Halidzor and the Tatev cable car: twelve minutes above the Vorotan canyon

The road down from Goris towards Tatev reaches a car park on the edge of a 500-metre gorge, and from there a red cabin sets out into the void and vanishes towards the other side. This is the Halidzor station, the start of the Wings of Tatev cable car, and the gorge is the Vorotan canyon. On some websites the area appears as Jaghatsadzor; on maps and at the ticket office it is Halidzor. What matters is that the cabins leave from here, and that the ride, twelve minutes in the air, is as memorable as the monastery it takes you to.

The cable car

It was built by an Austrian company and opened in 2010, with a Guinness record as the longest single-span cable car in the world: 5,752 metres between Halidzor and Tatev, up to 320 metres above the canyon floor, at 37 km/h. Two cabins of 25 people that pass each other halfway. It used to take forty minutes by car on a track that drops to the river and climbs again; now it is twelve minutes looking down. It runs from 10:00 to 19:00 in summer and less in winter, closes on Mondays for maintenance and in strong wind, and the return ticket costs a few thousand drams, with a discount for children. On summer weekends there are queues; book a time slot online.

What is at the top

The 9th-century monastery of Tatev, on a ledge above the canyon: three churches, a wall, the refectory, the swinging column Gavazan, which the monks erected in 904 to warn of earthquakes, and the rooms of the medieval university that in the 14th and 15th centuries was the most important in Armenia, with hundreds of students. There is a restaurant, and you can sleep in the village of Tatev, right by the monastery, in guesthouses, something almost nobody does and which lets you see the place without groups in the late afternoon.

What is at the bottom

At the bottom of the canyon, where the old track crosses the river, is the Devil's Bridge, a natural rock arch beneath which there are hot-spring pools with coloured stalactites. You reach it by car along the track from Halidzor in twenty minutes and climb down to the pools by a ladder. Many go up by cable car and come back by car via the bridge, or the other way round.

On the southern route

Halidzor is 30 km from Goris, the town where you sleep, and four hours from Yerevan. The usual plan is Tatev in the morning and Khndzoresk, the cave village with its suspension bridge, in the afternoon, with a night in Goris before continuing to Sisian or to the Iranian border.

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