The drive from Dilijan to Garni was uneventful except for the paranoia about speeding after being flashed again. It’s a nightmare as there are so few speed signs, it’s very difficult to know exactly what the legal speed limit is. Especially as locals overtake at twice the speed of sound.
We thought we would check out the Garni Temple before heading to our BnB but the queue for buying the tickets to enter the gardens was at least 50m. All the tours from Yerevan which was only 40 minutes away. We decided to come back later tine
Next stop was our BnB called 3G in Goght. It was amazing with some many chill areas and a deep, cool pool with surrounded by plenty of loungers. The owner, Sandra has moved from Holland 12 years earlier and ran the place with the 2 other local ladies. She was very social and made us feel feet welcome. It was incredible what she had done with it over the years – starting with a run done building ad turning it into a multi-level space with rooms, glamping, camping and camper vans. The first thing we is to grab our togs (first time on tour) and jump into the pool. We spent a few hours chilling by the pool before jumping back in the car and driving back into Garni. We decided to have a look the Symphony of the Stones. Pleasingly the car park was empty when we arrived.
The Symphony of Stones” or “Basalt Organ” was up there with all time impressive natural monuments I have seen for a long time of Armenia. It is made up of thousands of columnar basalts stuck together up to 50 meters high. In its appearance it resembles an organ musical instrument, hence the name. The columns were the result of powerful lava from an eruption 127000 years ago. Due to slow cooling, the lower parts of the lava flows took the form of pentahedral and hexagonal columns. It was quite scary standing underneath some of the overhanging columns as it looked like they could break off and drop at any moment.
Next we headed up to the Garni Temple. The Temple is a classical colonnaded structural and is considered an eastern outpost of the Greco-Roman world and the only largely preserved Hellenistic building in the former USSR. It is conventionally identified as a pagan temple to the sun god Mihrbuilt by King Tiridates in the first century AD. A competing hypothesis sees it as a second century tomb. It collapsed in the 1679 earthquake, but much of its fragments remained on the site. Renewed interest in the 19th century led to excavations in the early and mid-20th century. It was reconstructed in 1969–75, using the anastylosis technique. It was pretty impressive, as were the gardens surrounding it and the view up and down the Garni Gorge and the Azat River. We finished off our evening of culture with dinner at the 7 Qar restaurant with sweeping views of the Temple. As a started we had a plate of pickles – peaches, grapes, cucumber and even cauliflower amongst others.
Deryn decided that she wanted to walk back from the Geghard Monastery so we drove up there nice and early to avoid the heat. We had the Monastery mostly to ourselves which was magic. It really was special and my favourites of the 10s of monasteries that we had seen on our trip.
While the main chapel was built in 1215, the monastery complex was founded in the 4th century by Gregory the Illuminator at the site of a spring inside a cave. The monastery had thus been originally named Ayrivank, meaning “the Monastery of the Cave”. The name commonly used for the monastery today, Geghard, or more fully meaning “the Monastery of the Spear”, originates from the spear which wounded Christ on the crucifix, allegedly brought to Armenia by Jude. The effort and skill in building the monastery into the cliffs really was incredible. The natural setting was as impressive. No wonder the site has a World Heritage listing. By the time we were ready to go, the tourist busses were pulling up and disgorging hordes of Japanese tourists. I decided to head into Garni for a haircut and pick up Deryn on her returning walk.
The haircut in a 1-chair barber cost me a pricey $8. I found Deryn at a roadside cafe where there were a couple of ladies making lavash in the traditional clay oven. Looks simple but watching some tourists have a go showed just how difficult it was. We had a cup of Armenian coffee and some lovely apple pasties that we made in the clay over. It was then back 3G and more chilling by the pool. As it was my birthday we got stuck into the bottle of orange white wine we had bought in Georgia. Eventually. Our BnB had a shared fridge and a fridge mistakenly opened another guests wine. He wasn’t happy. We ordered take in which was equivalent quality but half the price of the restaurant food.
We got a late check out for the following day as we didn’t have to drop the rental off until 4pm. Another restful day chilling by the pool.
The drive back to our rental drop off point was easy until the last 15 minutes where we ended up chasing our tail down tiny dead end alleyways until we finally gave up and told the rental guy car to come find us. We shared our location on WhatsApp and waited.
5 minutes later a young lady turned up. We were literally 100m from our destination. We grabbed a Bolt to the station and killed a couple of hours wandering around the station area including checking out a lovely art museum cafe. The area was a mix of affluent and poor but had a lovely family vibe.
We boarded our train at 9 but as the aircon wasn’t on I hung around outside. Our 2 bedded cabin was very comfortable – once the aircon came on.
The border crossing was a bit of a pain at 330 am. Leaving Armenia we Okish but entering Georgia was a pain as we had to leave the train and stand in a queue. It was bucketing down as well. It took a couple of hours to process all the passengers at the checkpoint. 45 min out of Tblisi the train stopped for 2 hours. No explanation. It was OK tho as we got a couple of hours of extra sleep and helped kill the time before our flight to Bishkek.
We arrived at a very odd central station in Tblisi. Georgia certainly is a lot more tatty than Armenia. We grabbed a quick coffee and pasty at the food hall before getting a taxi to a nearby sulpher bath to spend an hour soaking in boiling water. Dits grabbed a salt scrub as well. It was then off to the airport and the next leg of our adventure