Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia in 16 days: from the Caspian to Ararat

Itinerary

Day 1 - Transfer from Baku airport to Baku

Total road of the day - 20KM 0 Hours and 30 Minutes We pick you up at the airport whenever your flight lands and go to the hotel. No more programme today. Road 20KM 0 Hours and 30 Minutes

Day 2 - Baku - Absheron - Baku

Total road of the day - 94KM 2 Hours and 4 Minutes In the morning, the Palace of the Shirvanshahs; in the afternoon, Ateshgah, Yanardag, Heydar Aliyev Center and Yashil Bazar. 94 km in all. Road 9KM 0 Hours and 25 Minutes

Palace of the Shirvanshahs

The Shirvanshahs ruled this coast for almost a thousand years, and when in the 15th century they moved from Shamakhi to Baku, fleeing the earthquakes, they built themselves this palace at the top of the old city. It is not a palace of gilded halls: it is a group of pale limestone buildings, plain, with the divan where audiences were held, the mosque, the family mausoleum, the baths and the tomb of Seyid Yahya Bakuvi, the court scholar. The eastern portal, from 1585, is the most elaborate piece. A UNESCO site since 2000, together with the Maiden Tower. An hour, including the explanation of who was who. It is five minutes on foot from the Maiden Tower, so the two visits run into each other. In the afternoon the stone takes on a golden colour that is worth the photo. Road 21KM 0 Hours and 30 Minutes

Ateshgah, the fire temple

The flames you see on the altar come out of a pipe nowadays; the real ones went out in 1969, when the wells around exhausted the gas that had seeped out of the ground on its own for centuries. That does not make the place less interesting: Ateshgah, at Surakhani, 30 km from Baku, was built in the 17th and 18th centuries by Hindu and Sikh merchants from Multan, in today's Pakistan, who worshipped fire and paid for the cells around the pentagonal courtyard. Inscriptions in Sanskrit and Punjabi remain above the doors. It has been a museum since 1975 and is a candidate for the UNESCO list. Three quarters of an hour, much of it in the sun. The story that matters here is that of a crossroads: Zoroastrians, Hindus and traders on the India route praying to the same flame in the middle of the caliphate. Road 35KM 0 Hours and 30 Minutes

Yanardag, the burning mountain

A sandstone hillside ten metres wide that has been burning for decades with nobody feeding it. Gas seeps through the rock and, once lit, goes out neither in rain nor in snow; local lore says it was a shepherd with a cigarette in the 1950s. Yanardag means "burning mountain", it is 27 km from Baku and it is the shortest explanation of why Azerbaijan is called the land of fire: Zoroastrians worshipped flames like these long before oil. The flames reach a metre, sometimes more when the wind picks up. It has been a protected reserve since 2007 and in 2019 it got a visitor centre and seating. Half an hour, and if there is a choice, at dusk: in daylight, with the sun out, you can barely see the fire. Road 17KM 0 Hours and 35 Minutes

Heydar Aliyev Center

There is not a single straight line in the whole building. Zaha Hadid designed it as a white wave rising out of the ground and it opened in 2012; it is by far the most photographed thing in new Baku. Inside the Heydar Aliyev Center there are changing exhibitions, a collection of classic cars and a museum devoted to the president the building is named after, father of the current one. We say so to make clear what it is: a great piece of architecture and, at the same time, a state monument. The best part is the timing: at dusk the façade changes colour and people from the neighbourhood come out to stroll on the lawn in front. An hour if you go in, twenty minutes if you only walk around it, which is also worth it. Road 2KM 0 Hours and 4 Minutes

Yashil Bazar, the green market

If you want to know what Baku eats, this is the place. The Yashil Bazar is the covered market of old, a Soviet building with no charm outside and full of life inside: pomegranates and persimmons in autumn, mountains of fresh herbs that are eaten here as salad, sheep's cheeses, dried fruit and nuts, Shirvan saffron, pickles of everything that can be pickled and, on some stalls, Caspian caviar at prices worth asking about twice. They will give you things to taste without being asked and expect you to haggle, which is part of the deal. Three quarters of an hour. Bring small notes and, if you buy spices or nuts, ask them to vacuum-seal it, because it travels better that way. Road 10KM 0 Hours and 4 Minutes

