25th of June, 2022.
Hitchhiking in Armenia.
Samuel is going to spend the weekend with his friend Hayk (in the other car) and a Belgium couple exploring the region of Tatev and fishing. He is a very nice guy, and we talk about many things.
Right now, they are going to visit the ruins of a castle, and Samuel invites me to come over, since it is on the way to Tatev anyway. I have time, oh boy I have time, so I accept.
I think the road is super cool! It is an off-road track, but their cars are 4×4, so we are cool. We must pass through a small river, and the roads have some huge holes, so I think it is exciting!
Unfortunately, as soon as we arrive at the ruins, Samuel gets a phone with some really bad news. A friend of him has just died. He is knocked out by the news and decide to go back to Yerevan. He apologies quite a few times, even though I keep telling him that there is nothing to be apologise for it.
Hayk decides to carry on with some of his plans. And he invites me to come along. We would visit a monastery nearby, then a lake, trying to visit another spot, camp for the night (he would sleep in his car) and then next day he can drop me off in the road to Tatev. I have time so I say yes! By the way, these are the ruins of Smbataberd Castle, and they are nice!
Hayk seems like a very calm and patient guy. On the way to the monastery, we pass by a family of four people: parents with two young boys. He offers to take them up to the monastery (it is really sunny!), but only the youngest boy accepts. The monastery is in the middle of nowhere, which is amazing! Of course, the reasons why they would build here, away from everything and everyone, are not for the pretty view. Nope! Persecution is the word you are looking for it. This monastery is called Tsaghats Kar and I am truly happy for being able to visit. It was not on my list of places at all!
When we are about to leave, Hayk offers to take the family back down, to their accommodation, which is very nice of him because they would easily spend another hour going down. We make space on the back seats for them, and they fit alright.
After we drop the family off, we have some lunch by the river. It is so cool under the shade of the trees, having some food and the sound of the water…
We go towards to the next stop: the lake. It is not too far away but it is quite late already, and the roads become bad after certain point, so we must drive slowly. The lake is in Artavan and people say that the vegetation at the lake makes it look like to Planet Earth seen from space.
We have a long and funny journey trying to find the lake. We first ask information to two workers in the fields, and they only say we should keep going straight. Then we ask again to a young man in the bus station. He looks very weird, and Hayk also tells me he was speaking some weird stuff and at the end he didn’t know about the conditions of the road to the lake. When Hayk decides to buy some food in the grocery shop, the owner of the shop is a very funny but also weird character. Hayk comes back to the car telling me they don’t have much for us to eat in the shop but if I want, we can have ice cream. Yay! With Ice cream on hands, we try to get to the lake again. The owner of the shop keeps talking a lot. I think he wanted a friend. We take a break to eat our ice creams, but I drop a big last piece of mine on the floor. I make such a drama about it that Hayk, in a very sweet way and with a calm voice says to me: “If you want, I can give you mine…” I laughed out loud.
It takes so long to find the blessed lake that we start to laugh and to think that there is something wrong. Does this lake even exist? But the landscape is very pretty.
We pass a very elderly shepherd man and his goats. He comes to the car and chat a bit with Hayk. When we leave, Hayk tells me what all the talk was about. The elderly shepherd was talking about one of his goats, which didn’t want to go back home. “This one does not want to go home. If she is still here when you are coming back, can you take her down for me?” I laughed even harder when Hayk tells me that.
When we finally get to the lake, I laugh out loud again. It is a very funny looking lake but nothing attractive or touristic. And definitely does not look like the Planet Earth seeing from space. Laugh.
As soon as we arrive it starts to rain and, in a few seconds, it is pouring rain. We run back to the car but not before I miss something which was at the edge of the lake, but it ran / swam away once I got close to it. I think it was a snake because it was super-fast and it didn’t look like a fish swimming.
After this mystery, we were wondering for a little while which animals were taking their heads out of the water, every now and then, but not enough for us to see it. We got to the conclusion they were ducks.
A beautiful and powerful rainbow is formed. Wonderful!
In a few minutes we decide to go back and find a place for camping somewhere between the village and the main road. We chose a spot which is flat, a bit far from the road, and with a beautiful view.
We have our dinner inside the car because it is super windy. In the shopping, Hayk didn’t only buy ice cream but also some beers! Yay! It was a long day so the having a beer in the evening was very relaxing.
I can see that Hayk is quite worried about me making my camp. He asks about wild animals and possible dangers. And, because it is super windy. He offers for me to also stay inside the car with him. But I tell him that everything will be alright.
It is crazy inside my tent! I don’t remember having this much windy situation until now. And it starts to rain a bit also at some point. I managed to sleep a bit but not enough and I did wake up many times during the night.
26th of June, 2022.
We agree to leave early, around 8 or 9 o’clock but I think I slept a bit more than that. We leave soon after breakfast.
For some reason I though Hayk would go back to Yerevan straight away and drop me off on the road to Tatev. But he actually wants to see some other places. Well, one other place, Jermuk, the city of water. Laugh. It is a big water brand in Armenia, and it carries the name of the city, Jermuk. It is one of those spa / thermal waters cities. It also has a waterfall quite in the city. There is a place where you can try the hot spring waters in different temperatures: from 40° up to 50 something degrees. I tried and for me it tastes horrible. It seems to be healthy though. The waterfall is really nice too, quite in an unusual place, and the path which leads to it, you could never tell it is a path to a waterfall.
Soon after that, I say goodbye to Hayk and he goes back to Yerevan while I start to hitchhike to Tatev.
10 Years Around the World 