Day 18: Part One ✅

This morning we woke to the melodic tune of a bird singing away in the trees, and the trees gently rustling in the background. It was beautiful, lying there with eyes closed, just listening for a while. Astoundingly, when I checked the time, it was 8:45am 😳 The last time we’d woke up that late it was in our first few days of hiking!! I usually wake at 6:50am on the dot regardless of when I’ve fallen asleep (work habits die hard?), so this morning’s little lie in felt like a blessing 😴

By the time we’d packed up our things and hiked back down to the road (seeing Ashat along the way!), it was 10am. Organising a taxi then took quite some time, as we realised that even here in Tandzaver the taxi app wouldn’t “work” (still too rural). What to do? The random lady on the street gestured that we should just hitchhike (or that’s what we thought she meant). That felt a little too uncomfortable, however… maybe one day we’ll be brave enough to hitchhike 🤗 In the end we knocked on Mariana’s door and asked for assistance. Thank goodness we met them yesterday 🙏 Before long we’d met the entire neighbourhood, a ride to Tatev was happening, and we were being asked about why we’d been with the eco police yesterday 😅 In general everyone seemed thankful that we’d found the flaming tree and called it in 🙏

Arriving back in Tatev was like entering a totally new place! Without the fog it was almost unrecognisable - everything was so alive and in sharp focus! We could see the cliffs, the views, everything - and waaaaaay in the distance we could see Bardzravan sitting on the clifftop. Of course the first thing we did was check to see if Shya had made it back to Tatev. We highly doubted it, but we had to check - no Shya 😞 We sighed, walked towards a restaurant for brunch, and gave Jon a call. We also ended up giving Ben’s parents a ring, too, and it was lovely to catch up with them for a while! 🥰

Next up was our flight on the world’s longest non-stop reversible gondola! This stretches between Tatev and Halidzor, and what a perfect day we had for it! We could see everything in almost perfect quality - including the track we’d taken past the mother of god church and down into the gorge as we’d made our way to Bardzravan. Again this made us think of Shya and his gorgeousness - we are missing him more and more 🥺💔

Once the gondola ride was over, it was time to embark on our last hike for part one of our Armenia thru-hike. We can’t believe we’re at this point already! The days and time have flown by. Today we hiked to Khot, via the ruined towns of Old Halidzor, Old Shinunayr, and Old Khot. Months ago, back when I was planning this particular week of our hike and looking into the route that went to Bardzravan, Ben caught sight of Old Khot on the map. On looking up what it was, he declared “we are going there”. And so that is at least partly why this end of our hike has been so choppy in terms of being in one place and then back again and off to another - Ben wanted to finish Part One in Khot. You’ll soon understand why 😊

The gondola dropped us off at one end of Halidzor, and the track to Khot started at the other end. Halidzor is another small town situated on a clifftop overlooking the gorge, and the difference in altitude between the gondola end of town, and the cliff edge of town, is a couple of hundred metres! So our first task was to wind our way down through the village to the track start. Ben and I both commented on how “alive” Halidzor seemed compared to other villages we’d visited - it seemed to have an energy to it! Perhaps it was because we were visiting in the middle of the day where other towns we’d seen either in the morning or evening? It also might be because Halidzor seems to somehow be less dilapidated…or maybe that’s just the effect of it having paved roads 😝 Who knows! It was a lovely place to wander through, anyway!

Our 4WD track began and descended along the edge of the cliff, winding down to Old Halidzor. Honestly, Ben and I were so immersed in our convo that we actually missed this old town as we walked by 🤣 I remember seeing the old church with the grass roof (a lot of these ruined churches here have a grass roof!), but Ben doesn’t remember seeing any of it! Oh well, we’d seen it from the gondola 😋 So then we were moving on to Old Shinunayr. Our 4WD track soon switched to a nice little hiking trail moving through bright green forest. This trail had been recently maintained - we could tell, because the little painted trail signs were fresh and overgrowth had been chopped/mown back a bit 🙏

