Day 16: The pack goes marching on and on

Holy Mother of God, we s e v e r e l y underestimated how long and difficult today was going to be! 16km, 2/3 downhill, how hard could that be?! Turns out, very hard! It has actually proven me wrong - we have now experienced a harder day than what our day 2 was!!! Whew, what a time to be alive and hiking in Armenia! 🤣

This morning we woke to a steaming breakfast of omelette, crepe, herbal tea, tomato, cucumber, and various cheeses and jams. After eating all we could manage 😮‍💨, and taking a bit of what was left to eat later, we trundled out of the guesthouse and onto the chilled, foggy streets of Tatev. We both felt really good about our lives and plans in this moment, so we set off in high spirits. First stop: Tatev Monastery.

Because it was so foggy, we couldn’t see much further than 10m in front of us. When we reached the monastery, at first I wondered where it was! Turns out we had to get pretty close just to see its outline, so thick was the fog! 🧐 Even so, we were still able to take in and appreciate its size, grandeur, and soul. It is a beautiful church, and we can see why it’s well known across the world - or, across the Christian world, at least. We stayed inside it for a while, resting in the quiet and healing space that ancient sanctuary type buildings seem to emanate. I lit a candle and prayed to my Nana Anne, letting her know I think of her every day, miss her very much, and can’t wait to be with her again, whenever that time comes (hopefully not for a good while yet!). I placed her candle next to some other candles so she wouldn’t be lonely. Ben also lit a candle for his family in general, and sent them love and protection. 🕯️

Whilst in the monastery grounds, Ben once again befriended the homeless dogs. It is heartbreaking how many dogs are homeless here, and it’s sooooo cold at night 🥶 Most people here don’t seem to have much empathy for the plight of these dogs (or any dog, at that)… Our hearts just can’t take it! Unfortunately, one of these dogs took a particular fancy to Ben (surprise surprise) and started following us as we hiked out of town. He actually took hold of Ben’s jacket sleeve, and wouldn’t let go! 🥺 We tried to shake him off, but he insisted on following. I tried yelling aggressively at him and waving my stick (😭💔 I just had to tell myself that it is kinder to be mean to him so he stays in Tatev, as he has dog friends here and he does get fed, whereas where we’re going that may not be the case!), but he just went to Ben. Ben tried shooing him for quite some time (Ben just can’t be mean to dogs or anyone…he’s so sweethearted 🥺😭), but the dog just kept following. This dog knew we didn’t want him with us - each time I turned around to look at him he’d start pretending to be intensely interested in something on the ground, and as soon as I’d turn away again, he’d continue following along. Sigh! Eventually we gave up and just let him follow - he had no idea what was in store for him! But then again, apparently neither did we 🤣🤷🏼‍♀️

As we stepped off the highway and began our descent into yet another canyon, everything quickly turned green and luscious! It’s truly springtime now, in these more southern areas of Armenia! We came across the ruins of a church, which actually just looked like a wall of stone. Never would’ve known it used to be a church was it not marked so on the map! Our descent then took us down steep lush flowery slopes. We couldn’t see much at all (fog!), but we could hear the raging river and waterfall… somewhere… around us! As we slowly made our way lower we eventually got below the cloud and fog, meaning we could make out more of the valley and impressive cliffs around us. Finally, we could see the waterfall we’d been hearing all morning, and our path was headed right for it! Thankfully, there was a bridge for us to cross the river!

From there we wound our way down through thicker and thicker bush. Luckily, this particular part of the track had been recently maintained, so it was a well-marked and “easy” path to follow (easy compared to what it could have been like!). At one point we came across a sign that depicted the different types of animal prints we might see in the dirt. This is good information for us to have, so we photographed it. After that, we saw many bezoar prints, a few bear prints, and what we THINK may have been a lynx print! Wow!! 🤩 We no longer feel overly anxious about other inhabitants in the environment - as long as we’re loud and announcing our arrival, things should be alright. Today, however, we had this dang dog with us! We felt unsure how this might change how other animals approach/feel about us. For example, at one point, the dog started barking at something in the bush. We heard a growl-like sound, and then saw a bunch of leaves and branches shift as something that seemed fairly large moved away from us and the dog… 🧐🫣 In a scenario where we didn’t have the dog with us, we probably would’ve just passed this creature without knowing and each of us gone on with our lives undisturbed. But who knows 🤷🏼‍♀️ Perhaps it was good to have a guard dog with us today? Maybe?

