The best two-week route through Armenia

Armenia is about 11,500 square miles (29,700 km²), roughly the size of Maryland. Eight days covers what most people come for. Eleven covers it thoroughly, with the far south done properly or the north added or several serious walking days. Past eleven, the returns flatten fast, and the risk is the specific Armenian failure mode: too many monasteries in a row, at which point they stop registering and the trip goes flat.

So the best two-week route through Armenia is a two-country route. Nine days in Armenia and five in Georgia, over the land border in the north, and it is one of the better fortnights in our library because the two countries are so unalike that the second half resets the first.

Here is the case, and the alternatives.

The border facts that decide this

Armenia’s land borders with Azerbaijan and with Turkey are closed. There is no overland route between Armenia and Azerbaijan in either direction, and we will not build one. We state that as a practical planning matter and take no view beyond the practical one.

The two open land borders are Georgia in the north, at Bagratashen and Sadakhlo, and Iran in the south. The Georgian crossing is normal and workable, and the drive between Yerevan and Tbilisi takes most of a day with the Debed canyon monasteries on the way, which turns a transfer into one of the better days of the trip.

The consequence for anyone planning two weeks in the Caucasus is simple. Armenia and Georgia is the combination. If you want Armenia and Azerbaijan, they are two separate trips, each reached by air, and each best paired with Georgia.

The route in one table

Fourteen days, thirteen nights, six hotel changes. Our fourteen-day route is the day-by-day version.

Days 1 to 3: Yerevan

Three days, and build them the way the city runs, which is late. Cafes and museums open around ten or eleven, dinner is at nine, and the squares are alive after dark. A nine o’clock departure wastes the best part of the day.

Day one is the city itself: Republic Square, the Cascade stairway with its sculpture collection, and the Matenadaran, which holds one of the world’s great collections of medieval manuscripts. Day two is Tsitsernakaberd, the genocide memorial and museum, in the morning with a deliberately easy afternoon behind it, then Echmiadzin and Zvartnots. Day three is Garni and Geghard: the first-century Hellenistic temple in its gorge, and the rock-cut monastery where you should ask your guide to arrange the singing in the stone chamber.

Khor Virap goes in early on one of these mornings, because Mount Ararat at 16,854 feet (5,137 m) clouds over by mid morning in summer. Yerevan in three days is the full plan.

Days 4 and 5: Vayots Dzor

Two hours south. This is the wine province and our favourite two nights outside the capital.

Noravank sits at the end of a narrow red gorge and is one of the four or five best buildings in Armenia. Areni village has the cave where archaeologists excavated a winemaking installation dated to around 4100 BC. The modern producers around Areni and Yeghegnadzor are the point: small, serious, working with the indigenous Areni Noir and Voskehat grapes.

If the season allows, the loop over the Vardenyats pass at about 7,900 feet (2,410 m) to the fourteenth-century caravanserai at the top is worth the detour. It closes in snow, usually from around November to April.

Two nights here also does something structural: it puts a wine day between two monastery days, which is how you keep them from blurring.

Days 6 and 7: Syunik and Tatev

Two and a half hours further south to Goris, a town in a bowl of eroded rock cones.

Day one: the Wings of Tatev cable car, which runs about 3.5 miles (5.7 km) across the Vorotan gorge to a ninth-century monastery on a promontory. It is the rare attraction genuinely worth the queue. Ride it out, walk the monastery properly, and either ride back or walk down into the gorge to the Devil’s Bridge and the old Halidzor path.

Day two: Khndzoresk, the abandoned cave village below Goris, reached by a swinging footbridge across the ravine, which is the best hour in the south. Then the Zorats Karer standing stones and Shaki waterfall on the way north.

Two nights, never one. Yerevan to Tatev is five and a half hours with no stops. Rooms down here are the honest weak point of an Armenian itinerary: a handful of good places and then a long gap, and in parts of Syunik the best available room is a good guesthouse with a shared bathroom.