As we got closer to Old Shinunayr, Ben’s leg brushed against a plant and it made his skin sting like a whole bunch of needles were stabbing his leg. This went on for about 10 mins, and this is when I remembered reading about a plant here that has that effect even at the slightest touch!! Thankfully, that was the most that happened, and Ben was careful to avoid that plant moving forward. The landscape then became more rocky and harsh with sharp drops. This is where we started to see a lot of caves in the cliff face. This was exciting, because some of these caves were actually used by humans waaaaay back in the day! Imagine living in a cave 🤯 One cave we went past seemed like it had rooms inside of it! 3 of them! 😱 How cool!!!! But also how did one get up to it? Perhaps the land looked differently back then, but also you’d want your cave to be pretty high so it couldn’t be reached by predators like bears, right? And possibly other humans 🤔

As we wound our way around the cliffs, we were constantly in awe of the landscape. The ancient gnarled rock pillars of aggregate bound by limestone, the carved-out clifffaces, the caves, the waterfalls, and of course the view out and across the deep and luscious gorge! Everything was truly a feast for our eyes!! What we were walking now, is what we would have been looking over at when we’d been making our way to Bardzravan, had the cloud and fog not been so intense that day! Now, with our perfectly clear day, we could look over at the path we’d taken to Bardzravan…🤯 We stood there with our bottom jaws on the ground for some time. How on earth we’d managed that track - it just looks insane!!! We could see clearly the climb up from the farm and the area with all the fallen trees - it’s basically a knife-edge vertical cliff in between two gigantic slips! 😰 And then the climb up to Halidzor through that steep forest 🤯 Holy guacamole!! Beautiful, BEAUTIFUL lush forest, but hot dang are we glad that’s all just a memory now 👀🤣🤣🤣👀

At last Old Khot came into view. It was much greener than all of the pictures we’d seen! We supposed the pictures had all been taken in summer, when everything is brown. Old Khot is a cliffside village, so a lot of the houses are literally built into the cliff - the aesthetic effect, although I’m sure far from the point at the time, is epic! It’s actually often referred to as the Armenian “Machu Picchu”, because of its dramatic and ruinous setting against the gorge. For a ruined town, it seems pretty well preserved - but then again, it was only abandoned 60 years ago as opposed to other village ruins we’ve seen which are hundreds if not thousands of years old. So I guess we’ve seen what’s coming for Old Khot 😜 For now, however, it’s incredible to see how people used to live and the cave-like houses they inhabited! It seems to now be used as farmland, or at least as a place to graze horses and provide thoroughfare for cows and sheep to move between the clifftop and grassy hills below.

Now I know what you’re thinking - how have we got through almost a whole day without mention of any farm dog? We did actually almost make it the entire day without a farm dog 🤣 We still did, really. Just the last 30 minute climb up from Old Khot was spent wondering if that barking sheep dog was getting closer to us or if it was the gorge messing with our ears. We didn’t feel too stressed, as the farmer was very nearby, but we did speed up a bit - nothing like a barking sheep dog to move you up the last ascent with a little more pep in your step 🤣

Reaching the town of (new) Khot was an interesting experience. I can only think to describe it as we were immediately harassed by children - or that’s how it felt. I’m unsure of their intention, whether they were actually harassing or just being curious... they really wanted my hiking poles! And one of them ran up and made some noise behind us, and I asked Ben to check if my jacket was still attached to my pack. I felt unsettled and keen to be inside the safety of our hotel room. Can’t say children make me feel that way usually 🤣 so hopefully I was just being a bit paranoid, and they were just being curious kids 👀

That’s a wrap for part one of our thru-hike! We’ve made it to the hotel in Khot, had a lovely dinner (we actually got to cook our own food!!), and are feeling actually really tired, so hopefully we sleep well!

A bit of a twist - Ben and I have arranged to hire a car tomorrow so that we can go and pick up Shya from Bardzravan. Best case scenario: We are able to arrange for an organisation to care for him until we can adopt him in December. Second best case scenario: We find an organisation to care for him and adopt him out to other people. And third best scenario: Failing the above, we take him back to Tatev where we now know he is more suited and better looked after (but still desperate). Fingers crossed we can actually find him!!! Will be good to know he’s either in better hands or at least as well off as he was in Tatev:) It shall be interesting being driver over here instead of passenger… we’ll be taking it s l o w 🤣🙏🫡🤗🩵

Woohooooo onto the next adventure!! 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳Read more