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29 August Yerevan / Lake Sevan / Dilijian

Want to Bring An Armenian Cross Home ?

Ara came early to drive me up the Armenian Highlands.  Our destination was Lake Sevan, the largest lake in the Caucasus - a crystal-clear wonderland 2000m above sea level.  This, like all other Soviet resorts, used to be full of millions of domestic tourists.  With the collapse of the USSR and the economies of the constituent states, tourism disappeared overnight, with Armenia attracting less than 100,000 tourists a year.
 

	Through the Armenian countryside

We dropped by two small churches on Sevan Island, or rather a cute little peninsula, where every tourist to Sevan goes to have photos taken with the churches and the lake in the backdrop.  Hmm… been there, done that.  The Noratus Cemetery was next – and this is an amazing place with hundreds of ancient Armenian crosses and carvings - very intricate and yet primeval in certain ways.  The khachkars, the Armenians say, are unique symbols of their faith which combines elements of Christianity as well as paganism.  Someone even told me that there were related to the Celtic crosses, and told me about how these could have gone to the British Isles with an Armenian monks…care to believe in that ?  Noratus also has lots of unusual tablets and sarcophagus, many with primeval carvings of celebrations, the farmer, and other scenes of everyday life.  Actually, I was to see so many khachkars all over Armenia and I often wondered at the way they were left by the roadside…wonder if anyone would just pick one up and sell them somewhere.
 

	The Khakhars and reliefs of Noratus - farmers, feasts, parties, music, life in general...

Then we made my way to Dilijan, a highlands resort town and two ancient monasteries nearby...Goshavank and Haghastzin.  These monasteries were so remote and the roads so bad that a 4-wheel drive was needed to get there fast.  Of course, if you have all the time under the sun, you can take the once-a-day bus there and spend the night in the villages.  Not totally a bad proposition, for the scenery was amazing and villagers were friendly... old ladies greeted me with such warmth, kissing my face and calling me son...
 

Bring me light... Look at those ancient Armenian inscriptions on the walls.	The Monasteries of northern Armenia	Reliefs of "playing eagles" and hence the name of the monastery.

Back to Yerevan and I met Onnnik and wife again.  We visited the Genocide Monument - a memorial to the 1.5m Armenians massacred by the Turks in 1914/5, still a sore point in the memories of the Armenian people worldwide.  Worried that the Armenians might join the Russians against itself, the Ottoman Turks launched a systematic massacre of Armenians.  Today, Turkey flatly rejected such allegations and instead talked about the “Genocide of Eastern Anatolia”, which they said was the murder of Turks by Christian forces.  Needless to say, this line of argument wasn’t quite widely accepted by rest of the world.

Again, I sent emails from Onnik’s home, had some drinks and coffee, before retiring for the night just after midnight.