Between Jujevan and Ijevan in the Armenian mountains

Arpi — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 06:00:53 +0000

After eating a dieting breakfast of plain chocolate with the few remaining biscuits accompanied by unsweetened tea, and having said good bye to Mushanak, our host, we have rolled out of Jujevan.
According to our map the main road ran away from the Azerbaijan border, the road near the border was an inferior road, but eventually both led to the same place. In reality everything was the other way round.
We managed to roll on good quality ashfelt.
I was cycling on an empty stomach in the beautiful Armenian mountans.
About 200 metres above the village we stopped in a hairpin bend. We were just wondering and admiring the glorious countryside. We could see across to Azerbaijan and we loved the countryside that we could see there. Not to mention Armenia. I found myself an excellent stand for making a video:

A car stopped in front of us with an Iranian numberplate. It was Rambod with his wife and tiny little daughter.
Finally at around 1100m the road started dropping again and we could start the well deserved descent.

In one of the bends a large white jeep with „World Vision” on its side stopped right next to us. A man and a kid got out. We took a picture with them in front of the beautiful countryside for a background.
The lake was already in Azerbaijan, an in the North we saw a mountain rise out of the countryside in a sugarloaf shape.
Rolling downhill into the valley of the river Aghstev was an adventure.
In Idjevan we were the guests of the „World Vision” UN charity organisation.
We ate Lavas with lots of rice.
At night we could sleep in the jeep parked up in the carpark behind the building.
It was excellent to gain a little insight into the work of such an organisation. We thank them for every bit of help, I really don’t know how I could have managed without them!

Our first day in Armenia

Arpi — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 06:00:06 +0000

Our planned itinerary was that in Armenia to Yerevan: after the Georgian border up to the mountains, Noyemberian, Idjevan, Chambarak, beach of Lake Sevan, Sevan peninsula, Yerevan. You can watch that on the section level:

The time is short. We don’t like rushing and we couldn’t go much faster, but we mustn’t be late, otherwise our visas will expire.
Zita’s grandfather was an Armenian, from Gyerszószentmiklós, so it was obvious for us, we would visit this very interesting country, too.

We payed for the two visas 10 dollars per person, we got it our passports and we could go to Armenia.

We met 4 cyclists few kilometres after the border. Margaret, Silvia, Samanta, and Bartek made a cycling tour and we changed our maps.

The landscape was beautiful. We came across less villages, mountains were standing around us, we found ourselves on the peek at 1090m, from where wasn’t more ascendant.

We were happy because we wheeled down. That ascent was really hard.

While we were relaxing in the shade a cyclists stopped by us, Alexander from Switzerland.
We met two girls, Lia and Manan, and their father, David. After I reached Zita on the top of ascendant, I got know we were invited by them for lunch. The two girls spoke fluent in English so we could easily tell them our story. We enjoyed talking to them and we got lots of useful information about Armenia. Among other things, we learnt some Armenian words, we expanded our vocabulary from 5 to 30 words.
The ghat was higher than I remembered. The GPS registered 1168m when we reached the top.

We were Mushavank’s guests in Jujevan. He laughed when he understood we would sleep in tent in his garden.
It was happy to saw him, how he laughed, he was really glad. Finally we slept in room in their house.

Honeymoon Around the World » Jujevan

Between Jujevan and Ijevan in the Armenian mountains

Our first day in Armenia