Day 8: the reset

North again. Either back to Yerevan for a night, or better, straight to Lake Sevan at about 6,200 feet (1,900 m) and on to Dilijan.

Sevan is roughly a sixth of the country’s surface area. The Sevanavank churches on the peninsula are the postcard, and Noratus on the western shore, with the largest surviving field of khachkars, the carved cross-stones that are Armenia’s distinctive art form, is quieter and better.

Dilijan is the forested north, cooler and greener, with Haghartsin and Goshavank in the woods. This is the day off in the middle of the trip and it should feel like one.

Day 9: the Debed canyon and the border

The transfer day that is not a transfer day. North from Dilijan through the Debed canyon, with Haghpat and Sanahin, two eleventh-century monasteries on the UNESCO list, sitting above the gorge on the road to the frontier.

Cross at Bagratashen and Sadakhlo. It is a normal, workable land border and our Tbilisi partner meets you on the other side. Sleep either at Alaverdi on the Armenian side before crossing or push through to Tbilisi, depending on your flight times and the season.

Days 10 to 12: Tbilisi

Three days, and the contrast is the point. After nine days of high, dry, austere and monumental Armenia, Tbilisi is green, humid, chaotic, layered and enormously social.

The old town with the sulphur bathhouses at Abanotubani, the Narikala ridge, the art nouveau and Soviet layers in Sololaki and Vera, the Dry Bridge flea market, and a restaurant scene that has become a reason to visit Georgia on its own. Half a day at Mtskheta, the old capital forty minutes out, with the sixth-century Jvari monastery on the hill above the confluence.

Days 13 and 14: one Georgian region, then out

Two nights, and choose one.

Kakheti, two hours east, for the wine country: family cellars where the tasting happens in the room the wine was made in, Sighnaghi on its wall above the Alazani valley, and a supra in a private house, which is the best evening most of our travellers have in Georgia.

Kazbegi, three hours north up the Georgian Military Highway over the Jvari Pass at about 7,815 feet (2,382 m), for Mount Kazbek at 16,512 feet (5,033 m) and the Gergeti Trinity Church on its shoulder at about 7,120 feet (2,170 m). Two nights gives you two chances at the weather, which you need.

We would choose Kakheti for a first Caucasus trip and Kazbegi for anyone who wants the high mountains.

The alternatives, named

Reverse it. Georgia first, Armenia second. It changes the emotional shape and we build it either way. It usually comes down to flights.

Eleven days in Armenia and three in Georgia. For people who want Armenia in depth. Add Gyumri, the second city, built in black tufa and still visibly marked by the 1988 earthquake. Add Mount Aragats at 13,420 feet (4,090 m) with the Kari Lake road, open only from around July, and Amberd fortress on its southern slope.

Make it a walking fortnight. Dilijan and the Transcaucasian Trail sections, Aragats, the southern trails around Tatev, then Kazbegi or upper Svaneti in Georgia. Walking in Armenia covers the Armenian half.

Add a week and do it properly. Twenty-one days is Armenia in nine and Georgia in twelve, which opens Svaneti or Tusheti in the Georgian mountains. This is what we recommend to anyone making this journey once.

What we cut from this route, and why

• A fourth and fifth monastery day. The route above has roughly five monastery encounters in nine Armenian days, spaced by wine, lake, forest and city.
• The big brandy factory tour. An hour of process and a small pour, in a city where three days is already tight.
• One-night stops. Six hotel changes in fourteen days is the ceiling.

Plan this trip

Tell us your dates and which of the two countries you lean towards, and a specialist will send you this fortnight rebuilt around them, with real drive times and the border day handled. Free first outline, no obligation.

Start planning

Keep reading

• Armenia: the complete guide to planning your trip
• How many days do you need in Armenia?
• Yerevan in three days
• What we would skip in Armenia
• Armenia and Georgia, 14 days
• All our Armenia trips

Frequently asked questions