Day 8. Part 1. The Road from Goris to Sevan
Slept in Goris again. As usual, I wake up around sunrise, and while Anton sleeps, wakes up, and gets ready, I do my morning and work stuff. This time the neighbors didn’t peek out :-)
On previous days we’d head out and drive to a specific spot. Sometimes you notice a beautiful view or a cool detail on the way. But you don’t stop, because you’ve got to be somewhere.
We decided to try a new format for the day. Plan: leave super early and drive till evening; stop along the way and shoot everything we like without telling ourselves “we won’t make it.”
I put on an Armenian song for Anton and we hit the road.
In August, Armenia’s main color is straw-gold:
Photos don’t fully capture the vibe. But wherever you look — it’s a postcard :-)
We had an idea to stop by the lake with the flooded church and brew morning coffee with a pretty backdrop. A photo from the internet:
Getting close to the lake:
Everything is straw-colored. And again, wherever you look — a postcard! (And then you’ve got ten identical shots and have to keep just one!)
Anton’s thrilled with the views!
We reached the spot where the church should be, and saw this:
Turns out you can only see this church rarely. When the water level drops a lot. It used to stand on the riverbank. Then they built a dam and the church was flooded. The dam:
Got a little upset (just me), accepted it. Shot the surroundings anyway:
Everything’s dried out:
A car and a fisherman in white:
We kept going.
You see lots of car remains, kiosks, and other metal stuff around.
Sometimes fences are made from old car bodies:
The fence below also uses car bodies, and you can see a hay pyramid (more on hay below):
Across the country there are umbrella-shaped bus stops of a single design. Often old, clearly Soviet-era and unused. But I also saw some that looked new.
From the photos you can tell the design is poor. The umbrellas don’t shield from the sun. And that matters in the Armenian climate.
I asked Anton to take photos of me for the first time. Test shots:
Beeyards are common. In June I didn’t see them.
People live right there in trailers or buses and sell honey:
We bought honey from this guy:
The beeyards are seasonal. The man said in winter the snow is taller than a person here.
We stopped by a lake to snack and make coffee. The video’s long and unedited — almost 30 minutes 😅 Posting as is for now. Because of strong wind, two tablets weren’t enough to boil a cup of water. And the tablet didn’t want to ignite for some reason.
But for the public pretty picture, I’ll pretend I’m enjoying it!
We stopped by the Areni caves.
People hung out in these caves since around 4000 BCE. The oldest shoes were found here. The first winery in the world is here (there’s a lot of “the oldest” in Armenia; suspicious):
The shiny stuff is mumiyo, the dull stuff is soot:
A note on mumiyo. It’s a resin formed from guano and plant remains over thousands of years. And guano comes from bat (and bird and other animals’) poop. Basically, mumiyo is like oil, but made from bat poop and plants.
Swallow nests:
Anton approved. But at first he didn’t believe that hundreds of thousands of years ago this place was the ocean floor. And that these caves were carved by ocean water movement.
If Belarus has lots of sawmills, Armenia has quarries instead.
Here they crush stone:
Here they cut it into slabs:
If timber trucks are common in Belarus, in Armenia it’s rock haulers:
Wild rose grows everywhere:
The same place
in August
in June
This shows how different a country can feel in different seasons.
Hay is stored in pyramids:
It’s rare to see hay stored under a roof:
Hay is hauled on GAZ-53 trucks (sometimes loaded one and a half times higher):
This might be my favorite video of the day — GAZ trucks, hay pyramids, and the unloading in action:
To us, these hay pyramids look huge. But Anton and I have a theory: for Armenians they don’t look big, because the tall mountains around shrink the scale. We live on the plains, so we make haystacks :-)
Closer:
I love capturing moments like this. I even have an album where people are just doing stuff :-)
This photo shows village life — a GAZ truck and a solar panel:
We spotted a bird. Anton said it was a woodpecker. But ChatGPT said it was a hoopoe:
Saw this being sold on the roadside:
At first I thought it was manure. Then I thought it was tobacco. While I was taking a photo, a guy came out. We talked, and it turned out to be sorrel. They make soup from it, like we do.
We passed a caravanserai built in 1332:
I made a separate post about what’s inside.
The main color of the day is yellow!
Cows walk on the roads:
Toward evening they’re herded back from the pastures:
In the video — a herd of cows and a quarry:
Driving through the village of Geghovit, we hit a traffic jam. A shepherd was driving a herd down the road. The cows split off into side streets by themselves, walking into their own yards. Just like my dad used to say — cows remember where home is.
We reached Sevan at sunset.
A paradise beach was waiting for us.
Every trip has a place that earns the honorable title of “worst overnight spot.” Hahahaha! “Paradise Beach” confidently takes the crown on this trip!
Filmed a short recap for the record (the price-to-quality contrast will show better in the next post — same price, way better conditions):
Options for staying the night were limited because it was Saturday. Lots of people come to Sevan for the weekend.
While Anton sat in the car using the internet — the room had no signal — I had a couple of beers I bought from the sorrel guy.
And this was my dinner:
A little spoiler for the next day. I’ll tell you what it is and where we bought it in the next post.
So many impressions and photos for just one day! I think I’ve found my travel-day format — a photo day. Two things matter: leave as early as possible, and don’t set goals to visit specific places. Just drive and stop as many times as needed.
Would be fun to do a photo day around Belarus :-)
24 August 2024