Day 3 - Baku - Gobustan - Baku

Total road of the day - 204KM 3 Hours and 30 Minutes A day of 3 hours 30 minutes on the road with three things to see: Gobustan, the mud volcanoes and the Carpet Museum. Road 70KM 1 Hours and 5 Minutes

Gobustan, the petroglyphs

Sixty kilometres south of Baku, in a landscape of stone and wind by the Caspian, there are more than six thousand drawings carved into the rocks: hunters, bulls, reed boats, dancing women. The oldest are around forty thousand years old and the most recent are medieval. Gobustan has been a UNESCO site since 2007 and has a modern museum at the entrance that is worth seeing before you go up, because without it the rocks are just rocks. Two things we always look for: the Roman inscription of the Twelfth Legion, from the 1st century, the easternmost the Empire ever left, and the "gavaldash", a slab that sounds like a drum when you strike it with a stone. An hour and a half with the museum. Hot in summer and windy almost always. Road 30KM 0 Hours and 50 Minutes

Mud volcanoes

Almost half of the mud volcanoes on the planet are in Azerbaijan, around four hundred, and the easiest to see are the Gobustan ones, on a bare hill near the petroglyphs. They are cones of grey mud one or two metres high that burp gas and bubbles every few seconds; the mud comes out cold, you can touch it, and now and then one of them spits. No lava: it is gas from below pushing up for the same reason there is oil here. You get to the top in the locals' old Ladas along a dirt track, and that is half the fun. There is nothing up there: no shade, no toilets, no water. Half an hour. After rain the track turns to mud and sometimes you cannot get up at all. Road 84KM 1 Hours and 25 Minutes

Carpet Museum

The building is a statement in itself: a rolled-up carpet of glass and metal right on the Baku seafront, opened in 2014. Inside, the Carpet Museum holds more than ten thousand pieces and explains something Azerbaijan takes seriously: carpet weaving has been on UNESCO's intangible heritage list since 2010, and each region (Quba, Shirvan, Karabakh, Tabriz) has its own patterns and colours, which an Azerbaijani can tell apart from ten metres away. On the ground floor there are usually weavers at work, and that is the part that hooks people: watching the knots go in one by one and understanding why a good carpet costs what it costs. An hour. If you plan to buy a carpet on the trip, come here first so you know what you are looking at. Road 20KM 0 Hours and 10 Minutes

Day 4 - Baku - Shamaki - Sheki

Total road of the day - 347KM 5 Hours and 27 Minutes We leave after breakfast. On the programme, Diri Baba Mausoleum, Yeddi Gumbez, the Palace of the Sheki Khans and the Albanian church of Kish; 347 km in short stretches. Road 90KM 1 Hours and 20 Minutes

Diri Baba Mausoleum

A short stop on the road from Baku to Shamakhi, in the village of Maraza: a two-storey mausoleum from 1402 pressed against the wall of a ravine, as if it grew out of the rock. Diri Baba means "the living grandfather", and the name comes from the legend of a Sufi saint whose body, they say, never decayed. For centuries it was a place of pilgrimage and of hermits; today it is restored and empty. You climb a narrow staircase to the upper floor and, through a passage, to the top of the cliff, from where you see the valley. Twenty minutes. Mind the steps if it has rained. Road 35KM 0 Hours and 30 Minutes

Yeddi Gumbez, the seven domes

On a hill outside Shamakhi, among old graves and long grass, stand the mausoleums of the last khans of Shirvan, from the 18th and 19th centuries. It is called Yeddi Gumbez, "seven domes", although fewer than that survive whole; the earthquakes, frequent here and the reason the Shirvanshahs moved to Baku centuries earlier, have done their work on these tombs too. A quiet twenty-minute stop, with Shamakhi and its Juma mosque at your feet. The mosque, founded in 743 and rebuilt after every earthquake, most recently in 2013, passes for the oldest in the Caucasus. Road 206KM 3 Hours and 2 Minutes