After a while we came to a church named “the church of the holy mother of God”. Based on the name alone and being entirely ignorant of what it means, I liked this church straight away 🤣 Aside from its name, this church was charmingly sweet - made of stone, with its own disastrously overgrown garden, and situated on the edge of a cliff looking out into the canyon (which we still couldn’t see the bottom of!). It was truly a sight to behold. Our dog, which we’d named Shya at this point, had gone off on a sniffari in great excitement. 🐶 It seemed clear to us at this point that Shya would be accompanying us to Bardzravan, if nothing major prevented him from doing so. 🫣😭😮‍💨

It took us a surprisingly long time to finally reach the river at the bottom of the canyon. We weren’t rushing or anything, we just hadn’t anticipated it would take sooooooooooo long! But the path was windy and at times tricky to navigate in terms of mud and slippery rocks.

Walking along the river was breathtakingly spectacular. Gigantic, ominous looking stone formations lined either side of the river and our immediate surroundings were dense cover of small trees, and everywhere along the ground flowers bloomed - reds, yellows, purples, blues, and whites. At this point, we couldn’t have been enjoying our day more! Aside from the constant worry about Shya, our day had so far been incredible. Surely we were halfway, at this point! We checked our location. We’d done what looked like nothing on the map. Huh? We’d been hiking for 3.5 hours and today was meant to be a 5-6 hour hike. How can we still have soooooo far to go?! How had we only done 5km? It dawned on us then that we needed to get a move on - it was already 1:30pm, we had 11km to go, and if the downhill was that slow, what was the uphill going to bring? Eeeeek! 😬

We put our boots in 4WD mode, and hit the track! Thankfully, this part of the track had also been recently maintained - it actually seemed like a new path had been put in that followed the river directly, as it was a bit different from the map. Same direction, different location. Eventually we began our “5km” ascent. We climbed for a time, and then realised we’d overshot and missed the turn off for the track to Bardzravan. Always check the map! We quickly scooted back down and found the right way. Upon reaching this track, it became clear that it had noooooot been maintained recently at all! It was very overgrown, and at times really quite difficult to get through. This is just part of doing the TCT, however - nobody promised us perfect track conditions! In fact, we’re aware some parts of it will be bush bashing. So we bushed and we bashed, and eventually things thinned out again and we were able to continue unimpeded for a time.

That was around when we saw the little farm cottages ahead. We looked nervously at Shya, and prayed there were no big sheep dogs around. They don’t take kindly to us in the first place…how would they react if we’re with another dog? 🫣 Anyway. Not much we could do but keep on keeping on. Then we realised we’d taken the wrong path. So we turned back. Then we took the wrong path again. Omg! Again we turned back. I zoomed in so far on my map that I could see only the next metre. Worryingly, the way the map wanted us to go didn’t even look like a path. It was wildly overgrown! We could just make out a path, however. Resigned, we continued bush-bashing until we very suddenly burst onto a freshly formed 4WD track. Huh?! There’s daylight around?! 🤣 Everything seemed so open compared to the dense forest we’d just been tackling! We weren’t sure whether to be relieved or worried - this was sure to be easier and therefore faster, but it put us in direct and easy sight of any farm dogs.

We pushed on. This track curved around the farm houses and then rose steeply up - it was a real bitch to climb, if I’m being honest. But we powered up it. Personally, I was terrified of farm dogs becoming aware of our presence too early and chasing after us (I think Ben was, too). We wouldn’t be able to protect Shya, let alone ourselves! So my ability to power up this slope was entirely supported by my body producing adrenaline. Far out! Why would anyone decide to make a road this steep?! Eventually we turned off the 4WD track and back onto a hiking trail. The relief was short lived - could this really be called a hiking trail? After ascending even more steeply (I was actually thanking my feelings of terror at this point because this was an insane climb), our path was blocked by a vertical maze of huge fallen trees. Really? Really.

At this point we heard dogs barking below, and looking back we could see a herd of sheep coming up and around the farm buildings we’d left behind not so long ago. Thank GOD we passed that when we did, and ultra thank God we’d absolutely blitzed the climb since! We were so high up, with the track so gruelling, no dog need chase us!

Climbing over those trees was a real challenge with packs on our backs! We ended up climbing straight up (I’m not even going to try to describe how challenging that was in itself, I’ll just say we were on all fours!) and tried to go around and back down to the path - which eventually worked. It was, however, getting later in the afternoon and we somehow still seemed to have forever to go 😩

Our fear of farm dogs shifted to fear of being out in the wild forest at dusk. Again, adrenaline pumped through our veins and kept us moving at a faster pace than we’d usually be capable of maintaining in such terrain. The fallen trees were behind us, but ahead of us was what looked like bare cliffs - did our track even exist or had it been wiped out in a slip? Were we going to be stranded up here? 🫣 This was truly a big concern we had for a few minutes, until we managed to check the map and found our track veered to the right and continued ascending away from the steep cliffs ahead. Phew!!! 😮‍💨

