Trip: Odzun – Dilijan. First Part.

I always thought that I rarely travel north of Armenia. I somehow always perceived “north” to be cold and unfriendly, preferring the dusty Artashat highway that is so plain it makes you yawn and sing to yourself, pondering about the eternity. Oh well.

So we hit the road last weekend on Saturday, riding a nice and tidy Yerevan-Vanadzor-Alaverdi-Odzun-Dilijan-Sevan-Yerevan trip with camping.

Now, anyone who has read Tumanyan probably has this perception of Lori as some sort of a fantasy place. And I was so surprised to find out that Lori is in fact a much bigger fantasy than I expected it to be! Now I don’t know if it was the lucky weather or the adrenaline from the exciting curves of the narrow road, but the whole experience was so beautiful and rich in colors that I couldn’t help my jaw being dropped!

Looking at the wonderful curves of the road, then at the forests on the mountains, then at the cute wooden bridges over my head, then at the rocks at my left, then at the eagles soaring around, the tunnels, the sky, the houses and their rooftops, amazing!

The next pleasant surprise was to find out that people in these places are about as great as the place itself! Calm, adequate and understanding — you don’t meet these in an average Armenian too often!

So the initial idea was to ride through Stepanavan to Odzun and then back to Yerevan through Dilijan, however just before hitting the road we decided to skip Stepanavan this time and visit Haghpat instead. We left Yerevan on M3 and headed for Vanadzor.

Now most of my friends know that I love speeding. I love speeding on my bike, I love speeding on any car I drive and I love speeding in any situation — offroad or urban. And if you’ve been driving cross-country a lot, you know it’s hard to switch to the lower speed scale once you enter a town through a highway (in fact some recommend taking a 5-minute rest when entering a town after high speed driving). So the first small thing happened in Aparan where the traffic police stopped me for speeding. I certainly instantly considered that they were located on the opposite lane and it would take them forever to chase me, so I never stopped, squeezing my throttle further in. They did, however, stop my buddy in his car and ripped the damn 5000 drams for speeding.

On the way from Vanadzor to Odzun I met the rare traffic road sign called ‘other dangers’:

Then I rode through some very spooky tunnels. Imagine entering a tunnel that has zero lights inside and no visible light at the end after riding in a lot of sunlight with sunglasses. You instantly face black darkness with an uncomfortable feeling like there is a solid wall just in front of you. Seeing nothing at all and smelling the humidity, all I could do was to hope that there were no potholes or stones on the road section ahead.

Afterwards came Odzun at the top of the mountain and it looked fantastic! We drove through meter-high grass towards the gorge (a must-have experience!), settled with our tent by the flowers and made some really great pork barbeque, after visiting some local stores and of course the Odzun Church. Shortly after we arrived some light rain started to pour so we had to enjoy our meal inside the tent. Then there was Poker, Aerosmith and the usual chit-chat of the tent, with hawks and eagles flying under our feet, so close we could hear the wings flap!

We had a great night’s sleep and planned for Haghpat and Dilijan-Sevan-Yerevan for the upcoming day. Little did we know!