Palace of the Sheki Khans

Two storeys, six rooms and not a single nail: the façade of the palace of the Sheki Khans is a wooden lattice holding thousands of pieces of coloured glass fitted without glue, the technique they call shebeke here, and when the sun comes through it the floor fills with red and blue diamonds. Khan Huseyn built it in 1762 as a summer residence, and inside the walls are painted top to bottom with battles, hunts and flowers. The two plane trees in the courtyard date from 1530, older than the palace. Photography is forbidden inside, which has its logic. A half-hour visit, and Sheki deserves another hour: the 18th-century caravanserai, where you can have tea, and the local halva, made of rice dough and walnuts, unlike any other. The historic centre has been a UNESCO site since 2019. Road 8KM 0 Hours and 20 Minutes

Albanian church of Kish

Albania, but not the Balkan one: Caucasian Albania, the kingdom that occupied the north of today's Azerbaijan until the arrival of Islam and had its own Christian church. The church of Kish, a village 5 km from Sheki, is one of the few still standing; tradition takes it back to the 1st century and the apostle Elisha, and what you see dates from the 12th and 13th centuries. The excavations of 2000 to 2003, with Norwegian archaeologists, exposed graves under glass floors and left a small museum inside. It is a short visit, 40 minutes, in a mountain village of walnut trees and stone houses that you want to walk through slowly. Thor Heyerdahl, of Kon-Tiki fame, came here convinced that the Vikings came from the Caucasus; the theory did not catch on, but the sign is still there. Road 8KM 0 Hours and 15 Minutes

Day 5 - Sheki - Lagodekhi - Kvareli - Alaverdi - Telavi

Total road of the day - 230KM 3 Hours and 51 Minutes Today we change country. Khareba Winery and Alaverdi Monastery; allow an hour for the border. 230 km in all. Road 110KM 1 Hours and 50 Minutes

Lagodekhi, the Georgia-Azerbaijan border

You cross on foot: Georgian control, a few hundred metres with your suitcase and Azerbaijani control, which is the most thorough of the three countries and can take its time. Allow an hour. On the far side the Azerbaijani car and guide are waiting. Check before leaving home whether your passport needs an e-visa for Azerbaijan; it cannot be arranged at the border. Road 47KM 0 Hours and 45 Minutes

Khareba Winery, the wine tunnel

In 1962 the Soviets dug 7.7 km of tunnels into the Caucasus foothills near Kvareli to store wine at a constant temperature: 12 to 14 degrees all year round. Today they belong to the Khareba winery, which has filled them with bottles and qvevris, the buried clay vessels Georgia has made wine in for 8,000 years. You walk a lit stretch, the method is explained and you taste: usually a white from rkatsiteli, a red from saperavi and, for the brave, chacha, the grape-pomace spirit. It is a big and fairly touristy winery, we say it so you know; in return, the tunnel is cool in high summer and the explanation is clear. An hour. Outside there is a restaurant with a terrace if lunch falls in the area. Road 52KM 0 Hours and 51 Minutes

Alaverdi Monastery

Alaverdi cathedral can be seen from far off across the Kakheti plain: 50 metres high, the second tallest church in Georgia and for almost a thousand years the tallest. Kvirike III built it in the early 11th century on the monastery founded in the 6th by Joseph of Alaverdi, one of the thirteen Assyrian fathers who brought monastic life to the country. Inside there are frescoes from the 11th to the 15th century, and photographing them is forbidden. The monks have made wine in qvevri since 2006, reviving a tradition that goes back centuries here, and in September the Alaverdoba festival brings half the region together in the meadow outside. A 40-minute visit; headscarves for women and, if you are in shorts, there are skirts to borrow at the door. Road 21KM 0 Hours and 25 Minutes

Day 6 - Telavi - Sighnaghi - Bodbe - Tbilisi

Total road of the day - 181KM 3 Hours and 8 Minutes First Sighnaghi, then Bodbe Monastery. 181 km, 3 hours 8 minutes; lunch on the way. Road 69KM 1 Hours and 15 Minutes

