There has been a bit of a pause to writing the blog, due to a bout of particularly nasty food poisoning (that’s what I get for trying to be healthy!). Which also reminds me to say that your best travel partners will always be stemetil, Imodium and hydrolite!
So, due to the inability to move (literally!) I sent Toni, Stephen and Mary to the cave city of Goris without me. A good decision apparently, as the road was really rough.
After a few hours of getting myself together and allowing time for more meds to kick in, the crew picked me up as we headed on our way north. We stopped at Zorats Karer, ancient stone circles. The misty and mountainous valleys of the south Caucasus have been host to human activity continuously for thousands of years, but only recently has the Western archaeological world had access to them.
These rock circles are is an area which has been inhabited numerous times across millennia, from prehistoric to medieval civilizations. It consists of a prehistoric mausoleum and nearby, over two hundred neighboring large stone monoliths, eighty of which have distinctive, well-polished holes bored near their upper edge. There’s much debate as to what the circles and holes were for, but much of the science shows that they were used as an early form of telescopes.
As we climbed up through the mountains of southern Armenia, we came across the Orbelian Caravanserai, located on the crest of the Vardenyats Mountain Pass.
This carsvanserai was being conserved, so we couldn’t go in, but clearly showed how sturdy and lonely these sites were.
We moved on through the stunning mountains, towards Lake Sevan where we stopped at the Noratus Cemetery. Here we wandered through the carved stones from the 7th century that told of the lives and deaths of the people of the time.
Unfortunately (for me!) our next stop was a local cheese maker, Mikayelyan Family Farm. They took us into their cheese cellar and talked through their making process…. Of course at this stage, I’m having severe discussions with my stomach to tell it to toughen up so that I can sample some of this wondrous and amazing looking cheese!
Our last night in Armenia was spent in Dilijan, which is back within the Caucus Mountains and you can see the clear difference.
