanted to in one day, so we headed off toward Jraberd Fortress and Yeritsmankants Vank which did not require any hiking. The dirt road was surprisingly good and we did not have to share it with anyone. We were however, 6 people in a 5 seat car and I ended up with only one cheek on the seat. The scenery was incredible with sheer mountains completely covered in lush green forests. This whole region was like that and as a Southern Californian I enjoyed that very much. When we got to Jraberd, which is primarily a natural fortress with not a great deal of made made enhancements we had fun exploring and climbing the steep cliff. The ruins at the top had very recently been dug in and our guide told us that some foreigners had come with a map and dug up gold. Sounds unlikely, but who knows?
From Jraberd you can already see Yertismankants and as we drove towards it we stopped to photograph the forest canopy surrounding us. A 4.2 kilometers after that stop Jack realized he had forgotten his video camera on the front bumper of the car, but there was no way to turn around and look for it. We decided to go on with our trip and hope for the best. Yeritsmankants is a very interesting monastery which was built by Caucasian Albanians and was the center of their church when it was built. They use the Armenian script for their language, but of course I couldn't understand it since I do not know Caucasian Albanian (Aghvan in Armenian). The architecture and decorations were similiar, but noticeably different from the usual Armenian monastery. We headed a little past the monastery to a spot by a stream with a spring to have our picnic lunch. During lunch I noticed another tick on my pants, and flicked it off... this wouldn't be my last encounter with them. On the way back from the monastery to the village, Jacks amazing luck held up as we spotted his videocamera sitting completely unharmed in the dirt. We stopped for a break while Ara bathed. The commander of the area sent a car to find us and a messenger informed us we were invited to his house for dinner to celebrate his birthday. We headed over and the toasts and eating began. After plate after plate of delicious meat was brought out and consumed, a call came informing the commander that a circus had come to visit the base... a kind of birthday surprise for the commander too. Our eating was cut short and the massive pot of crawdads was not to be tasted by us.
The circus performance was in the mess hall (cafeteria) of the base and it was quite crowded with new recruits who were tired of marching for the past 6 weeks. A clown, a contortionist, a gymnist, a ring/rope magician, a juggler, a monkey, a snake and a "Ringmistress" entertained the crowd for hours. The soldiers absolutely loved it and we headed headed back to our car very late to set up our tents and camp on the lumpy moist ground. The party going on nearby at the commanders house was very loud and kept us up past 3 am, but there was nowhere else to go and we had to try to sleep a bit in preparation for the next days hike.
Day 5 - Yeghishe Arakyal - the "short-cut"
Waking up with the sun and very little sleep, we got ready for the hike. At 9am we set out and were hiking by 9:30. The hike was meant to be an hour and a half to two hours, so we decided not to carry our lunches with us and just eat when we got back. We had not had a chance to eat breakfast either, but did take a little bit of water with us for the hike and eat a couple of candy bars for energy. Ara and the guide had previously decided to take a "shortcut" without our knowlege and I grew more and more suspicious that something was wrong when there was just no sign of a trail, which the guide kept saying would show up soon. On top of the fact that we were completely blazing our own trail, taking a "short cut" that takes much longer than the normal trail and I believe is longer as well, the guide got lost. Needless to say, after hiking for 4 hours to get to the monastery through deep forest and bush down the entire steep and muddy side of a mountain and halfway up another, without having eaten and even without enough water, we were exhausted, grumpy, and even exploring the large monastery compound seemed to require more energy than we had. The complex was quite nice, and well worth the hike... if we had only taken the right trail! Tired of bushwhacking, we insisted on taking the trail strait back to the village, and getting a lift to the car. This clear, fairly level path took us less than two hours and when we got into the village the guide spotted an extremely dangeroud "G'rzo?" snake. He had been boasting that he could catch these things and decided to show us. We tried to convince him to skip the show and not risk it but he proceeded to catch the thing and show us its fangs before squashing it to death. We continued through the village, picking some of the first ripe mulberries, since we were starving and dehydrated. They tasted absolutely fantastic! We stopped at a little shop and ate lots of junk food while Ara and the guide went after the car. Upon their return we bid our guide farewell and I once again could place both of my butt cheeks on the seat on the ride to Stepanakert.
The hike had taken so much out of me, that I assumed the next day I would be in no shape to travel the bumpy roads and hike around, so I planned to return to Yerevan with Lena and Zabel. We checked into a room at the Karabakh hotel ($3/person for a regular room, $5/person for a luxury room with its very own toilet) and headed to a pizza joint to refill our bodies. The food was great (although probably anything would have been delicious at this point) and we became a tourist attraction on the walk back to the hotel in our filthy exotic condition. Ara left us and headed home, while we settled in. While preparing for bed, I discovered a tick had lodged itself in my ankle, and I dug it out. After a nice shower (75cents) which was a small story in itself, we slept like babies.
Day 6 - The return trip
The four of us had breakfast in bed (total bill, $2) and called a cab to take us to Yerevan as we had not patience for public transportation at this point and with three of us sharing the cab it wouldn't be too expensive. Well this was the slowest taxi driver I have ever seen and we had to tell him three times to speed up. It took forever to reach Yerevan. He came to a complete stop for many of the potholes, I think his vision was quite poor too... in Yerevan he seemed not to see any of the traffic lights and we had to shout directions to him in order to prevent an accident... I wonder how he would ever made it out of the city in one piece. After downloading well over 100 e-mails and typing up a bit of our adventures, discovering and removing another tick, and showering, I went to finally went to bed.
I will have to post pictures and links to where we went later... typing this much up took forever.
posted by Raffi K. at 8:23 PM
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