Sighnaghi

Sighnaghi sits on top of a ridge at 790 metres, with the Alazani valley at its feet and the Caucasus range behind, and it is the best-kept town in Georgia: cobbled streets, carved wooden balconies, red roofs. Too well kept, some will say, because the 2007 restoration left it a little postcard-like. The wall was ordered by King Erekle II in 1762 to protect the townspeople from raids out of Dagestan: 4 km and 23 towers, and you can walk along one stretch. They call it "the city of love" for a prosaic reason: the registry office marries people at any hour, no appointment needed. Two hours cover the wall, the museum of Pirosmani, the naive painter born in a village next door, and a glass of wine on some terrace looking at the valley, which is what everyone comes for.  

Bodbe Monastery

St Nino is buried here, the woman who converted Georgia to Christianity in the 4th century, and that is why Bodbe is the most visited place of pilgrimage in the country. It is a convent 2 km from Sighnaghi, among cypresses, with a small 9th-century church much rebuilt in the 17th, where the tomb is, and a huge new cathedral finished a few years ago that we like less. From the garden you see the whole Alazani valley. What sets Bodbe apart is St Nino's spring: a source 3 km downhill along a path, where pilgrims get into the icy water in a white shirt. It is 30 minutes down and 45 up, and there are minibuses for the way back. With a normal group we stay at the top; if someone wants to go down, we arrange it. Headscarf and covered shoulders.  

Day 7 - Tbilisi - Djvari - Svetitskhoveli - Kazbegi - Gudauri

Total road of the day - 216KM 4 Hours and 29 Minutes A day with 4 hours 29 minutes at the wheel, which is not nothing, and in return Jvari, Svetitskhoveli, Ananuri and Gergeti Trinity Church. Road 25KM 0 Hours and 36 Minutes

Jvari, the Monastery of the Cross

From the Tbilisi road you can see a small church on top of a bare hill above Mtskheta. It is Jvari, "the cross", and it is there because, according to tradition, in the 4th century St Nino planted a wooden cross on that spot when she converted Georgia. The present church was built between 586 and 605 and became the model for many others in the country: a cross plan with four apses and a dome in the middle, with hardly any decoration. It is a UNESCO site together with Mtskheta. What you remember is the view: below, the Aragvi and the Mtkvari meet, each a different colour, with Svetitskhoveli cathedral in between. Lermontov set his poem "Mtsyri" here. It is almost always windy, so a jacket is not a bad idea even in July. Twenty minutes, half an hour if the day is clear. Road 13KM 0 Hours and 18 Minutes

Svetitskhoveli

For a Georgian this is the cathedral, full stop. It stands in Mtskheta, the old capital, 20 km from Tbilisi, and the present building went up between 1010 and 1029 on the site of the 4th-century church of King Mirian, the one who converted the country to Christianity. Beneath it, according to tradition, lies the robe of Christ: a Jew from Mtskheta brought it from Jerusalem, his sister Sidonia died clutching it and they were buried together; a cedar grew from the spot, and from its trunk came the pillar that gives the church its name, "the life-giving pillar". Kings were crowned and buried here; the slabs of Vakhtang Gorgasali and Erekle II are in the floor. A UNESCO site since 1994, and at weekends the weddings follow one another, so sometimes you wait at the door. Headscarves for women and covered shoulders for everyone. Half an hour inside, another in the lanes around it, which live off tourism but keep the feel of a village. Road 45KM 0 Hours and 45 Minutes

Ananuri

The first serious stop on the Georgian Military Highway, 66 km from Tbilisi: a fortress with two churches inside, planted above the Zhinvali reservoir. The turquoise water in all the photos dates from 1986, when the dam flooded the valley; until then the castle watched over a crossroads. It was the seat of the Eristavis of Aragvi, the dukes of the area, from the 13th to the 18th century, and the story you will be told is that of 1739, when a rival lord took it and put the whole family to the sword. The best of Ananuri is the façade of the big church, the Assumption, from 1689: a huge cross carved with vines, lions and angels. You can climb the tower, up a narrow staircase. Half an hour, and at the exit there are stalls selling churchkhela, the strings of walnuts dipped in grape must, which are good here and not expensive. In autumn the reservoir drops and the postcard loses its colour. Road 94KM 1 Hours and 50 Minutes

