Day 9: Highs and Lows

Wheewwwww!! What a day. Never a dull moment here in Armenia 🤣 Each day is so varied!

Today started with an incredible breakfast set out for us by our lovely host, Anahit. Of course there was lavash 🫓 (there is always lavash!), eggs, rice with corn and chicken, two different types of home-made cheese (we watched Anahit make one of them last night from a bucket of fresh cows milk her husband, Votoran, had come back with! Wow!), yoghurt (also home-made), salad, tea, rose-jam (home-made), home-collected honey, luncheon, roast capsicum, and an assortment of other things we’re unsure of the name for! The food alone that Anahit provided for us during our stay with their family was above and beyond - it just never stopped coming! 🤪 We felt completely spoiled by Anahit’s homely…home! Anahit would not let us help with anything in terms of preparation or cleaning up, and we got the feeling she would be offended if we pushed 🥹

After breakfast Anahit had to go to work (she works as a primary school teacher at the local school!) Before leaving, Anahit gave us both the biggest grandma hugs 🥰 and wished us well on our adventures. We were sad to see her go. It was wonderful being and feeling so thoroughly cared for and welcomed 🥹 We hope we will see Anahit and her family again some time in the future. Beautiful, beautiful family. We actually had the pleasure of meeting Anahit’s baby grandson, Vagahn, later last night. Vagahn is 8 months old and currently lives there with his mother (from our possibly incorrect understanding, his dad works in Yerevan as a paediatrician?). How happily engaged both Anahit and Votoran were with Vagahn - it warmed my heart sooooooo deeply to watch! As soon as Vagahn and his mother arrived home, Anahit swooped in (as she does) to prepare him dinner and get him fed while he sat on his Grandpa’s lap with an abacus. He was completely loved on by both of his grandparents during this time - so many convos, waves, kisses, and laughs! Anahit had Vagahn so focused on everything she was saying to him! Vagahn is blessed to be so loved and cared for by so many wonderful people - people who find joy in connecting and being with him; he is such a happy baby! 🥹 and believe it or not, he is their 9th grandchild! 🤪🩵

And then it was time for us to venture on our next trek. We weren’t entirely sure where we were going to stop for the night, but our aim was to get down as low as possible where it would be a little warmer and therefore more comfortable to camp. Again, the TCT track from Artavan would have had us climbing up to 2500m where there is still way too much snow (Anahit almost had a heart attack when she thought we were going that way 🤣 I think she would have tied us up to stop us from going 🤣), so we (again) had to find a way around, instead of over, the mountains. We decided to follow the TCT track to 2200m where there was an alpine lake, and from there we’d follow the goat and 4WD tracks that trended downward so that we could avoid the higher ridges and eventually meet up with a TCT side route heading up to Jermuk. Our plan was to make this day as well as the next day quite big hiking days so that we would only have to camp once on our way to Jermuk. This is because the route goes through a protected conservation area, and it is biiiiiig bear territory! 😳 We’re also not keen to continue camping at higher altitudes because it really is just too cold for the gear that we have. It’s really unfortunate, because usually at this time of year there’s not nearly as much snow and it’s usually warmer (according to all of the Armenians we’ve talked to about this!), but alas…it is what it is, and we can’t do anything about it until we get back to Yerevan where there is a store that we MIGHT be able to pick up more gear from (if still needed by then).

Our trek up to the lake felt slow and laborious - for me, not Ben. We climbed 300m across 3km, starting with muddy gravel tracks which turned into rocky grassy goat trails. On the way there we happened across a couple of village ruins, one of which had a more misshapen graveyard. We actually didn’t realise it was a graveyard at first, and as we were walking between the rocks I said “it looks like a rock graveyard!” and then we were like “………oooohhh wait…” 😅😅😅 Then we really looked at the shape of the rocks and how a lot of them were lying down like graves… woops! Our bad. We hurriedly apologised and scurried back to the path!! One of the village ruins also had grinding stones that would have once been a windmill - how cool!

From there we continued climbing up into the snow. For most of this next little while, we were following the tracks of a wolf! The tracks were going in the opposite direction to what we were, so we weren’t “tracking” the wolf, per se - it was just cool to be following them! And obviously, the higher we climbed, the more snow there was to contend with. For reasons unknown (at the time), I was not enjoying this at all! I was feeling the weight of my pack a lot more than usual, I felt tired of climbing up all the time, and I felt utterly pissed off at sinking to my thighs in snow again and again and again! 😤 By the time we (FINALLY!!!) reached a point from which we could see the lake, I just felt resentful of the lake’s existence (never mind it was my idea to go there in the first place 🤣). And although it was probably less than 100m away from where we were, when Ben (who was having the most amazing joy-filled time) suggested we now go to the lake, I basically exploded and said fuck the lake🖕and went and sat on a rock in wait while Ben went to see the lake 😅 At this point in time I had no idea why I was feeling the way I was feeling - I just knew I felt so, so tired and didn’t want to be in the snow anymore. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Climbing down and around the mountain was certainly more joy-filled on my part! 🤪 Once we got back below the snow-line, we stopped for a lunch of salami & cheese wrapped in lavash! From our vantage point, we could see the deep canyons and valleys in the middle of Armenia, the snowy mountains on the other side, and far to the west we could see the towering cone of Mt Ararat, in Turkey. I like that mountain, that is a niiiiiice mountain! 😝🫏

An hour later we’d trekked down through some forest to a little reservoir, where we think a farmer must come to stay during the summer months. There was a little cabin there and a paddle boat on the water! We stopped here and enjoyed a mandarin each, commenting on who might stay here and what they do, and what the little reservoir could be used for. We think the paddle boat might be used for fishing? But maybe it’s just for fun!

