Late last night, i did not check my watch but figured it was about 11:45, i was woken by a series of loud noises i could not identify, it sounded like a thunder storm but it wasn’t. My best guess was somebody had consumed too much of that wonderful Armenian Brandy and was playing cymbals with some dustbin lids…. I checked my door was locked and went back to sleep.

Got up next morning to be told what i had heard during the night was the sound of artillery shelling from the Azerbaijani armed forces trying to frighten local Armenians!!! As the day progressed we learned a little more: Armenia announced 49 of their troops had been killed in clashes with the Azerbaijanis…..

Tour Leader Dario, having reviewed all the available information and spoken with Wild Frontiers HO in England decided to continue with the tour.

Actually, we did not have to travel far for our first visit: it was to the local bakery almost next door to the hotel!!!

It’s a modern bakery using traditional methods to cook Arnenia’s favourite bread called Lavash: it’s a cross between savoury pancakes and very thin pizza. Here are some pics:

The lady on the left is preparing the ‘dough’, rolling it flat and thin on a rectangular metal tray. in the next pic that same lady is depositing the tray into an intensely hot fire pit. It the final pic the lady in the blue gear is using a long metal rod to remove the tray from the fire pit. The bread is then stripped from the tray, folded and offered for sale.

I can’t say it’s the tastiest thing i have ever eaten but we discovered later that the main traditional use for lavash is to spread your lunch or dinner ingredients over it – a bit like a savory pancake – roll it up and eat it… I tried that later and it tasted very good, but my lack of expertise meant that most of the ingredients fell out of my ‘pancake’!!!

Next scheduled stop promised the most exciting part of the trip so far: a visit to the 9th century Tatev Monastery: getting there includes a 15 minute ride on the world’s longest reversible cableway at three and a half miles.

But it was not to be….. we got there to find the Armenians had closed the cableway because of the fighting referred to earlier! The alternative to get to the Tatev Monastery was a 60 minute each way drive on some dodgy roads, so Dario decided we’d have to forego that element of the trip. Much disappointment all around, but not a lot we could do about it….

Still, not to be defeated we headed off to our next stopping point: the Caravanserai at Selim. The well travelled amongst you will recognise a Caravanserai as a overnight stopping point for travellers and merchants along the Silk Road. This one was built in 1332 by Prince Chesar Orbelian in the Selim Mountain Pass to accommodate weary travellers and their animals – usually camels and pack-horses – as they crossed from, or into, the mountainous Vayots Dzor region.

Here are some pics for you:

Here are some pics taken along our very interesting ride from Goris to Dilijan….

The first one is of Dario doing his ‘lovely assistant’ role using the map of the area while Laura was doing her best to explain the current situation as they understood it about the fighting. She also gave us some insight about the rights and wrongs of it all, but inevitably from an Armenian perspective…… The second shot is of beehives – we saw lots and lots of these at the roadside, usually with some bloke selling fresh honey. Looked wonderful!!! The third pic is of a church ‘steeple’ that i found interesting and the rest are to give you an idea of the mountain scenery as we moved north towards Dilijan.

Here are the inevitable [for me!] food shots showing our excellent lunch, main course being marinaded trout cooked on the BBQ….. yum!

I thought the statue in the garden of the restaurant was rather fetching, so i’m sharing that with you also…..

Right, it’s 11:00 pm here, folks, and i have to get some sleep ahead of another busy day tomorrow. I still need to share with you our visit to Lake Savan and the Savanavank Monastery complex which i will do hopefully tomorrow as a Part 2 of day 3.

Nite nite….