Gergeti Trinity Church

The photo of Georgia: a 14th-century church alone on a ridge at 2,170 metres, with Kazbek (5,047 m) behind it if the clouds allow. You get there from Stepantsminda, the village below, by a 6 km road that was paved only a few years ago; before that you needed a 4x4 or an hour and a half on foot, and in winter you still need the 4x4. For centuries the treasures of Mtskheta were hidden up here when invaders came, because of how remote it is. Two warnings. First: Kazbek is usually covered from midday on, so we go up as early as we can and, if it is hidden, we wait a while, because sometimes it clears. Second: it is cold and windy at the top all year; in the middle of August we have seen people in T-shirts shivering. Headscarf to go in and covered shoulders; there are wrap skirts to borrow at the door for anyone in shorts. An hour for the drive up, the church and the photos. Road 39KM 1 Hours and 0 Minutes

Day 8 - Gudauri - Uplistsikhe - Gori - Kutaisi

Total road of the day - 335KM 5 Hours and 20 Minutes Today the car is only the means: 335 km to reach Uplistsikhe and Stalin Museum. Road 167KM 2 Hours and 35 Minutes

Uplistsikhe

A whole town cut into the rock, 10 km from Gori above the Mtkvari river. People lived at Uplistsikhe from the first millennium BC until the Middle Ages: first a pagan centre, then a Christian one, and always a stop for the caravans. What remains are carved streets, a hall with a ceiling imitating wooden beams (they call it "Queen Tamar's hall"), wine presses, a tunnel down to the river and a 10th-century brick church planted on top of it all. The Mongols emptied it in the 13th century and it never recovered. One piece of advice: in summer there is no shade and the rock burns, so go early or late in the day, and wear shoes with grip, because the polished stone is slippery. An hour is enough to climb up to the church and look down at the river.  

Stalin Museum

Gori is the town where Iosif Dzhugashvili was born in 1878, and the museum dedicated to him in 1957 is still open much as it was then. It is three things: the little wooden house where he was born, protected under a pavilion of columns; the main building, a Soviet-style palace with his personal belongings, photographs, gifts from heads of state and one of the bronze copies of his death mask; and the armoured railway carriage in which he travelled to Yalta and Potsdam, because he did not like flying. Let us be plain: the museum tells the kind version. There is a small room on the repression, added late, and little else. We tell the rest on the road, and the one-hour visit usually ends in a long conversation in the car.  

Day 9 - Kutaisi - Bagrati - Gelati - Promete - Batumi

Total road of the day - 197KM 3 Hours and 52 Minutes 197 km and 3 hours 52 minutes in the car in all. Today's stops: Kutaisi market, Bagrati Cathedral, Gelati Academy and Prometheus Cave. Road 0KM 0 Hours and 0 Minutes

Kutaisi market

The central market of Kutaisi, two steps from the White Bridge, is the best lesson in Georgian cooking you can get in 45 minutes. What to try: sulguni and fresh Imeretian cheese, the one that goes inside khachapuri; ajika, the local chilli paste; khmeli-suneli, the spice mix that goes into half the country's recipes; tklapi, sheets of dried fruit that look like leather; churchkhela hanging everywhere and, in autumn, persimmons and pomegranates by the heap. The women on the stalls give you things to taste and do not mind if you do not buy. Prices are real ones, not tourist ones, so if you want to take spices or honey home, this is the place. Outside, on the square, the Colchis fountain, with gilded copies of the 3,000-year-old gold pieces found around here. Road 2KM 0 Hours and 9 Minutes

Bagrati Cathedral

You can see it from half of Kutaisi, so you arrive already knowing what it is. What you cannot see from below is the controversy: Bagrat III consecrated it in 1003, the Ottomans blew it up in 1692 and it stood in ruins for three centuries until, in 2012, it was rebuilt in full, with concrete and a glass lift stuck to one side. UNESCO took it off the list in 2017 for that. Some people see it as a botch job. We still like it, mostly for the site: the terrace has the best view of the city and the Rioni valley. Ten minutes uphill from the centre and a full circuit of the building to find the original carvings left on the walls. Road 10KM 0 Hours and 20 Minutes

