Yeghegnadzor and mountain lingerie

I enjoyed walking down from Noravank through the impressive canyon that is also a climbing paradise.

Some information.

The lower part of the canyon.

Also in the lower part of the canyon.

For the last kilometers I was picked up by a car of local people. They connected me with the gentle local people in the restaurant at the crossing with the highway. There they helped me to travel further. It was complicated to find a kind of a taxi but they phoned around. After a nice hour watching a Russian TV show and drinking tea they organized a driver who was willing to drive me to Yeghegnadzor not further to the south. So the stop in Yeghegnadzor was not planned. But well, I love these unforeseen situation because these are the moments to learn about a country.

While driving through to the scenic valley of the Arpa river the
Jaan Kuman Instrumental Ensemble
is a good choice to listen to.

Yeghegnadzor is a small town and I noticed immediately that something is wrong with it. It was so quiet. The stores were open but there were almost no customers. In the hotel I talked with the young english-speaking staff and what they told me explained the situation: People live close to poverty but more important is that they don't have a perspective. Most of the men are working abroad in Russia. Only because of their money the woman and children who stay in Armenia can survive. They were very unhappy about this. The families are not united and the work life in Russia seem to be hard. There was the fear that Russia could send their men back to protect their job market and people also feared the high corruption in Armenia. All talks were therefore quite depressing. I cannot describe it properly with words but even before I could talk I got the blues of the locals just by walking around. Once more it corroborated that it is not that hard to live a simple live but to have no perspective. It was sad to see that the people in Armenia's south didn't have one.

Hotel Arpa, where I stayed. A nice one but without
other guests that time.

This building besides the hotel was used as youth club.
There was a small party going on that evening.

View down the Mikoyan street. By the way, Anastas Mikoyan was
for one year the nominal head of the Soviet union while his brother
Artem was the famous aircraft designer.

The town is surrounded by high mountains.
 
 

The bank buildings in Armenia were always either new
or perfectly renovated.

A new school or university building (I think).
 

This is the junction with the highway. Note the traffic enforcement
camera on the right side. The road is so bad that I wonder how one can
drive too fast. Note also that this is the main road connecting the south
of the country with the rest. Incredible that it is in such a state!

View from the highway junction to the town.


 

Leaving the town the next day was not easily possible because of the problematic of the buses I described. In the hotel they had an illustrated book with pictures of the surrounding. So why not visit one of the places in the book? I asked the lady at the reception how to go to Smataberd to see also another sight than only churches. She organized not a taxi but her boyfriend that he could also earn some money. We drove up a narrow road with his old Lada. Although that Smataberd is only 20 km from Yeghegnadzor he had never been there. He insisted to climb with me up to the fortress but had to give up after a few hundred meters because he had only normal street shoes and the ground was wet and hard to walk on. With good shoes climbing up is not difficult and the view from the top is fantastic.

This deserves another song: Gramatik - A Bright Day

The houses in the valley around Shatin.

This explains why street shoes were unsuitable.

It is also an option to visit the Tsakhats Kar monastery too.

The weather was so amazing. It changed quickly and one could see the full beauty of the mountains only for some moments. Like lingerie makes a woman more attractive: You cannot see all but enough to play cinema in your head.

View to the north.

View down to Artabuynk.

Nature was awaking, also the spiders.

Very close to the fortress but it is still hidden.

And here it is.

The entrance with some information,...

... even in English.

Closeup of the entrance.

The clouds were moving so fast that the scenery looked different every minute.

The sun that passed the clouds also changed the color of the light...
 

... This image was only taken about a minute after the one on the left side.

The Noravank monastery

We reached Noravank in the afternoon with beautiful weather (that in general often changed quickly in the mountains). This monastery is really worth a visit. It was rebuilt in the 1990s with the help of a patron, an Armenian living abroad. The nice thing is that it contains a good museum that even has English information plates and where one can ask people to learn about the interesting culture and history.

While admiring the landscape and architecture you might listen to Get Well Soon - When you're near to me.

The Surb Astvatsatsin church was designed by a monk who dies before it could be finished. His ideas were nevertheless used. The most famous one is the stair forming the elevated entrance of the church.

The Surb Astvatsatsin church. The main entrance is the upper door.

The stairs don't have a railing but that's not the problem.

I just stood on the first step of the stair so that my shoulder touched the wall.

The other side frightened me even more.

 

Some tourists in a hurry - they came, took a photo of the church, went up,
took a photo inside, went down and walked away. As this is a standard stairs.

I was embarrassed by the others who could use the stairs while I couldn't. In the museum they said that the reason for the stairs are that people often brought animals to the church service and that should be avoided. Also the person going to the church service should trust in god. "If one trusts god one is safe on all his ways."
If there is a god he made me, right? He made me with fear of heights an prevented to enter his church. So either he made me wrong but a god doesn't make mistakes or the monk misunderstood god's will despite he was praying several times a day. OK, I stop questioning. I cannot trust in a god because all religions tell that their god(s) is(are) the only one(s) and their way of praising him(them) is the correct one. That simply doesn't make sense.

View from the monastery complex down to the valley.

The Surb Astvatsatsin in front and the Surb Karapet
church in the background.

The lower level of the Surb Astvatsatsin church
has less ornaments and only small windows without glass.

The inside is quite "naked" as most of the Armenian
churches. Here I wondered why there is no even floor.

The Surb Karapet church.

The side door of the Surb Karapet is a khachkar.

The Surb Karapet church is more interesting because of its interior. It contains in a side building also a mausoleum of a prince.

The main entrance.

The left door is the entrance of the mausoleum.

The church has a stone floor in which there are tombstones.

Interesting ceiling.

The interior is a bit unusual because the altar is upstairs in a small room.


 

The architecture of the window is strange. As if something went wrong during the building. The decided not to use a bow for the window ceiling and that made obviously problems.

The mountains are impressive.

They rebuilt also some of the small houses where the monks lived.

As I wrote the museum is great. I learned for example about the Holy Chrism and how it is made. The many different ingredients are put together using a recipe that is only known by the Catholicos. He cooks the Chrism together with some bishops. The whole creation process takes several days.

The (known) ingredients of the Holy Chrism.

Such cups in form of a bird are used to serve the chrism
during church service.

An original bible written and pained by
the monk who planned the Surb Astvatsatsin church.

A lamp.
 

The ingredients used for the colors of the
paintings in the bible and on ceramics.

The Armenian alphabet painted with these colors.

The museum also presents some khachkars  and some images about the history of the complex, the archeologic excavations and the rebuilding.

The khachkar exhibition and the museum building.
 

The left image shows the Surb Astvatsatsin church before 1940, the right one the result of the preservation in the 1980s

The gentle driver and his daughter could not understand that I wanted to stay longer than 15 minutes in Noravank. She said it was her first time in Noravank nevertheless they went straight to both churches, lighted candles and drove away.
Everywhere where I have been most people don't care about architecture and history. Also many religious people just go to curch because for church service but don't know much about the church building etc.. And as I mentioned in an older post Armenia is not a very religious country.

In fact is was a good decision to stay there longer. As consequence I had to walk down because there are no public buses to/from Noravank. The tourist buses don't transport other persons than the ones who booked e.g. a touristic day trip. I cannot recommend such a trip because the tourists only had half an hour for the whole complex. This is much too short. If you go there you will need 1 to 2 hours.

The weather can change quickly in the high mountains. And within 5 minutes the sun was gone and it rained.