Day 1 - Naps, Mountains, & Valleys

Day one turned out to be a bit all over the place, but ended with us both feeling excited to continue!

We’d initially planned to start the hike from a monastery near Shatin and walk the 19km down to the campsite just out of Yeghegnadzor. However, we couldn’t find a taxi that would take us to Shatin, and our guest home human - fatherly man called Manuck (pronounced Mar-nook) - explained we need a 4WD. So he offered to take us in his jeep - but not to the monastery we wanted to go as that was too dangerous to get to. He said he could take us to a the second monastery a bit further down the track. Of course we accepted! We didn’t realise he needed to prepare his car with fresh tyres, however, so about 2 hours later, during which we napped hard, we were all ready to go (1:40pm-ish!) 🤣

We travelled in the jeep for around 30-40mins, going up. and up. and up. Ben and I were looking out at the increasing snow and height like 😳 oh!!!!! It’s HIGH! 🏔️ And it’s SNOWING!!!!!! 🌨️Eventually we got to a part that couldn’t be safely crossed by vehicle because of the amount of snow, so Manuck dropped us there and said “come home for tea”. He snapped a pic of us, and we watched his lovely warm and safe jeep move back down the mountain…until we were alone. ☃️

We quickly decided we weren’t going to any monastery on the mountain today! And we also quickly decided we’d just follow the jeep route back down to where there’s a little less snow. Because this was our very beginning, we were a little overwhelmed and therefore not as confident; we did not expect to be in so much snow - it is not normal for there to be this much snow in April here. It was so epic, though! Once we found our feet we deeply appreciated and enjoyed the wondrous mountains surrounding us. And so. much. snow!

We hiked back down to Yeghegnadzor, finding the proper TCT trail along the way. Ben stopped for a swim (🤪🥶) in a lively river and we enjoyed yet another flurry of snow! ☃️

Back at the b&b (a couple of hours later) Manuck and Karine offered us hot tea and honey cake (we hungrily accepted!). They taught us to count to 10 in Armenian, and how to say thank you- which we utterly failed at, so they said “Mercy” will be widely understood, or “mercy chat” for many thanks! So we “mercy chatted” our way through goodbye, promised to keep them updated on our travels, and made for the campsite - via Aygi (our newly found favourite restaurant) for some deliciously steaming spag bol and sausage crepe. YUM!

One scary / stressful thing that happened as we were leaving Yeghegnadzor - the path the TCT was telling us to take had been blocked by a big wired fence, so we took the next available route thinking nothing of it. Big mistake. We were approached by some very big, very unhappy, sharp-toothed guard dogs. Luckily all they did was bark at us and follow us (way too closely, I could have reached back and touched one) until we reached the end of what they considered their territory.

You can imagine our fear. But we couldn’t show it, we had to stay calm and walk slowly. This was a big ask - I would have preferred to get as much distance from them as soon as possible! Instead I held my hiking poles ready to defend. Thankfully this was not needed.

This stood out as a reminder that the dogs we’ll come across here are largely not to be messed with, and we must keep our wits about us at all times. The kind town of Yeghegnadzor and all its “fluff nugget” stray dogs that Ben had enjoyed petting had lulled us into security - and this shocked us back out of it! Thankful that’s all it turned out to be - a warning.

Finally reaching our campsite was such a win! We survived day 1! Now on to day 2… 🫡Read more