South Compact: Tatev & the Devil’s Bridge

Three days, two nights, and what this route demands lies in distance and altitude rather than in the surface under the tyres. The M2 leaves Yerevan, some 990 metres up, heading south-east; as far as Yeghegnadzor, 1,194 metres up and 123 kilometres from the start, it stays a brisk trunk road. After that it turns into a mountain road: it climbs onto the volcanic plateau and crosses the provincial boundary between Vayots Dzor and Syunik at 2,344 metres. The pass is sealed right to its crest and still the place where the weather turns first — snow up there is possible into early summer. Beyond it the road sinks to Sisian, 1,600 metres, 217 kilometres out from Yerevan. On day two it holds the plateau before dropping to Goris at roughly 1,385 metres, the town from which the entire south is worked.

Surface is barely an issue on this route; the state of the road is. The M2 is the country’s north-south axis, sealed throughout and two lanes wide; the planned new corridor between Artashat and Sisian exists only as a preliminary design, so what you drive is the old alignment with its bends, its gradients and its long-distance traffic. The two detours of day one are sealed as well: the Areni-1 cave opens at 1,010 metres just above the trunk road, and the spur to Noravank Monastery runs twelve kilometres into a side gorge and ends at 1,591 metres. Anyone holding the wheel learns one figure on the first day above all: the south is a long way off.

Day two is the one that is about driving. From Goris it is 35 kilometres to the valley station at Halidzor, and from there the cableway floats 5,752 metres across the Vorotan gorge to Tatev Monastery at 1,580 metres — twelve minutes for a link the road through the gorge below needs about forty minutes to cover. That road comes next: tight, steep hairpins down to Satani Kamurj at 1,020 metres, some 560 metres of descent in one go. What works here is not low range but a low gear; ground clearance hardly matters, whereas seeing far ahead matters a great deal, because the valley road is narrow and oncoming traffic is the rule. There are no fords anywhere on the route.

The one gravel stretch worth the name comes late in the afternoon of the same day: from the turning at Khndzoresk a compacted gravel track runs to the car park above the gorge of Old Khndzoresk, passable for any vehicle when dry and, after rain, the moment when four-wheel drive and ground clearance make the difference. From there it continues on foot: about 400 steps down to the suspension bridge, 160 metres long and a good sixty metres above the floor of the gorge. The night’s lodging hangs on the class booked rather than on the stage: guesthouses in Sisian and Goris in the Expedition class, a spa hotel in the Signature class, a wild camp in the Frontier class. Self-drivers take on practically all of this route; what it asks for is not off-road skill but stamina and an eye for bends. The driving season runs from May to October.