UNESCO World Heritage Route

The World Heritage listing for Geghard does not cover the monastery alone. It covers the monastery and the upper Azat valley — the gorge, the cliffs and the way in. That is how the inscription reads, and it changes how you look at the drive there.

Armenia has three entries on the World Heritage list, and they lie far apart. Etchmiadzin, with its churches in Vagharshapat and the ruins of Zvartnots, sits half an hour west of Yerevan. Geghard is an hour to the east. Haghpat and Sanahin are in Lori, three to four hours north in the Debed valley, two monasteries on opposite sides of the valley and within sight of each other.

So this route is mostly a driving question. The southern part of the list fits into one day; for the north you need a night away. Anyone who tries all of it in a day has seen four car parks by evening.

We drive the northern stage in the morning. The road through the Debed valley is long, narrow and unpleasant in the dark, because unlit vehicles are everyday traffic there. Up in the afternoon, down by evening — that order works.

At Etchmiadzin a weekday gives you a cathedral and a feast day gives you a crowd in front of it. We tell you beforehand what is happening and agree a meeting point before we go in.

You can lay Haghpat and Sanahin side by side, and that is the real gain of this route. Two monasteries from the same period and the same building school, a few kilometres apart — and still almost every visitor comes away with a favourite. Which one depends less on the architecture than on the weather that day. The drive between the two takes a quarter of an hour, and most people do it twice because they want to check their choice again.

With snow in the north we reverse the order and drive west first. The day does not fall through, it just looks different.