This part of the track in itself was challenging. We were still ascending quite steeply, over a fallen tree every 10m or so, but mostly it was the blackberry bushes that were slowing us down now. Far out those things just stick you! Our hiking poles were extremely helpful here. We continued at snails pace, and time kept ticking on. Beautiful as this forest was, we could barely appreciate it, such was our stress! Eventually we came across a TCT sign - it was like seeing a friendly face! Albeit a friendly face on a ledge above a cliff drop surrounded by thorny vines halfway up a foggy mountain… 🤪

Fiiiiiiinally the track moved away from exposed drops and flattened out a little, although even here the climb just seemed never ending! We continued climbing through oak and walnut trees. There were small blue and yellow flowers poking their heads up through the fallen leaves. Soon enough we were back up in the cloud! As the fog surrounded us again, our surroundings changed to moss covered boulders and trunks. And yet still we climbed…

We were reaching the last bits of the hike to Bardzravan, and it was here that I realised we were going to be okay. And so it was here, before the ascent had finished, that my body stopped producing adrenaline and started feeling relief. Not good! Next minute, I’m feeling completely exhausted. Legs are heavy, body hurts, my eyelids just want to close. And so it became one of those ends to a hike where you just have to keep putting one foot in front of another. Left, right, left, right, the pack (Shya, Ben, and I) goes marching on and on… and on.

Our thoughts that Shya would be able to make it back to Tatev had looooong passed. There’s no way he’d make it back the way we came, anyway. Not with that farm and those dogs in the way! What would his night in Bardzravan be like? Would there be other homeless dogs? Would they allow him to join them? Or would he be outcast and bullied? Either way, he was in for a rough night…

Climbing up to the base of the cliff on which sat Bardzravan felt like a never ending climb, it was such a bitch! It was so so hard! That forest just kept on foresting! It is an incredible forest, it’s sooooo stunning! It’s probably the most beautiful forest I’ve been in outside of NZ (can’t beat NZ forest). But yeah…I just couldn’t fully appreciate it at the time. At one point we rounded a corner and the moss covered boulders suddenly had an order to them and behold! The ruins of Old Bardzravan! At the time, I regret to say I did not give a shit about this old town 🤣 I did not have the capacity to care about ruins at that point, so empty was my energy tank 🤣 All I could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other, pushing myself up this mount, knowing there was a guesthouse waiting at the top…hopefully with a hot shower and dinner ready to go 🤤

Speaking of dinner, we fed Shya before entering Bardzravan. We knew he wouldn’t be allowed inside the gates of the guesthouse and that he’d be left to fend for himself in this unfamiliar, unknown town overnight. It seemed cruel to let him go hungry when he was so obviously exhausted and had a long night ahead of him…I took my pack off and gave him the little bits of lavash and cheese we had left, and a chunk of salami. Bless this dog, but we hope he doesn’t follow us tomorrow.

The final, still very steep, climb finally lead us over the cliff top and over some grassy fields. Walking towards the town, the ghostly shapes of buildings loomed out of the fog along with the noises of chickens and cows. As we walked down the road towards the guesthouse, some dogs came out and barked at Shya, who whined and stuck close to us 🥺 Sorry, dude. You’re on your own 🥺 Hopefully they’ll quickly sort out a hierarchy and will all be friends in the end, and hopefully his life here will be better than in Tatev 😭🩵

Upon reaching the guesthouse, Anahit waved us in and demanded we shower before coming inside 🤣 Dunno if this is custom here, or if it was because we smelt that bad…🤣🤣🤣 but anyway. The shower was mercifully hot, and it felt amazing to wash everything away and start the process of relaxation. Stepping inside was like a dream. It was so warm 🥹, and on the table was dinner all laid out for us! Bread, pizza, potatoes, meat, ah I’m tearing up just thinking back to it! It was wonderfully delicious - all homemade by Anahit, of course! This Anahit in Bardzravan is 70 years old! Wow! We had a great time teaching her to use google translate - she didn’t realise one can speak into it and it will translate what you say!! So that was how we spent this evening- chatting with Anahit. She has 9 grandchildren, 3 children, and 1 great grandchild! Wow!!!! She seems a lovely, lovely human. We are so lucky to have had the opportunity to meet and stay with such wonderful people! 🙏

Tonight we are in old wooden beds that creak like crazy whenever you move, but hey - wouldn’t have it any other way when staying in an older persons house ;P the beds are probably older than us 🤣🤣🤣

Hope you’re all having a fab week so far! Missing everyone back home a lot. Big love and hugs! 🩵Read more