Gelati Academy

David the Builder asked to be buried in the floor of the south gate, so that everyone who came in would step on his grave. He has been there since 1125, and the monastery of Gelati, which he founded in 1106, was for centuries the great school of the kingdom: in its academy Greek philosophy was translated and copied at a time when Georgia looked to Byzantium. A UNESCO site since 1994 and, unlike Bagrati, still on the list. As soon as you enter the main church, the 12th-century mosaic of the Virgin in the apse; then frescoes on every wall, from different centuries. We give it almost an hour between the church, the tomb, the academy (a long hall with stone benches) and the church of St George. The domes were under repair for years because of leaks [VERIFICAR: estado de la restauración del tejado en 2026]. Road 29KM 0 Hours and 41 Minutes

Prometheus Cave

Inside it is 14 degrees all year round, which is welcome in summer and in winter too: bring a jacket. Prometheus Cave is at Kumistavi, 20 km from Kutaisi, next to the spa town of Tskaltubo. It was discovered in 1984 and opened to the public in 2011 with a route of just over a kilometre through six of its 22 halls, on concrete walkways with coloured lights that some people like and others do not. The name is for the titan who, according to the Greeks, ended up chained in these mountains; Georgians call him Amirani. The visit takes a good hour. At the end, if the underground river has enough water, you can leave by boat along a stretch of about 300 metres, paid separately; when the level drops, you walk out. The floor is damp and slippery, so closed shoes are better. Road 156KM 2 Hours and 42 Minutes

Day 10 - Batumi and surroundings

Total road of the day - 27KM 0 Hours and 50 Minutes Borjgalo Ethnographic Museum and Gonio Fortress. It is 27 km; we leave early so as not to rush. Road 6KM 0 Hours and 15 Minutes

Borjgalo Ethnographic Museum

It is not a museum in the usual sense. Borjgalo was made by hand by Kemal Turmanidze, a sculptor from the area, and opened in 2016 on the outskirts of Batumi, near the airport: models and near life-size wooden figures showing how people lived in the villages of Adjara a hundred years ago, the house, the mill, the forge, the wedding, the beekeeper. Many pieces move or make sounds, and Kemal himself or his family are usually around. It works very well with children and with anyone who is tired of churches by now. An hour. It sits on a residential street with nothing around it, so do not expect a café.

Gonio Fortress

Fifteen kilometres south of Batumi, almost on the Turkish border, the Romans built the camp of Apsaros in the 1st century to watch the coast, and the walls are still standing: a rectangle with a perimeter of almost 900 metres and 18 of its original 22 towers. Later the Byzantines and the Ottomans used it, and the Ottomans called it Gonio. Inside there is a small museum with the finds from the digs, the remains of Roman baths and a grave that tradition attributes to the apostle Matthias, the one who replaced Judas. No proof, but people come to pray. It is a 45-minute stop, flat and without shade; in summer bring a cap. If there is time, Gonio beach is next door and is one of the quietest in the area.

Day 11 - Batumi - Bodega - Borjomi - Akhaltsikhe

Total road of the day - 336KM 6 Hours and 14 Minutes A day of 6 hours 14 minutes on the road with three things to see: Baia's Wine and Borjomi. Road 173KM 2 Hours and 52 Minutes

Baia's Wine

Baia Abuladze started making wine in her grandparents' house in the village of Obcha, in Imereti, when she was barely into her twenties, and today her name appears on natural wine lists half the world over. She makes it the way it has always been made here: local grapes, tsolikouri, tsitska, krakhuna and otskhanuri sapere, fermented in qvevri, the buried clay jars, with nothing added. The winery is still the family house, with her mother and sister in the kitchen and the dogs in the yard. The visit is a meal: you taste at the table, with whatever they have cooked that day, and it lasts an hour and a half or two depending on how the conversation goes. It is one of the stops people like most in the whole trip, and we say that with evidence: people write afterwards asking where to buy the wine.  

