Caucasus routes: Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia in 14 days

Itinerary

Day 1 - Transfer from Baku airport to Baku

Total road of the day - 20KM 0 Hours and 30 Minutes Arrival. Someone from the team is waiting at the airport with a sign; the rest of the day is yours. Road 20KM 0 Hours and 30 Minutes

Day 2 - Baku - Absheron - Baku

Total road of the day - 94KM 2 Hours and 4 Minutes First the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, then Ateshgah, Yanardag, Heydar Aliyev Center and Yashil Bazar. 94 km, 2 hours 4 minutes; lunch on the way. 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 We leave after breakfast. On the programme, Gobustan, the mud volcanoes and the Carpet Museum; 204 km in short stretches. 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 Diri Baba Mausoleum, Yeddi Gumbez, the Palace of the Sheki Khans and the Albanian church of Kish. It is 347 km; we leave early so as not to rush. 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 Border day: 230 km, 3 hours 51 minutes, and Khareba Winery and Alaverdi Monastery. A new car and guide are waiting on the other side. 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 A day with 3 hours 8 minutes at the wheel, which is not nothing, and in return Sighnaghi and Bodbe Monastery. 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 - Guided tour in Spanish

No driving Today it is Rustaveli Avenue, Metekhi Square, Narikala Fortress, Abanotubani and Anchiskhati; lunch on the way.

Rustaveli Avenue

A kilometre and a half of plane trees between Freedom Square and Rustaveli Square. This is the street where Tbilisi shows off: the Parliament, the Moorish-looking Opera House of 1896, the Rustaveli Theatre, the Kashueti church, the National Museum and the grand hotels of the early 20th century. It is named after Shota Rustaveli, the 12th-century poet who wrote "The Knight in the Panther's Skin", the book every Georgian can quote. It takes a good half hour on foot, or two metro stops if the heat is on. In front of the Parliament there is a plaque worth stopping for: on 9 April 1989 the Soviet army broke up a demonstration here and twenty-one people died, almost all of them women. That day still weighs on the politics of the country.

Metekhi Square

The king on horseback looking over the city from the cliff is Vakhtang Gorgasali, the founder of Tbilisi according to tradition; the statue dates from 1967. Next to him, the church of Metekhi, from the late 13th century, built by Demetre II on top of another from the 5th. The royal palace stood here for centuries, and in the 19th century and Soviet times the building was a prison: Gorky did time in it. Then it was a theatre, and in 1988 it became a church again. We come here for the view, the best of the lower town: the sulphur baths right below, Narikala opposite and the river running between the two. It is a fifteen-minute stop that almost always runs longer because of the photos.

Narikala Fortress

We take the cable car that leaves from Rike Park and crosses the river in two minutes; it costs the same as a metro ticket and is paid with the same card. At the top is Narikala, or what is left of it: the Persians founded it in the 4th century, the Arabs enlarged it in the 8th and the Georgians in the 12th, and in 1827 an explosion of the gunpowder store took out a good part of the walls. The church of St Nicholas inside dates from 1997, on medieval foundations. The reason to come up is not the stones but the view: the whole old town, the domes of the baths, the river and Metekhi opposite. Careful, the walls have no railings and the rock is polished by so many feet. From here we walk down through the Betlemi quarter to the baths, passing the Mother of Georgia on the way, the aluminium statue of 1958 that watches over the city with a cup in one hand and a sword in the other.

Abanotubani

Tbilisi means "warm place", and the warmth comes from here. Abanotubani is the sulphur bath district, on the right bank of the Mtkvari just below Narikala: brick domes at ground level with the baths underneath, and water that comes up on its own at 37 to 40 degrees and smells of eggs. Legend has it that King Vakhtang Gorgasali founded the city in the 5th century after seeing a wounded pheasant healed in these waters. Pushkin bathed here in 1829 and wrote that he had never seen anything like it. You can stroll and look, but what is worth it is going in: a private room with a hot-water pool and, if you like, a scrub with a coarse mitt that leaves you like new. Booking is needed in high season, and you bring swimwear and a towel or rent them. The blue-tiled façade belongs to the Orbeliani bath; the others are plainer outside.  

