North: Sevan, Dilijan & the Monasteries of Lori

Four days in the north, and the first of them starts by gaining height. Out of Yerevan, 990 metres or so, the M4 runs northeast; after 65 kilometres Lake Sevan opens out beside the road, its surface measured at 1,900 metres in 2012, and beyond it the road keeps winding up towards the pass above Semyonovka, a good 2,100 metres and the highest ground of the whole loop. Since 2003 a tunnel of 2,257 metres has taken the sharpest hairpins out of the descent to Dilijan; the old pass road above it is still in place. Behind it the country changes completely: Dilijan sits between roughly 1,260 metres on the valley floor and 1,500 metres on the slopes, takes about 650 millimetres of rain a year on close to a hundred days, and stands in beech and oak forest. That is what sets this route apart — here the subject is clay, not dust.

Dilijan National Park covers 240 square kilometres and reaches from 1,070 to 2,300 metres; its main axis is the sealed M4 running straight through it. The interest lies in the side routes: coarse forest tracks with deep potholes, stream crossings without a bridge, and after rain a surface that turns to clay and makes the ruts greasy. Fifteen to twenty kilometres inside the park cost an hour to an hour and a half — distance says little here, condition says everything. Four-wheel drive and some 200 millimetres of ground clearance are the minimum on those side routes; on top of that we lower tyre pressure, because a wider contact patch does more on soft forest ground than any amount of power. Above 1,600 metres snow or meltwater often sits in the ruts until the end of May. Haghartsin Monastery at 1,430 metres, by contrast, is asphalt: eighteen kilometres out of Dilijan, narrow at the end, with a car park at the entrance.

Day two is the opposite case and the longest at the wheel, without a metre of gravel. From Dilijan the road runs via Vanadzor at 1,350 metres onto the M6 towards Tbilisi, which drops into the valley with the Debed. The river forms at Dzoragyukh at 920 metres out of the Dzoraget and the Pambak; in Alaverdi the vehicle stands at 715 metres, at the fortified monastery of Akhtala at 690 — the lowest ground of this tour. What the day asks for is hairpins, not low range: up to Haghpat at 1,000 metres and to Sanahin at 1,016 metres a short, steep switchback road climbs from the valley onto the plateau, both surfaced right up to the car park. Only beyond the gate does it become walking, over old, uneven paving.

Day three turns west. The valley road through the Dzoraget canyon is sealed and open all year, while the river beside it lies up to 300 metres down in the basalt; Stepanavan above it stands at just under 1,400 metres. The off-road part comes afterwards: from the turn at Shirakamut, some ten kilometres of gravel and field track to the Trchkan waterfall, crossing the Chichkhan several times at shallow fords, with the final stretch running over damp river sand that gives way after rain. In winter that approach is closed — which is why the tour runs from May to October. Guided, we travel in convoy, the lead guide taking the forest track and the fords first; driving yourself means handling the trunk roads alone and staying behind the guide vehicle in the terrain, after the off-road training given on departure. Where you sleep depends on the comfort class, not on the town: Signature means a hotel with a spa, Expedition a guesthouse, Frontier a camp pitched where the day ends — three nights, one in Dilijan and two in Alaverdi. The fleet page sets out what the vehicles carry for this; the safety page sets out what holds in the terrain.