Day 2: Well that escalated quickly…

Where do we begin? 😅 Today has been intense! 🫣

Ben and I had a pretty average sleep last night and slept in until 9:30am! To be fair, neither of us could sleep until after 2am (seems to be the norm for us here…).

We set out around 11:30am, both feeling positive and excited! We smiled as we walked across farmland, chatted with the farmers (via google translate) who were curious about what we were up to! We received a couple of invites to have tea with them, but because we’d set off so late we had to decline. However, it was lovely to experience the kindness and good intention of strangers. Other hikers have talked about finding it difficult to really get started for the day because the locals love to chat and next minute you’re going in for tea… can confirm this is indeed the case here!! 🥰

This easy stroll across flat land and smiling people once again lulled us into a sense of ease. We strolled leisurely into Arpi and were quickly met by a man called Jonuck who, upon seeing us and with barely a word spoken, proceeded to bring us coffee (straight up espresso!) and chocolate from his house for us to drink and eat by the river! He also ensured the public toilets in the park had toilet paper for us to use. The invitation and generosity of these people is incredible! We were and are so thankful!!

What we realised fairly quickly after Arpi was that this day was not at all going to be a leisurely walk in the park - it was to be a full on traverse! And when I say traverse, I mean holymotherofgoditwasinsanelydifficult 🤣 We. are. sooooooo. sore. this evening!! 🥵 Never in our lives have we hiked like that! However, the good news is that the next two weeks shouldn’t be THAT difficult again! 🙏 PRAISE BE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Read on if you’d like to hear the story……

We climbed the hillside from Arpi like oh wow we’re so high! Look at the view! We can see Yeghegnadzor! We’ve climbed so much so fast! And then 2,3,4,5 hours later we are *still* climbing. 🤯 And, the vast majority of this was without trail and not signposted. Navigationally this is fine for us, but physically it was incredibly difficult!

What made this easier was the perfect weather and visibility. At all times we had breath-taking views of rounded snow-capped mountains, epic canyons, weathered rock faces and cliffs. It’s beyond language how semi-arid, rock strewn, and massive this landscape is. There are ground colours ranging from brown to bright red, gnarly old juniper trees and thorny brambles, and there are ancient ruins and monasteries just dotted here and there!

What made this much more difficult was being startled by a snake, coming across fresh bear poo, and then fresh bear tracks in multiple places along the way. At one point there were so many bearprints I thought I was going to be sick with fear. We just had to keep telling ourselves that the brown bears here are shy, and we’ll only be in trouble if we surprise them. So what did we do? We talked (amongst wheezing and heaving from continuously climbing steeply uphill) and stomped, called out to each other, and tapped rocks with our hiking sticks - we made noise! These bears would know we were coming! The snakes would also know we were coming! And whatever else exists here would have no doubt we were on the way! 🫡

On top of our worry about nearby wildlife, the sun ahead of us was also rapidly approaching the horizon. This brought the threat of us being in a wild alpine environment, in the dark, on an unmarked trail to the fore. Thankfully, finally, we soon crossed a ridge onto the southern side of the peaks which granted us more day time. However, what we could then see was an extremely steep and rocky descent into a massive canyon. To say we felt intimidated is an understatement. As we carefully climbed down, we saw a large herd of mountain goats across the valley. Upon hearing our approach, they scaled the cliffs around them - ascending in a matter of seconds what had taken us the better part of an hour to descend. Wow! 🐐

Needless to say, my nervous system had expired by that point, and I welcomed crossing the final peak and moving downhill towards a main road. In one of the pictures Ben is seen to be celebrating finding some stairs and old ruins - our first signs of civilisation in hours! Never mind it was ruined civilisation 🤣

We’ve never been happier to reach camp. Knowing there’s a main road right there means our anxiety about bears can mostly rest for the night, and we will hopefully have a good sleep!

We didn’t quite make it to the camp we’d planned for. It’s only another 1km away, but that km is again steeply uphill, so we’ve decided to tuck ourselves away in our tent here at the Noravank Junction and call it a day 🫡 and what a wild day it was!

Tomorrow we only have 9km to hike compared to the 19km we had today… feeling thankful for that, even though it starts with a big climb…

Hope you’re all well! We’ve survived day 2! On to day 3…Read more