Our hotel last night was…adequate.
Breakfast in Poki surrounded by 4 dogs with longing eyes and wagging tails.
Haghpat
First stop this morning, a monastery. Yes, another one, but this one knocked my socks off. As you will see from the photos, it’s very unkempt and it seems barely touched since the last monks, priests or whoever, walked out 500 years ago. It to me, was powerfully haunting. Rough hewn stone floors. Remnants of beautiful fresco’s. In one crypt, the sound of monks chanting/preying. Magnificent. Built in the 10th century and now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Damaged a number of times by both earthquakes and plundered by Selkirk Turks, Arabs, Mongols and modern gun fire.. Wikipedia’s tells me that it was finally abandoned in the early 20th Century due to the loss of surrounding land titles. But like I said, it shows little sign of restoration, except for two pieces of rusty corrugated iron on a roof.
We were very fortunate to be there early as just as leaving several tourist buses arrived with their hordes. A bit rich from a once-upon-a-time tour coach driver/guide..:)
Alaverdi
South west of Hagphat on the Debed River is the former Soviet Industrial town of Alaverdi. In its prime the Alaverdi plant produced nearly 50,000 tons of copper annually. Following its closure in 2018 it reopened using a slightly more environmentally acceptable smelting process, but those processes were not enough to save the plant, and it closed for good in 2022. No doubt its closure had a devastating impact on employment in the region, and country, with 3000 loosing their jobs.
While looking for a park to better observe the facility we met Christian & Pia, the Austrian couple in their Troopy. They are both retired engineers. Christian said that in its prime, Alaverdi produced roughly 75% of the Soviet Unions copper requirements.
How many of those factory workers crossed and recrossed this bridge every day!
The pipes in the foreground carried hot water that all former Soviet villages were supplied with for heating accommodation.
An earlier ‘Thinker’?
Personal impressions of Armenia.
Armenia was the first country to embrace Christianity. Approximately 30 years before Georgia.
It shares a very strong Russian or more accurately, Soviet feeling. Apart from old Mercedes sedans and the occasional new one, the Lada is dominant, along with old Soviet jeeps and trucks. It’s very easy for an outsider to say that the country is lagging in development, but that’s not all bad. Our modern western societies are less egalitarian and I’m sure lack the social cohesion that is the hallmark of former Soviet society. Thats not an endorsement of the Soviet system but it did have benefits.
I’m intrigued by the number of Russians encountered here. Are they fearing a general mobilisation and departing before it happens, or is it normal tourism?
Yesterday, while in the queue to enter the country, a driver in a car beside us initiated some chat and asked where we are heading from Armenia, Iran? That comment piqued an article I read several months ago, that you cant drive from Armenia to Turkiye! W
Thinking about it, the reason is rather obvious. There was a genocide perpetrated against non Turks, by the nationalistic Young Turk movement between 1915 & 1916. Approx 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered. Something similar going on right now not far from here!. It takes a long time for those wounds to heal.
Tonight we’re camped in grassy space close to one of the many stonemasons that are active in this region. We have the blessing of the two, I suspect father and son working the stone. Our elevation must be at nearly 2000m as it’s a considerably cooler night. Great!
Tomorrow we head towards Yerevan, the country’s capital with another tourist site between.
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