Wednesday 13 May – Over the border to Armenia
There was no hanging about in Tbilisi, so we headed straight to the border with Armenia. As usual, in this part of the world it was one of those borders where you were stamped out of a country, had to walk 200 metres and went through immigration into the next. That only took about 20 minutes, so no complaints whatsoever. We met our Armenian guide “Elizabeth, just like your old queen”.
The first task was to get some Armenian cash, as cards are
not widely accepted beyond the capital Yerevan. It would be another 36 hours
before we hit that great metropolis. Being a girlie swot, or clever Dick, I had
discovered a little place in Datchet (i.e. not far from where I used to work in
Staines) that would exchange both Georgian “Lari” and Armenian “Dram”. So I was
already nicely loaded up with 30,000 Dram (c500 to a pound). However, the
smallest denomination they did was AMD10,000 (c£20). I’d read that a lot of
places would not take AMD20,000 notes (c£40), so I was keen to get rid of the
one I had. I asked the guide if it would be possible where most of group were
getting cash; but I got a very unexpected response – “that note is no longer
legal tender, they went out of circulation 6 weeks ago”. Shit, I’d been done up
like a kipper! However, Elizabeth took the note from me and went to speak to
the exchange people – she returned with a lovely new AMD20,000 note, but they
wouldn’t give her smaller denominations for my old relic. No problem, that’s a
battle for another day.(see postscript at the bottom)
Initially, we headed through a deep valley following the
bubbling River Debed. The first town of note that we came to was Alaverdi. It
looked like a slightly better version of Chernobyl. A huge, dilapidated copper mine
and factory dominated the vista of the town. Loads of scruffy looking old
Soviet blocks of flats, a good number of which were also wrecked. According to
my Lonely Planet book, it was in severe danger of becoming a ghost town. We
turned off the main road and headed steeply uphill through the semi-ruined town
and soon arrived at a farm where they made honey. Surprisingly, it was a very
serene spot overlooking the decimated city below. However, rather than hearing
about how honey is made, I’d have much rather been on the opposite side of the
valley at the Mikoyan Brothers Museum look at wonderful old Soviet MIG Jets, of
course!
Having successfully avoided having to taste honey (I hate the stuff), we set off heading further into rural Armenia. To be blunt, it looked so much poorer than its northern neighbour Georgia. Having passed through the dull looking town of Vanadzor we climbed slowly into the hills.
We eventually arrived at an unusual village called Fioletovo. It’s unusual as its
entire population is of Russian descent. These Molokans (Russian Old Believers)
have been living here for over 200 years. They’re not quite as severe as the Amish
communities in the USA for shunning modern ways, but they are certainly on the
road in that direction. Long skirts and headscarves are mandatory for women and
girls, for example. Armenia seems to tolerate them to the extent that when the
boys are old enough to do National Service, they do it with Russian Forces
rather than Armenian. We stopped and had lunch with a family there, and they
were exceptionally friendly. We had some interesting, but nice, food. Particularly
two items that initially tasted like doughnuts but contained cabbage and
potatoes!
Next stop was Dilijan. A spa town described as being “The
Switzerland of Armenia”. It was indeed quite pretty and had an alpine feel to
it. However, the most notable thing about the place was that I was able to buy
postcards and stamps with ease. Good, but equally a bit disappointing as I love
the language and bureaucracy challenge of going into local Post offices to get
the latter.
Our last visit of the day was to Lake Sevan. By far and away
the largest body of water in landlocked Armenia. It is over 1200 square
kilometres and sits at over 6200 feet. By the time we’d got there the clouds
had come in, and aside from a few colourful ancient looking fishing boats, the
scene was a study in monochrome. We took a 40 minute trip on one of those
boats, and by the end it was verging on Baltic. All of us were more than happy
to disembark. A few of our group took the short climb up to Saint Jakob chapel
at Sevanavank. Aside from warming the few of us considerably, it was quite an
atmospheric spot high on its hill overlooking the monochromatic lake with the
snow-capped mountains beyond. Certainly worth the effort.
It had been a long day of driving, so it was nice to finally
get to our hotel at the Ski Resort of Tsaghkadzor. Yet again the scheduling of trip
was questionable, as we were asked to be down for dinner 20 minutes after
arriving. Stuff that! I’m not rushing, and I’m not going to be sociable. Room
service dinner with an Armenian beer was just what the doctor ordered! A busy
day, arguably way too rushed, but I was very happy to be in a new country.
Ps I wrote a very polite email to the currency exchange company informing them of my difficulty. Just factual and not asking for anything back. Within an hour I received an exceptionally apologetic email back saying that they would refund me £20 for the inconvenience. In these days of virtually zero customer service that is extraordinary.
Whilst talking about ManorFx I must mention that when I
collected my order, I took all my old foreign notes (except Euros and Dollars) over
to them in the hope that they might exchange some/all of them. To be honest, I
thought they’d exchange the Swiss and Polish currency, but as for the rest I
was really having a hopeful punt. I returned home with £192 in my pocket having
offloaded virtually all the notes I took there. That included notes from Switzerland,
Poland, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan,
North Macedonia, and Serbia. Result! So, if you’ve got a similar stash, and you
don’t live too far away, it could be well worth a visit.
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