Phew, I am still a bit wiped out and aching from yesterday... I headed out on a road trip at 10am and returned at 1am. That is a 15 hour trip, of which about 10 were spent in the car, with approx 6 of those offroad, and all of them with at least 6 people (albeit two of them 11yo) in a 5 passenger car, and not a spacious one to begin with.
We began with a drive up to Lake Sevan, and headed down to its southern tip of Martuni (yes, we have one in Armenia too, not just Karabakh). From there we headed south into a massive alpine plain (over 2km) and then offroad to find some petroglyphs (or geoglyphs as the expert with us said). We finally got to the first few at about 4pm, which were near some villagers camping out it these high meadows above their villages, gathering hay for the winter. The winters around Lake Sevan are very long (Oct-Apr) since it is 1km higher than Yerevan, which is 1km high itself, and luckily for these villagers, the fields here were very lush. The variety and color of the wildflowers was mind-boggling, every few meters a new color would dominate, but if you looked closely there were always many different colors in any spot. The bees and grasshoppers were having a field day (no pun intended). Some of the flower fields were seemingly endless, and it was a little sad to see it all being cut down for winter animal feed. Anyway, the villagers helped us get a khorovats (barbeque) started which we ate together, and we took pictures and inspected the interesting petroglyphs which are so different from the patterns on Ughtasar. The other major difference is that here there were only a handful of rocks with these 5 thousand year old markings, while in Ughtasar there are thousands. Our expert friend was explaining some of the significance of the drawings and his theories, which apparently he believes to be related to astronomy. I am glad he was with us because we would have never found them in a million years otherwise. Luckily I have the GPS coordinates now and can go back anytime!
After the food we headed for the next site over bad roads, and in this whole region we kept noticing the vivid blue eyes so many of the villagers had as we kept asking directions ;-) We got to the next set of petroglyphs and these were very worn out, but again luckily the expert was explaining what they appeared to be and showed us some of his photos where he had enhanced the engravings. Very interesting... following that we stopped by Selim Caravanserai, which was in the neighborhood (you would realize how insanely off the beaten track we were if you know how out of the way Selim is) and dropped down from 2.4km elevation down towards Yeghegnadzor as the sun set. Nearly reaching the Ararat plain where so much of the highway has been completely torn up, we stopped in the dark for a watermelon at one of the first of countless fruit stands along the road. It was a delicious melon and overhead the stars were magnificent in this area without much man-made illumination, the half moon just allowed us to make out the silouhette of Ararat, and off on our right, where Yerevan lay was a cloud system which was exploding with lightening and causing brush fires as we drove home (no rain till hours later). As we approached the police station on the outskirts of Yerevan where I had had an arguement with the officers who I told to treat tourists more kindly (see older logs), there were no police standing outside pulling people over. In fact, across the entire area we had covered we hadn't seen a single one! What could explain what was nothing short of a miracle? Apparently at this very police station some journalists had gotten pulled over a few days earlier and recorded the bribe. Incredibly enough in a country where every single person knows this is the deal, it created a scandal, and for the past few days across the country they have completely stopped taking bribes. I do not expect this to last long, but boy is it nice! We finally pulled in at exactly 1am and I was soon collapsed in bed.
We began with a drive up to Lake Sevan, and headed down to its southern tip of Martuni (yes, we have one in Armenia too, not just Karabakh). From there we headed south into a massive alpine plain (over 2km) and then offroad to find some petroglyphs (or geoglyphs as the expert with us said). We finally got to the first few at about 4pm, which were near some villagers camping out it these high meadows above their villages, gathering hay for the winter. The winters around Lake Sevan are very long (Oct-Apr) since it is 1km higher than Yerevan, which is 1km high itself, and luckily for these villagers, the fields here were very lush. The variety and color of the wildflowers was mind-boggling, every few meters a new color would dominate, but if you looked closely there were always many different colors in any spot. The bees and grasshoppers were having a field day (no pun intended). Some of the flower fields were seemingly endless, and it was a little sad to see it all being cut down for winter animal feed. Anyway, the villagers helped us get a khorovats (barbeque) started which we ate together, and we took pictures and inspected the interesting petroglyphs which are so different from the patterns on Ughtasar. The other major difference is that here there were only a handful of rocks with these 5 thousand year old markings, while in Ughtasar there are thousands. Our expert friend was explaining some of the significance of the drawings and his theories, which apparently he believes to be related to astronomy. I am glad he was with us because we would have never found them in a million years otherwise. Luckily I have the GPS coordinates now and can go back anytime!
After the food we headed for the next site over bad roads, and in this whole region we kept noticing the vivid blue eyes so many of the villagers had as we kept asking directions ;-) We got to the next set of petroglyphs and these were very worn out, but again luckily the expert was explaining what they appeared to be and showed us some of his photos where he had enhanced the engravings. Very interesting... following that we stopped by Selim Caravanserai, which was in the neighborhood (you would realize how insanely off the beaten track we were if you know how out of the way Selim is) and dropped down from 2.4km elevation down towards Yeghegnadzor as the sun set. Nearly reaching the Ararat plain where so much of the highway has been completely torn up, we stopped in the dark for a watermelon at one of the first of countless fruit stands along the road. It was a delicious melon and overhead the stars were magnificent in this area without much man-made illumination, the half moon just allowed us to make out the silouhette of Ararat, and off on our right, where Yerevan lay was a cloud system which was exploding with lightening and causing brush fires as we drove home (no rain till hours later). As we approached the police station on the outskirts of Yerevan where I had had an arguement with the officers who I told to treat tourists more kindly (see older logs), there were no police standing outside pulling people over. In fact, across the entire area we had covered we hadn't seen a single one! What could explain what was nothing short of a miracle? Apparently at this very police station some journalists had gotten pulled over a few days earlier and recorded the bribe. Incredibly enough in a country where every single person knows this is the deal, it created a scandal, and for the past few days across the country they have completely stopped taking bribes. I do not expect this to last long, but boy is it nice! We finally pulled in at exactly 1am and I was soon collapsed in bed.
posted by Raffi K. at 9:48 AM
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