Anchiskhati

It is the oldest church still standing in Tbilisi, and it does not look it: a small three-nave basilica of plain stone, tucked into a street of the old town. King Dachi, son of Vakhtang Gorgasali, built it around the year 530. The name comes from the Christ icon of Ancha, which arrived here in 1664 from an area that is now Turkey and is now kept in the Art Museum. The brick bell tower of 1675 is what you see from the street. If it falls on a Sunday morning, we go in during the liturgy: the Anchiskhati choir sings Georgian polyphony the way it was sung centuries ago, and it is one of the things people remember most from the trip. On other days it is almost empty and takes ten minutes. There are headscarves at the door for women.  

Day 8 - Tbilisi - Ananuri - Kazbegi - Tbilisi

Total road of the day - 321KM 6 Hours and 0 Minutes 321 km and 6 hours in the car in all. Today's stops: Ananuri and Gergeti Trinity Church. Road 67KM 1 Hours and 10 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.  

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.  

Day 9 - Tbilisi - Mtskheta - Uplistsikhe - Gori - Tbilisi

Total road of the day - 190KM 3 Hours and 22 Minutes In the morning, Svetitskhoveli; in the afternoon, Uplistsikhe and Stalin Museum. 190 km in all. Road 26KM 0 Hours and 35 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 61KM 1 Hours and 5 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. Road 14KM 0 Hours and 20 Minutes

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. Road 89KM 1 Hours and 22 Minutes

Day 10 - Tbilisi - Sadakhlo - Haghpat - Saghmosavank - Yerevan

Total road of the day - 289KM 5 Hours and 28 Minutes Today we change country. Haghpat Monastery and Saghmosavank; allow an hour for the border. 289 km in all. Road 74KM 1 Hours and 18 Minutes

Sadakhlo, the Georgia-Armenia border

Here you cross on foot: passport control on one side, a few hundred metres walking with your suitcase and control on the other. Between half an hour and an hour depending on the day. On the far side the car and guide of the next country are waiting, so this is where you say goodbye to the ones from this side. Road 43KM 0 Hours and 55 Minutes

Haghpat Monastery

Above the Debed canyon, in the region of Lori and almost on the Georgian border, Haghpat has been a UNESCO site since 1996 and, for us, is the most complete Armenian monastery: the Holy Cross church of 991, the gavit with its crossed arches, the bell tower of 1245, the refectory and the library, with jars buried in the floor where the manuscripts were hidden when invaders came. Queen Khosrovanush founded it in 976. In the courtyard stands the khachkar of the Saviour, from 1273, the finest of the thousands there are in Armenia. Sayat-Nova lived and died here, the 18th-century troubadour who sang in Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani and has a street named after him in Tbilisi. An hour, and another for Sanahin, 10 km away. It is 180 km from Yerevan; the town below, Alaverdi, is a mining town and ugly, and we say so to spare you the surprise. Road 140KM 2 Hours and 30 Minutes

Saghmosavank

On the edge of a hundred-metre cut, the one the Kasagh river opens in the plateau, stands a reddish stone monastery of 1215 called "the one of the psalms": Saghmosavank. The Vachutian princes built it, and what is special about it is the gavit, the entrance hall with its stone vault and reliefs, and the library, because manuscripts were copied here for centuries. It is 30 km from Yerevan, on the way to Aragats, and there is almost never anyone there. Half an hour. The best part is leaning over the canyon from the back wall and, on a clear day, seeing Ararat in the distance above the plain. Road 32KM 0 Hours and 45 Minutes

Day 11 - Yerevan - Yerevan city walk - Garni - Gueghard - Yerevan

Total road of the day - 62KM 1 Hours and 33 Minutes Today the car is only the means: 62 km to reach a walk around Yerevan, Garni and Geghard. 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 12 - Yerevan - Echmiadzin - Zvartnots - Oshakan - Amberd - Yerevan

