25th September: Gyumri, Armenia to Vanadzor, Armenia
We had a bit of time before the marshrutka, so found a chilled café in the centre. Another place with almond milk! Armenia is winning the non-dairy milk stakes so far.
On arrival at the bus station, it seemed like chaos. Our first impressions are that things are way less organised here than in Georgia. We were swarmed by taxi drivers, so eventually decided to ask them how much. We knew the marshrutka price was 800 Dram each and they only wanted 1,000 (£1.95) per person for the 65km trip. It seemed too good to be true, then we realised they had two other people in the car already and it made a little more sense. In we jumped!
On the journey, crop remnants seemed to be burning in every valley. Fighter jets also buzzed overhead, as indeed they did yesterday in Gyumri, the first we’d seen since Turkey. Otherwise, we slalomed on overtaking and neared Vanadzor in no time. Just before the city, we finally came to a halt for resurfacing works. Incredibly, lorries were coming the other way, sloshing over the freshly laid asphalt and leaving deep grooves behind. The workflow clearly hadn’t quite been ironed out!
The approach to Vanadzor was dominated by kilometres of abandoned and corroding heavy industry. The city was one of the centres for chemical production within the Soviet Union and rusting hulks of factories and chimneys remain. There is an apocryphal story that residents only wore natural fibres as the airborne chemical pollution would melt nylon. I don’t think the other major local industry of garment production would’ve approved of that sentiment, but it does focus the mind on the lasting impacts on people and the environment.
We were dropped at the bus station, which sat right next to the train station. A fantastic map showed the destinations that it was once possible to reach from here by rail – from Vladivostok to Brest, Murmansk to Dushanbe. The only location not labelled was the scrubbed-out star representing Baku. Now, one train per day in each direction stops here, and they are both in the middle of the night!
We felt like we’d been dropped into a truly strange place. Car squealed and skidded to a half with a regularity I’ve only ever seen in Ashgabat (where they polish the roads!). We witnessed 7 such instances in a few minutes. Our hunt for food places took us round and round in circles. Everything (I’m talking 10-12 places) marked on the map as a restaurant either didn’t exist or turned out to be a pool club or a barber shop. We finally found one food place, who made us an unusual but filling plate of lavash, filled with chips and parsley. We were kind of concerned or accommodation wouldn’t exist either, as we taken a risk with a place with few reviews. Instructions to check in took us through an incredibly dodgy feeling back entrance and up some stairs. As we unlocked the key safe and entered, we found ourselves not only with a room but with a fully modern whole apartment!
We took the opportunity to catch up with washing. It’s rare we get a washing machine and somewhere to hang it! A little wander in the evening led us to some slightly nicer areas, but there is very little in the way of things to see in the city. Most visitors head out to some monasteries but we think that instead we’ll have an admin day tomorrow to plan for the next bits of our trip and rejuvenate ourselves a little.
