Lake Sevan and Dilijan, Armenia

13th – 16th October 2010

After pitching up in windy Sevan we walked through the town to the Lake and some deserted holiday homes to try and find somewhere to sleep by the lake. After walking round without a soul in sight we found a couple of guys who rented us out a converted container home which was damn cold and smelt of stale wine – they moved us to a cleaner but equally cold container after a bit of complaining about the state of cleanliness and we ditched our stuff, pulled our jackets tighter and went off for a little exploring.

From Lake Sevan, Armenia

It was lovely walking round the lake and we walked through a park for container holiday homes which had an air of abandonment outside of the holiday season. We walked away from the Lake and into town eventually getting a taxi to a very upmarket hotel restaurant.

From Lake Sevan, Armenia

The place was gorgeous but the karaoke'esque entertainment blaring out into the empty restaurant rather spoiled the atmosphere. The food was good and halfway through the meal, after having asked for the volume to be turned down three times, we actually heard each other shout (the music was still exceptionally loud). We left the restaurant in a hurry and got the same taxi back to our freezing little container house with picnic stuff for the following day. The bed was so cold that it was impossible to warm it all up and moving limbs outside of the warm patch our bodies made, woke me up a couple of times in the night. It was actually a relief to pack up and go the following day.

From Lake Sevan, Armenia

We left fairly late in the day and walked to a spit of land, home to a few churches and monasteries. We sat and ate our picnic on the windy hilltop looking out over the lake, bread, crumbly herb cheese and tomatoes bitten into chunks to make sandwiches. Leaving the lake behind we hitched a couple of lifts onto the next town, promisingly described as the Armenian Swiss Alps. No such luck. It was drizzling when we arrived and the grey miserable weather suited the dilapidated resort town.
We walked about trying to find a guest house or hotel and eventually got taken to one, after walking about with our backpacks trying to find the old town, by a suspect individual working for the tourism office. This guy, dressed in a grey suit over a black crackled PVC top with a silver zip, and sporting a long pinky nail, drove us to the nicest guest house we've ever been in and stayed talking to us long after he was welcome. We settled in and eventually Djalma pestered me out of bed to go and make dinner.

From Dilijan, Armenia

We stayed put for the next day, the grey drizzling weather keeping us in, watching films and reading books and of course cooking for my hungry monkey. We left the following day and hitched all the way to the Georgian border driving along Debed Canyon. Anxious to leave Armenia and get back to Georgia we weren't feeling too bad about only spending a measly six days in Armenia, land of Apricots. Roll on Tbilisi!