As we continued making our way lower we left the forest and trekked across farmland. We were walking amongst these extremely prickly bush things for a while - they’re so sharp they draw blood easily, even through clothes (speaking from experience 😬). We came across a man who was picking mushrooms, and although he seemed nice at first, as we walked past he made sexual gestures towards me that really weren’t nice 😑 Of course he did this while Ben wasn’t looking, so when I told Ben he was shocked and enraged. After a while of feeling pretty depressed and then enraged myself, I thought to check on the map as to where abouts we were, as I remembered reading a warning about a man who harasses women at some point along this route - and sure enough, we were at that point. Trust my luck to stumble across him randomly in the wild… 🫩 So many women have reported him. He needs a big bullet to the brain.

The terrain changed massively once we got down off of the farmland. It was almost like we were in a different country - everything was arid, gravelly, dry, and rocky. There was also no path, and the terrain undulated a lot. Given my fresh experience of sexual harassment, I was wanting to put as much distance between us and him as quickly as possible, and having no path to follow combined with the undulation (I.e., not being able to see where we were headed) slowed us down hugely. This made my thoughts spiral until I was panicking about him following and catching up to us, etc etc etc. I let Ben know I felt scared, and as always he was so supportive, calm, and reassuring - he said if that asshole catches up to us he’ll get bear sprayed in the face 🤣 I enjoyed this image and even laughed a little. Ben also said he was more likely to stay around that farm area - which is true, it was highly unlikely he’d try to follow us, it was just my anxious brain in panic-mode. I was thankful to Ben’s voice of logic and reason. Because of this, I was able to calm down a bit, and although my fear and anxiety stayed with me, I was also able to stay out of my head and enjoy the hike; to get on with things.

When we eventually crested the saddle, so began our long descent into the canyon that winds its way to Jermuk. This trail was much easier to follow as it was more open with grassy hillsides - farmland. A short way down, we could see and hear someone riding a horse, and a little closer we could see and hear a farmer with a flock of sheep. They were moving the sheep towards us, and their sheepdogs were aiding this mission. We didn’t feel too concerned, as we thought the shepherd had seen us - they seemed to stop and look at us for a time, anyway, so we kept walking down the now 4WD track. Then, Ben says “I think the dogs are running towards us” and I said “nah, the farmer will call them off” (because I could see the farmer, surely they could see us?) to which Ben said “ummmm… I think they’re running towards us!” and sure enough, 4 massive sheep dogs were sprinting and barking in our direction, scattering the sheep as they barrelled towards us 😳 …oh fuck!

The next three minutes were fun. NOT! They felt like a whole eternity. We walked with our hiking poles in the air, so as to appear bigger, and we walked as quickly as we dared while appearing calm - which was still. so. slow. When I turned to look at these dogs, they were right behind Ben. They weren’t, however, baring their teeth like that dog back in Yeghegnadzor. They were snarling and growling, though, and one of the dogs kept running right up to Ben before dropping off and then running back up again, barking and snapping all the while. Fiiiiiinally they seemed to drop back, but then they started up again! Following us closely and barking. I turned around a second time and made soft but long eye contact with the dog who was leading. I don’t know if this actually helped, but I felt like it helped, because then they dropped off and went away… but that might have also been because we’d reached the boundary of their territory! Who knows. I don’t think they meant harm, they just wanted us off of their territory, but hot diggity dang that got our blood pumping!!! Bloody hell!!! As if my nervous system needed that added stress today!!!!!!! Afterwards, we wondered about the shepherd - is he an asshole? Or does he just have uncontrolled dogs? I thought that it could be plausible to have 1 uncontrolled dog, but 4? Seems unlikely for sheepdogs. I think they might just be an asshole. Ben’s remaining unsure - wise and unassuming as always 🤗 I am still practicing leaving room for the possibility that I may not have the full picture; it’s easier to assign intent than to sit with the discomfort of not fully knowing what something meant 🥺

