How many days do you need in Armenia?

The arithmetic is that Armenia is about 11,500 square miles (29,700 km²), roughly the size of Maryland, and the roads out of Yerevan are mountain roads. Yerevan to Goris in the far south is about 155 miles (250 km) and it takes four and a half to five hours before you stop for anything. The map is lying to you, as it does in Georgia.

The psychology is the monasteries. They are the reason most people come and they are genuinely among the best buildings in the region. They are also, by the fourth one in three days, hard to tell apart. Armenia is a country you have to ration to enjoy, which means the right length is the one that lets you put a wine day, a walking day and a city day between the stone rooms.

The short answer, by length

The right-hand column is the number that matters. Armenia tempts people into one-night stops because it looks small, and every one costs a packing morning and an unpacking evening.

Four to five days

This works and we build it, as long as you know it is a Yerevan trip.

Three or four nights in the capital and everything as a day trip: Garni and Geghard forty minutes east, Echmiadzin and Zvartnots half a day west, Khor Virap early one morning for Ararat, Lake Sevan an hour north. Yerevan itself needs three days and repays them, which Yerevan in three days sets out.

What you cannot do in five days is the south. Tatev is five and a half hours from Yerevan with no stops, which is why we do not offer it as a day trip and why the classic route sleeps down there.

Six to seven days

Add two nights outside the capital, either in Dilijan for the forest and the Haghartsin and Goshavank monasteries, or in Vayots Dzor for Noravank and the Areni wine villages. This is a good week and a real trip.

It still leaves Syunik out, which means no Tatev, no Khndzoresk and no Goris. For a lot of people that is the right trade on a short trip.

Eight days, the answer for most people

Eight days is where Armenia becomes a country rather than a city with excursions. The shape is Yerevan three nights, Dilijan or Sevan one, Vayots Dzor two, Goris or Tatev two.

That gives you the capital properly, the genocide memorial and museum at Tsitsernakaberd on a morning with an easy afternoon behind it, Garni and Geghard, Khor Virap with Ararat at 16,854 feet (5,137 m) behind it on a clear morning, Lake Sevan at about 6,200 feet (1,900 m) with the khachkar field at Noratus, the Vardenyats pass and its fourteenth-century caravanserai, Noravank at the end of its red gorge, two Areni cellars, and the Wings of Tatev cable car running about 3.5 miles (5.7 km) across the Vorotan gorge.

It also gives you one day with nothing in it, which is the day people mention afterwards. Our eight-day classic route is exactly this, and it holds the monastery count to four or five, spaced.

Eleven days

Eleven is where you can pick a direction and go properly.

South. Two extra nights in Syunik: Khndzoresk, the abandoned cave village below Goris with the swinging footbridge across the ravine, the Zorats Karer standing stones, the Shaki waterfall, and a second day at Tatev to walk the Devil’s Bridge gorge or the old path from Halidzor rather than only riding the cable car both ways.

North. Gyumri, the second city, built in black tufa rather than Yerevan’s pink, still visibly marked by the 1988 earthquake, with the best surviving nineteenth-century urban fabric in the country in the Kumayri district. Plus the Debed canyon monasteries at Haghpat and Sanahin, which are on the road to Georgia anyway.

On foot. Dilijan and the Transcaucasian Trail sections, Mount Aragats at 13,420 feet (4,090 m) with the road to Kari Lake open only from around July, and the southern trails. Walking in Armenia covers the routes and our eleven-day walking itinerary is built on them.

Fourteen days

Two weeks in Armenia alone is more than the country wants. Fourteen days is Armenia in eight or nine and Georgia in five or six, over the land border in the north at Bagratashen and Sadakhlo, which is a normal and workable crossing with the Debed canyon monasteries on the way.

This is the pairing we recommend to anyone making this journey once, because the two countries are unalike enough that the second half resets the first. Our fourteen-day route does it in two halves and the best two-week route argues the case.

One planning fact that decides the shape of any Caucasus trip: 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. Georgia is the connecting country in the region. We state that as a practical matter and take no view beyond the practical one.

Twenty-one days

Both countries thoroughly, with time for Gyumri and the Debed canyon in the north of Armenia and Svaneti or Tusheti in the Georgian mountains. Nine days and twelve splits well. Past three weeks, the honest answer is that you are better adding a third country reached by air than adding more days to either of these two.

Where the cut-offs actually are

1. Below six days, leave the south out. Tatev is not a day trip and pretending otherwise ruins two days.
2. Below eight days, do not try to add Georgia. The border day eats one of them.
3. Cap the monasteries at four or five on an eight-day trip. This is the most common thing we talk clients out of. After the fourth in quick succession they stop registering.
4. Two nights in Syunik, never one. The drive down and back is most of two days on its own.
5. Past fourteen days, add Georgia rather than more Armenia.

The drive times that decide everything

These are real times on real surfaces. The southern highway is paved and perfectly safe, and it is a two-lane mountain road carrying long-distance freight, so it is not fast.

Plan this trip

Tell us how many days you actually have and an Armenia specialist will tell you honestly what fits, what does not and what we would ration. 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 and Georgia
• Armenia month by month
• What a trip to Armenia really costs
• Armenia and Georgia, 14 days
• All our Armenia trips

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