What we would skip in Armenia

Nothing on this list is bad. Armenia has very little that is bad. Everything here is either overrated relative to the time it takes, or badly matched to the trip most people are actually taking, or good only under conditions nobody tells you about in advance. Where we would skip something, we say what we would do with the day instead. If you disagree with us, tell us and we will build it anyway.

We should say at the top that the biggest thing we cut in Armenia is not a place. It is a quantity.

The ninth, tenth and eleventh monastery

The single most common conversation we have with an Armenia client, and the one that improves trips most.

Armenia’s monasteries are genuinely the point. The country adopted Christianity as a state religion in the early fourth century, earlier than anywhere else, and the physical evidence of that decision is why most visitors come. Geghard cut into the rock, Tatev on its promontory, Noravank in its red gorge, Khor Virap with Ararat behind it: each of those is worth a day of your life.

Seen consecutively over three days they stop registering. By the fourth in quick succession you are looking at a sequence of dark stone rooms and you have stopped reading the carving.

Instead: four or five on an eight-day trip, spaced, with a wine day, a walking day and a city day between them. That is the ration in every itinerary in our library and it is why our classic eight-day route looks shorter on paper than the ones you will be sent elsewhere.

Tatev as a day trip from Yerevan

Five and a half hours each way with no stops. It is sold, and it produces eleven hours in a vehicle for ninety minutes on a promontory.

Instead: two nights in the south, at Goris or at Tatev itself. That gives you the cable car unhurried, the walk down into the Vorotan gorge to the Devil’s Bridge, and Khndzoresk, the abandoned cave village with the swinging footbridge, which is the best hour in Syunik. If your trip cannot afford two nights in the south, it cannot afford Tatev, and there is no shame in leaving the south for a second visit.

The big brandy factory tour

Armenian brandy is genuinely good and this is the most heavily marketed activity in Yerevan. What you get is an hour of production process, a corridor of barrels with famous names on them, and a small pour at the end.

Instead: twenty minutes in a Yerevan bar with someone who will pour you three older expressions side by side, which teaches you more and costs less. Then put the afternoon into the Matenadaran manuscript collection, which people routinely under-allocate. Yerevan in three days has the alternative plan.

Restaurants with folk shows

They exist for coach groups. Buffet food and a dance performance rather than something that was happening anyway.

Instead: a village table in Vayots Dzor or Tavush, arranged by our Yerevan partner with a family they have known for years, where the food is cooked by the household. A genuinely different evening, and it costs less.

Lake Sevan as an overnight in August

Sevan is worth half a day and it is worth it in any month. It is not worth a night in high summer, when the shore is the summer resort for the entire country, the restaurants are geared to volume and slow, and the good part of the day is over by two.

Instead: Sevanavank in the morning, Noratus on the western shore with the largest surviving field of khachkars in the world, which is quieter and better than the peninsula, lunch, and on to Dilijan for the night. Dilijan is cooler, greener and has the best provincial hotels in Armenia.

Squeezing Khor Virap, Echmiadzin and Garni into one day

Physically possible, and it produces a day in a car with three stops in it.

Instead: Khor Virap belongs to an early morning of its own, because Ararat at 16,854 feet (5,137 m) clouds over by mid morning in summer. Echmiadzin and Zvartnots are a half day west. Garni and Geghard are a half day east. Two of the three, on two different days.

The Areni cave, on its own

The cave at Areni village holds the oldest known winemaking installation anywhere, dated to around 4100 BC. That is an important archaeological site and, as a visit, it is a cave with some low walls in it and an information board.

Instead: do it as twenty minutes on the way to a cellar rather than as the destination. The interesting continuation of that story is two miles away, where small producers are making serious wine from Areni Noir and Voskehat. What to eat in Armenia explains the revival, and our wine and food route is built on it.

Mount Aragats outside high summer

The road to Kari Lake at about 10,800 feet (3,290 m) is open only from roughly July to September, and it is the last stretch that decides. People plan Aragats in May and June and are then disappointed.

Instead: in spring and autumn, Amberd fortress on the southern slope, a seventh-century castle in a fine position, with good short walks around it and a half day from Yerevan. Save the summit for a July to September trip. Walking in Armenia has the season detail.

A winter itinerary that pretends nothing is closed

We will build a winter Armenia and it is a good trip: Yerevan is cheap and atmospheric, the restaurants are full of Armenians, and Tsaghkadzor is a real if modest ski resort forty minutes from the capital.

What we will not do is sell you a winter route that includes the same things as a September one. Snow closes mountain roads. The Vardenyats pass at about 7,900 feet (2,410 m) is normally shut from around November to April, and the detour is long. The southern route to Tatev becomes a slow and sometimes impossible day. The Aragats road is shut. The smaller monasteries can be snowed in.

Instead: a winter trip built for winter, with the exclusions written down before you book rather than discovered on the road.

Any route that crosses between Armenia and Azerbaijan

We include this because it still appears in itineraries sold elsewhere, and because it cannot be done.

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 this as a practical planning matter and take no view beyond the practical one.

Instead: Georgia is the connecting country in the South Caucasus. The land border with Georgia in the north at Bagratashen and Sadakhlo is a normal, workable crossing, and the drive between Yerevan and Tbilisi takes most of a day with the Debed canyon monasteries at Haghpat and Sanahin on the way. If you want Armenia and Azerbaijan, they are two separate trips, each reached by air and each best paired with Georgia. The best two-week route sets out the pairing that does work.

Adding days in Armenia past eleven

Not because Armenia runs out of interest, but because the returns flatten and the monastery problem gets worse rather than better.

Instead: past eleven days, add Georgia. It is four hours from Yerevan over an open border and it is an entirely different country: greener, wetter, more social at the table, with a different alphabet, a different church and a different food culture. Fourteen days across both is a better trip than fourteen days in either. How many days you need in Armenia sets out where the lengths land.

Self-drive

Armenian driving is assertive, the road markings are inconsistent and livestock on mountain roads is normal. The southern highway is a two-lane mountain road carrying long-distance freight.

Instead: a car with a driver, which is $60 to $150 a day for the vehicle depending on the leg. Split between two people that is the best-value line in an Armenian budget, and it removes the two things that tire people out here, which are mountain roads and Yerevan traffic.

What we would never skip

For balance, the things we put into almost every Armenia trip and would fight to keep:

• The Matenadaran, with a guide, and two hours rather than one.
• Tsitsernakaberd, in the morning, with an easy afternoon behind it. It is not optional for understanding the country and it is hard.
• Geghard with the singing arranged in the rock-cut chamber, which has to be organised in advance.
• Khor Virap early, for Ararat before the cloud.
• Two cellars in Vayots Dzor, with the person who made the wine.
• Noratus rather than only the Sevan peninsula.
• Two nights in the south, for Tatev, the gorge and Khndzoresk.
• Three days in Yerevan, built around the late clock.

How we run Armenia

GO EAST staffs its own offices in Japan, Vietnam, India and the Philippines. Armenia is not one of them, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. We run it through a Yerevan partner we have worked with for years, whose drivers and guides meet you on the ground, briefed by us, with your consultant on the same WhatsApp thread from take-off to landing. Our founder Doron Reichman has led trips in the Caucasus himself, which is where several of the judgements above come from.

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Tell us the Armenia route you have in your head and we will tell you honestly which parts of it we would ration, and why, before you have spent anything. Free first outline, no obligation.

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Keep reading

• Armenia: the complete guide to planning your trip
• The best two-week route through Armenia
• Yerevan in three days
• What to eat in Armenia, and the Areni revival
• Classic Armenia in 8 days
• All our Armenia trips

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