Armenia month by month

Here is the year, honestly, with the passes named.

The short version

Spring

March

The month we steer people away from. The country is brown rather than green, the mountain roads are shut, the Dilijan forest is bare and the light is flat. Yerevan works as a city break at the lowest prices of the year, and the Matenadaran manuscript collection is just as good in March as in June. If you have any flexibility, move.

April

The orchards in the Ararat valley come into blossom and the country begins to turn green. Yerevan runs in the sixties and low seventies Fahrenheit (high teens to low twenties Celsius), which is good walking weather in a city built for walking.

The catch is altitude. The Vardenyats pass at about 7,900 feet (2,410 m), which many people still call the Selim pass, carries the old road between Lake Sevan and Vayots Dzor and may still be under snow in April. The road up Mount Aragats to Kari Lake at about 10,800 feet (3,290 m) is firmly closed until roughly late June. Dilijan is wet.

An April trip is Yerevan, Echmiadzin, Garni and Geghard, Khor Virap, Sevan and the run south, which is a very good eight days.

May

Close to the best month, and the better of the two peak windows for anyone who dislikes crowds and higher rates. The country is green for the only weeks of the year that it is. The Vardenyats pass is usually open, which puts the fourteenth-century caravanserai at the top back on the route and it is one of the best small sights in Armenia. Yerevan is warm rather than hot and the outdoor cafes are running.

Aragats stays closed. That is the one thing May cannot give you.

Summer

June

Everything except the very top of Aragats is open, the alpine meadows in Syunik are out, and Dilijan and Lake Sevan are at their most pleasant. Yerevan is in the eighties and low nineties Fahrenheit (high twenties to low thirties Celsius), which is warm but workable if the days are shaped properly.

This is the best all-round month for a trip that includes both the low country and the mountains.

July

Hot and dry in the lowlands. Yerevan regularly passes 100°F (38°C) in the afternoon and the Ararat valley is hotter, which makes the southern drive towards Goris and Tatev genuinely unpleasant between one and five in the afternoon. Air conditioning in the vehicle stops being a preference.

The compensations are real. The Aragats road to Kari Lake opens from around July and the walk to the southern summit becomes possible. Sevan is at its best and the lake is warm enough to swim in from late July. The Dilijan forest is cool. If your dates are fixed to July, we move the trip up and north and put the low country into the early morning.

August

The same as July with more people and warmer water. Sevan is the summer resort for the whole country and the shore is busy at weekends. Yerevan copes better than it should, and sightseeing in the middle of the day still does not work.

One thing August does well: the Yerevan evening. The squares and the Cascade are alive from nine until well past midnight.

Autumn

September

Our own favourite month and the one we recommend when someone is free to choose. Warm, clear, and the second half of the month into the first week of October is the grape harvest in Vayots Dzor and the Ararat valley. The wine villages around Areni and Yeghegnadzor are the best place in the country to be during it, and the producers are small enough that you end up in the middle of it rather than watching. Our wine and food route is built around this fortnight.

Everything is open all month. Rates in Yerevan and in the Vayots Dzor estates are at their annual peak, which what a trip to Armenia costs sets out.

October

Beautiful, colder, and the Dilijan forest turns properly, which is worth a detour on its own. The first three weeks are excellent. By late October the high passes start to become unreliable, and the Vardenyats road can close with little notice. We attach a written alternative to any late-October itinerary that uses it.

Yerevan in October is close to perfect: clear, cool and empty of tour groups.

Winter

November

The flattest month after March. The Aragats road is shut, the Vardenyats pass is unreliable, the southern route to Tatev becomes a long and sometimes impossible day, and the smaller monasteries can be snowed in. What remains is a genuinely good and very cheap Yerevan, Echmiadzin and Sevan trip.

December to February

An underrated city trip. Yerevan in winter is cheap and atmospheric, the restaurants are full of Armenians rather than visitors, and the brandy finally makes sense. Tsaghkadzor is a real if modest ski resort forty minutes from the capital. New Year in Armenia is a serious social season and the middle of January is an interesting fortnight to be in the country.

What you lose is roughly half of Armenia. We will build a winter trip and we will tell you plainly what it does not include, in writing, before you book.

Region by region, in one table

When is Ararat visible?

More often than people think, and less often in summer. Mount Ararat, 16,854 feet (5,137 m), sits across the closed Turkish border and dominates the view from Yerevan and from Khor Virap on a clear day.

In summer it typically clouds over by mid morning, which is why we put Khor Virap early and why it is one of the few genuinely early starts we build in a country that otherwise runs late. In October, November, March and April the air is cleaner and the mountain is out for longer.

The thing about Yerevan mornings

Worth stating in a seasonal article because it affects every day of your trip. Yerevan runs late. Cafes and museums open around ten or eleven, dinner is at nine or ten, and the squares are busiest after dark. A nine o’clock departure wastes the best part of the day for no gain, and fighting the rhythm produces a worse trip.

We schedule accordingly and put the early starts only where they buy something, which is Khor Virap for the mountain and the southern drive in summer to get ahead of the heat. Yerevan in three days builds the days the way the city actually works.

What we would actually book

If you can choose freely, the second half of September. If you want the same trip for less money and slightly fewer people, the second half of May. If walking is the point, late June to early September, because that is when Aragats and the high Syunik meadows are open. Walking in Armenia has the routes.

If your dates are fixed in July or August, we move the trip north and up and treat Yerevan as an evening city. If they are fixed in winter, we tell you which half of the country you are not seeing and then build a very good trip in the half that remains.

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Keep reading

• Armenia: the complete guide to planning your trip
• What a trip to Armenia really costs
• How many days do you need in Armenia?
• Yerevan in three days
• Armenia wine and food, 9 days
• All our Armenia trips

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