Today we make our way out of the lower Caucasus to the Armenian plains. First stop – have a guess? Instead I go down to the nearby lake, which is very peaceful and has the inevitable friendly dog.
On to Karmirgyugh and the ‘Field of Khachkars’- in the Noratus cemetery with very old (from 10th-century onwards) headstones.
Some of them are very touching, and tell the stories of the occupants: 2 women tailors, and a married couple who died on their wedding day, both due to violent invasion
We now follow the Silk Road trail up to the Selim Pass to a caravanserai used by Silk Road travellers. Note the Lada – still loads of them in Armenia.
On the way to yet another monastery we very sadly drive straight past a very important archeological dig (which is open to the public) where recently they found a cow hide shoe 6,000 years old (size 37). The shoe is oldest piece of leather footwear in the world known to contemporary researchers. The discovery was made by an Armenian woman archeologist, Diana Zadaryan during the course of excavations.
The shoe was found in near-perfect condition due to the cool and dry conditions in the cave and a thick layer of sheep dung which acted as a solid seal. Large storage containers were found in the same cave, many of which held well-preserved wheat, barley, and apricots as well as other edible plants.
Major similarities exist between the manufacturing technique and style of one-piece leather-hide shoes discovered across Europe and the one reported from Areni-1 Cave, suggesting that shoes of this type were worn for millennia across a large and environmentally diverse geographic region. The shoe is on display at the History Museum in Yerevan which we will visit the day after tomorrow.
Chalcolithic & Bronze Age remains in a cave, also uncover an ancient winery – the oldest in the world.
The dig also reveals the ancient economic landscape of Vayots Dzor—particularly viticulture, animal husbandry, crafts, rituals, and the use of natural resources.
The countryside is spectacular.
And lunch is lovely again – salads have lots of dill and tarragon and there is a great semi hard cheese, which I am told we can buy in any Armenian supermarket.
We then visit the mist miserable wine tasting ever from a mass producer of cheap Armenian wine, where the young woman cannot even describe the wines she is pouring. As you can imagine no one buys anything.
The Ladas are now turning into an obsession. Those cars are indestructible. Some are pretty banged up but others are immaculate
Then we go to see Mt Ararat, close to the Turkish border(the peak of which is not visible due to cloud) then into the home-time traffic madness of Yerevan, which looks from the coach like a lively, small city. Yerevan is called the pink city due to the pink stone used to build beginning in the Russian imperial era of the 19th-century.
Room service pasta and Armenian beer for me tonight (both of which are delicious)
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