It took us some time to feel okay again after that! Because of the dogs, we’d missed our turn-off point to connect with another 4WD track. Not a chance we were going back to find it, though! We just walked to the main highway and followed that for a time. Then came the big zig-zag descent! This road descended quickly and steeply right into the canyon itself. Once again we felt we were passing into a different country! The grassy slopes turned into cliffs that had massive stacks of basalt collumns pressed together. The effect was stunning! On our way down, a car that was zigging up the zag stopped and the dude inside asked us if we wanted a lift down. We politely declined, and once again were awed by the eagerness Armenians seem to have to help - even if it means going out of their way. We continued to zag down the zig on foot. About 3/4 of the way down, we heard a dog bark… we both groaned. Not again! We carefully peered over the edge of the road and our eyes were greeted by the sight of a massive German shepherd alongside a smaller border-collie looking dog. Well shit. We watched them run up the road, and then onto the grass as they moved further towards us. I said to Ben we should quickly move downhill so that when the dogs get here we’ll be down from them instead of higher up (less threatening for the dogs, and that way we could walk down towards people instead of having to go back up for ages with nobody to help). They eventually made it to the road. My nervous system was so wound up at this point - this was way too much for one day! We put our sticks up again as they began to follow us, but when I turned around to look at the dogs - particularly the German shepherd - I said to Ben they look friendly. So we slowed down, stopped and turned around, and HOLY MOTHER OF GOD they were so gorgeous and friendly and just wanted cuddles and pats! 🐕 I almost fainted with relief! Holy guacamole!!!! 🤣🤣🤣 These dogs will be the end of me 🤣🤣🤣

Our two new friends escorted us down the last zag to the construction site, where there was yet another dog. This dog got called off really quickly, however, and we were greeted and given a tour of the site by who we imagine was the foreman. Turns out they’re the ones building this zig zag road! And this was their work base. We chatted for a while before moving on. Before long, we crossed a bridge and a car stopped beside us. This man was curious about what we were up to, and said if we needed a place to camp we can stay at his “Honey Garden” about 2km down the road. This honey garden is located on the map (it just doesn’t say it’s a campsite), so we warmly took him up on his offer. He said he was just off to do some gardening for a few hours, and then he would be back. And that was that! We walked through the canyon with its spectacular and leaning basalt cliffs towering over us, down towards the honey garden. Upon reaching the entrance to the campsite, we could see a massive lion dog face poking out of its little kennel. It was watching us, but it wasn’t barking. Do we go in? Do we stay here and wait hours for Emin to come back? We could see the dog was chained, so we decided we’d just see what happened if we walked towards them. My god he was a big dog! He came out of his kennel as we approached - I swear he was the size of a lion!! 🦁 Certainly looked like one 🤪 As we got nearer, it became clear that this was an extremely friendly dog - thank god!!! 😅 This dog, which Ben named “Big Fluff”, was soon smitten with Ben and vice versa. As adorable as this was, all I wanted was to set up our tent, curl up into a ball, and rest! So after 5-10 mins of Ben and Big Fluff non-stop cuddling, I called it and moved us along down to where the actual campsite was.

This campsite was epic! It had Winnie-the-Pooh-esque earthenware honey pots, large and small, strewn around amongst trees, flowers, and rocks. There was even a camp shelter made from coarsely masoned multi-coloured rocks from the region - reds, blues, pinks, whites, and browns. All the colours! This shelter had a water tap, a wood-fire barbecue, a swing chair, and a long table with benches - all alongside a rushing river. Bougie! 🤩

Upon setting up camp, I realised I’d left my sleeping bag liner in Artavan…shiiiiiiiiiit. This liner makes my sleeping bag warmer by a whole 6 degrees Celsius, so it’s been very necessary and helpful! I wasn’t too concerned about this night in particular, as we were down at 1400m, 0/1 degrees C, but camping after this, back higher up, might be unwise if the temperature doesn’t increase a bit. Sigh! 😞 I quickly contacted Anahit, and she confirmed she has my liner, and has since dropped it at a petrol station in Vayk for us to pick up on our way back to Yerevan (in a couple of weeks). Bless her!

Anyway. Back to the Honey Garden. As we were setting up our tent, a car stopped on the road and a man got out and asked us what we were doing. We think they thought we were there without permission and they seemed like they meant business, so we hurriedly tried to explain (using mostly sign language) that the man who owns this place had given us permission and would be home in a couple of hours. Thankfully they understood this, and we parted ways on a happier note. Goodness! What more was this day going to bring? 😅

While we were eating our dinner, Emin returned home and invited us for a drink once we’d finished eating. This was really lovely - turns out Emin has built everything in this campsite on his own, including the little house he is currently constructing. He stays in the bottom of it - in a room I would describe as a basement. Emin said this house would be finished by October. Wow! And we think, if we understood correctly, he’s been working on the campsite in general for 5 years. Just incredible! He offered us coffee at 7pm, which we had to decline or else we wouldn’t sleep! So he then brought out the cognac 🤣 which we each had a shot of! This cognac did not seem to sit well in my tummy, but I just shrugged it off. We then had a tour of Emin’s bee garden area - he said 15 of his hives died in the winter 🥶 which is sad! He also said that because this area is a wildlife sanctuary, there are over 2000 different types of flowers for the bees, so they make very good honey! 🍯 Hence the name, Honey Garden! It’s a very sweet place, and Emin seems a lovely man.

We felt too tired to do any writing that evening, so we just went straight to sleep.

Little did we know, the worst was yet to come… 👀 To be continued…

(No, we haven’t been eaten by bears 🤪)Read more