Borjomi

The fizzy water drunk all over the former Soviet Union comes from here, and it has been bottled since 1890. Borjomi was the spa of the Romanovs, who built themselves a palace at Likani, at the entrance to the town, and what remains of that is the air of a spa town from another age: wooden villas, a central park of 1850 with the spring where anyone can fill a bottle (it comes out warm, salty and fizzy, and not everyone likes it) and a cable car up to a viewpoint with a Ferris wheel. An hour for the park and the spring; for walkers, the 3 km path to the sulphur pools in the forest starts at the far end of the park. The town is the gateway to the Borjomi-Kharagauli national park and the last stop with shops and banks before Vardzia.  

Day 12 - Akhaltsikhe - Vardzia - Khertvisi - Bavra - Gyumri

Total road of the day - 193KM 4 Hours and 5 Minutes Border day: 193 km, 4 hours 5 minutes, and Vardzia. A new car and guide are waiting on the other side. Road 60KM 1 Hours and 20 Minutes

Vardzia

A rock face 500 metres long riddled with 19 storeys of openings: that is Vardzia, the cave monastery Queen Tamar finished around 1185 in the Mtkvari valley, 60 km from Akhaltsikhe. It once had thousands of rooms; the earthquake of 1283 took the whole front off and exposed what you see today, some 600 rooms including cells, wine cellars, refectories, a pharmacy and irrigation channels cut into the stone. In the Church of the Dormition are the 12th-century frescoes, with one of the few portraits of Tamar made in her lifetime. It is still a monastery, with a few monks, so some areas are closed. The visit takes an hour and a half, almost all of it on stairs and through narrow tunnels: not for bad knees or claustrophobia, although there are routes that avoid the passages. In summer the sun hits the wall from mid-morning; we go as early as we can.  

Bavra, the Armenia-Georgia border

The northern crossing, at 2,000 metres on the Shirak plateau: passport control on one side, a few metres on foot with your suitcase and control on the other. It is quieter than Sadakhlo and usually takes half an hour. On the far side the car and guide of the next country are waiting. In winter it snows seriously here; we take that into account when setting the time.

Day 13 - Gyumri - Gyumri city walk - Casco Antiguo Dilijan - Sevan - Yerevan

Total road of the day - 195KM 3 Hours and 10 Minutes 195 km and 3 hours 10 minutes in the car in all. Today's stops: a walk around Gyumri and Dilijan. Road 0KM 0 Hours and 0 Minutes

A walk around Gyumri

Gyumri is Armenia's second city and the one that has suffered most: on 7 December 1988 an earthquake killed more than 25,000 people in the region and flattened the city; there are still empty lots and people who lived for years in containers. What survived is the Kumayri quarter, of black and red tuff houses from the 19th century, from when it was Alexandropol, the Russian garrison town; in Soviet times it was called Leninakan. The church of the Saviour on the square took thirty years to rebuild. People from Gyumri are famous throughout the country for their humour, and it is true that you end up talking to people. Two hours: Vardanants square, Kumayri, the Dzitoghtsyan museum in a merchant's house and a coffee on Rizhkov street. It is 120 km from Yerevan and at 1,500 metres: colder than the capital.

Dilijan

After the dry, pink Armenia of Yerevan, Dilijan is green: a spa town at 1,300 metres in the middle of a forested national park, in the province of Tavush, which the Soviets filled with sanatoriums and rest houses for composers. They call it "little Switzerland", as they do every place with pines and fresh air; no need to believe it. What there is is a restored stretch of old street, Sharambeyan, with 19th-century houses of wood and stone, craft workshops and a couple of cafés, and mineral water coming out of the street fountains. An hour for the town is enough. Its value is elsewhere: it is the perfect base for the forest monasteries, Haghartsin and Goshavank, and for sleeping cool in summer when Yerevan goes over 35 degrees.

