Wildflowers and Mount Argats

Hurrah my bag has arrived after its little holiday in Moscow.

First stop today was to see a commemoration park of outdoor sculptures of famous scientists and the inventor of the Armenian alphabet. It was erected in 2005 on the occasion of the 1600th anniversary of the creation of the Armenian alphabet. Stone sculptures of each of the 39 letters of the alphabet were also part of the complex.

We then drove north to the slopes of Mt Argats (4090m). On the way we past the summer pastures of some Yazidis. Some have been established here since the genocide and there are more recent refugees from Syria. Though they speak Kurdish they don’t see themselves in any way connected. They don’t believe in defiling the land by tilling it to grow crops, but it is obviously ok for them to graze their cattle and sheep. The are endogamous. It got very hot (31 degrees) in the minibus because the aircon had to go off as the vehicle ground its way up z bends for our visit to Amberd Fort at 2600m. We walked for 15 minutes to the fort as it was cooler outside. We saw lots of large orchids, and many other wild flowers.

Construction of the fort started in the 7th century and continued till the 11th. Although well protected by cliffs and 2 small rivers, the fort was eventually sacked by Tamerlane in the 14th century. We also saw a small monastery on the promontory, before heading back to the plain where we stopped in Oshaken village. A local family provided a delicious lunch of various salads and their home made lovash bread, which we saw being made. It is only flour, salt and water made into a dough, rolled out then thrown about like pizza dough till it is very thin and long. It’s then laid on a utensil that looked like a long hard padded cushion, with a handle on the back. She then put her hand on the handle, lifted the long bit of equipment with the dough on one side and slapped it down onto the side of a tandoori oven under the floor where the dough stuck the wall and was quickly baked. A very flat flatbread! They served it with purple basil, parsley, fennel and spring onions. Really light.

After lunch under cover in the garden we drove back to Yerevan, where the temperature was 39 degrees. (That is unusually hot for this time of year.) Thankfully our next visit was to the Matenadaran book depository to see some of the collection of 17,000 rare manuscripts. We found this really interesting as we’d both read Sisters of Sinai and also Peter Hopkirk’s book about the ancient manuscripts of the Silk Road.

We were dropped in Republic Square to walk to the hotel where a cold beer was in order.