Total road of the day - 92KM 2 Hours and 26 Minutes Echmiadzin, Zvartnots, Oshakan and Amberd. It is 92 km; we leave early so as not to rush. 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. Road 10KM 0 Hours and 5 Minutes

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. Road 18KM 0 Hours and 28 Minutes

Oshakan

Armenians write with their own 39-letter alphabet, invented by a monk, Mesrop Mashtots, in the year 405, and the monk is buried here, at Oshakan, beneath the altar of the church. That is why on the first day of school children from half the country come to leave flowers, and why the railing carries 36 khachkars, one for each original letter. The present church dates from 1875; the tomb, from the 5th century. The village, 30 km from Yerevan, lives off its vines. Twenty minutes. If you are going up to Mount Aragats, the alphabet park is a few kilometres away, with the letters carved in stone at giant size, which children like better than the church. Road 11KM 0 Hours and 18 Minutes

Amberd

Amberd sits at 2,300 metres on the southern slope of Aragats, where two ravines meet. The first thing you see on arrival is the church, of 1026, and behind it what is left of the fortress, which is much older: the oldest walls are 7th century and the Pahlavuni princes enlarged it in the 10th and 11th. Do not expect a whole castle. What remains is the church, the base of the basalt walls, a bathhouse and the outline of the citadel. What makes up for it is the site: from the top you see the valley and, on a clear day, Ararat. A practical warning: the access track is closed by snow for a good part of the year, well into spring, and it is cool at the top even in July. Forty minutes. Road 32KM 0 Hours and 50 Minutes

Day 13 - Yerevan - Sevanavank - Dilijan - Goshavank - Hagharstin - Yerevan

Total road of the day - 239KM 4 Hours and 5 Minutes Today the car is only the means: 239 km to reach Sevanavank Monastery, Dilijan, Goshavank and Haghartsin. Road 68KM 1 Hours and 10 Minutes

Sevanavank Monastery

Lake Sevan sits at 1,900 metres and is so big it looks like the sea: 1,240 km², the largest in the Caucasus. Until the 1930s Sevanavank stood on an island; the Soviets lowered the lake by almost twenty metres for irrigation, and the island became a peninsula. Two black tuff churches of the year 874 remain, founded by Princess Mariam, daughter of King Ashot I, and 200 steps to climb. Today there is a seminary next door. Three quarters of an hour. It is almost always windy and by September it is already cold; in high summer, on the other hand, people swim and along the shores they grill trout and ishkhan, the lake's own fish. It is 65 km from Yerevan. Road 32KM 0 Hours and 35 Minutes

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. Road 22KM 0 Hours and 25 Minutes

Goshavank

Mkhitar Gosh was the man who wrote Armenia's first law code, around 1184, as well as fables that are still read at school, and the monastery he founded in 1188 near Dilijan bears his name: Goshavank. It stands in a mountain village among walnut trees, and what sets it apart is a khachkar of 1291 by one Poghos, so fine it looks like lace rather than stone; Armenians rank it among the three best in the country. There are two churches, a book depository with a bell tower on top and the cell where Gosh is said to have worked. Forty minutes. The village, Gosh, is one of the real ones: cows in the street and people who say hello. Road 10KM 0 Hours and 15 Minutes

Haghartsin

A monastery in a forest clearing, 12 km from Dilijan, reached by a road between beech trees that turns orange in October. Haghartsin was founded in the 10th century and what you see is 11th to 13th century: three churches, a refectory of 1248 with a vault that has no columns, and a very old walnut tree with a hole in the trunk that children crawl through to make a wish. It was thoroughly restored in 2011 with money from the Emir of Sharjah, who fell in love with the place on a visit, which is why it looks so new; some people find it too new. Three quarters of an hour. It is one of the most visited monasteries in Armenia and at weekends it fills with families from Yerevan; on a weekday morning you can hear the forest. Road 107KM 1 Hours and 40 Minutes

Day 14 - Transfer from Yerevan to Zvartnots airport

Last day: transfer to the airport with whatever margin your flight needs. Road 13KM 0 Hours and 25 Minutes