Day 14 - Yerevan - Yerevan city walk - Garni - Gueghard - Yerevan

Total road of the day - 62KM 1 Hours and 33 Minutes We leave after breakfast. On the programme, a walk around Yerevan, Garni and Geghard; 62 km in short stretches. Road 0KM 0 Hours and 0 Minutes

A walk around Yerevan

Yerevan is pink. Almost the whole centre is built of volcanic tuff of that colour, following the circular plan Alexander Tamanian drew in the 1920s, and Republic Square, with its arcades and its fountain, is the centrepiece. From there we go up to the Cascade, the monumental stairway begun in the seventies and finished in 2009 with the Cafesjian museum inside, by its escalators and past Botero's fat cat at the bottom. From the top, if the air is clean, the whole of Ararat, which is in Turkey but presides over the city. The city boasts of being 29 years older than Rome: the fortress of Erebuni dates from 782 BC. But what you live today is something else: terraces, the Vernissage market at weekends, cafés that never close. Three or four hours on foot, comfortable shoes and, in summer, water: Yerevan in July goes over 35 degrees. Road 26KM 0 Hours and 38 Minutes

Garni

A Greek temple in Armenia. Garni was built by King Tiridates I around the year 77, dedicated to the sun god Mihr, and it is the only pagan building that survived the country's conversion to Christianity, probably because the kings used it as a summer house. What you see today is a reconstruction of 1969 to 1975 with the original stones: the earthquake of 1679 had brought the whole thing down. Next to it are the Roman baths with a mosaic and the inscription "we worked without receiving anything", which we guides find funny. The other thing is the Azat gorge just below: the "symphony of stones", a wall of perfectly hexagonal basalt columns that look like an organ. You go down in the locals' 4x4s or on foot, 20 minutes of slope. An hour in all, more if we go down to the columns. Road 10KM 0 Hours and 15 Minutes

Geghard

Half the monastery is inside the mountain. Geghard was founded by St Gregory the Illuminator in the 4th century beside a spring that still flows inside one of the chapels, and what you see dates from the 13th: the main church, of 1215, and the chambers cut into the rock by the Proshian princes, with their carved coats of arms and an acoustic you test by singing. The name means "spear": for centuries the one that, according to tradition, pierced Christ's side was kept here; it is now in the Echmiadzin museum. A UNESCO site since 2000. An hour. It is the place in Armenia where we have most often seen people moved, especially if a choir happens to be in the rock chamber. At the exit the village women sell fresh lavash and gata, a sweet bread; worth stopping for. Road 26KM 0 Hours and 40 Minutes

Day 15 - Yerevan - Echmiadzin - Zvartnots - Yerevan

Total road of the day - 49KM 1 Hours and 25 Minutes A day with 1 hour 25 minutes at the wheel, which is not nothing, and in return Echmiadzin and Zvartnots. Road 21KM 0 Hours and 45 Minutes

Echmiadzin

The Armenian Vatican. Echmiadzin, 20 km from Yerevan, is where the Catholicos lives, head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and where the cathedral stands that St Gregory the Illuminator founded in 303, two years after Armenia became Christian, the first nation to do so. What you see is mostly 5th century and later alterations, and the cathedral has spent more than ten years under restoration. In the museum on the grounds are the spear of Geghard and other relics that say a lot to a believer and, to everyone else, at least explain what this place means. An hour for the cathedral and the museum. On Sundays the sung liturgy fills the church and you go in all the same, quietly. Five minutes away are the churches of Hripsime and Gayane, from the 7th century, which are the ones architects like best, and the ruins of Zvartnots.  

Zvartnots

What is left of Zvartnots is a ring of columns and capitals with eagles, ten minutes from Echmiadzin and next to the airport. In the 7th century, between 641 and 661, Catholicos Nerses III raised here a round cathedral of three tiers and some 45 metres, the boldest of its age; an earthquake brought it down in the 10th century and nobody rebuilt it. It was excavated between 1900 and 1907, and in the small museum there is a model that helps you imagine what it was. A UNESCO site since 2000, together with Echmiadzin. Half an hour. It is a flat, open site with Ararat in the background when the day is clear, which is why photos from here always come out well.  

Day 16 - Transfer from Yerevan to Zvartnots airport

End of the trip. We take you to the airport at the time your flight dictates, with time to spare. Road 13KM 0 Hours and 25 Minutes