30th September – Yerevan, Armenia

Today’s the day. I finally got a haircut! Pictures to follow. Maybe.

The morning was very chilled. We’ve been doing some more China planning and I left Kaja to it for an hour to get a trim and a coffee on another glorious Yerevan morning. When I got back, a couple of guys were in the room next door and the guesthouse owner had made us all a sponge cake! We sat down for tea and cake with Noah and Balthazar to hear about their amazing trip hitchhiking from Denmark to Australia on $10 per day. They’re currently also planning their next leg and using Yerevan as a base for a rest and for visa applications. We brainstormed a few options and, whilst things are limited by the current geopolitical situation, they all sounded incredibly exciting. We’ll be following their trip!

Eventually we headed out for a late lunch at another one of Kaja’s finds. It was amazing! We’re already planning our return tomorrow. After deliberating over the range of mouth-watering options, we settled on a Lebanese shawarma plate, crispy deep-fried oyster mushrooms, and a healthy quinoa, veg, and tofu salad.

We fancied a little walk and perhaps relaxing on a shaded bench to do more China research. After going through the pedestrian tunnel under the Kord district, we thought we would come across the perfect spot along the river. Instead, we ended up further and further from where we wanted to be in the gorge and with successive marked paths not existing! At this point, we were committed and resolved to walk all the way around to the genocide monument. Then, lacking public transport options, walked back along a tiny footpath beside a 5-lane road to get back to the city bowl. I’ve no idea where we went wrong, but 10km and 3 hours after we’d set off we finally sat down in a park not far from where we’d started!

The monument to the Armenian genocide was very moving in its simplicity. An eternal flame is set 1.5 metres into the ground to remember the estimated 1.5 million Armenians who were killed by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. This is surrounded by 12 leaning concrete slabs indicating 12 provinces formerly part of historically Armenian inhabited lands which now lie within Turkish territory. This, of course, tantalisingly out of reach, includes the sacred Mount Ararat.

Along with many other ethnic groups – the Kurds, Palestinians, and Yazidis to name just a few – the Armenians fell victim to ‘Allied Powers’ (mainly Britain and France) carving up of former Ottoman territories after defeating the ‘Central Powers’ at the end of World War I. In simple terms, most areas were promised to more than one group at different times in return for support or obedience in or after the war. Naturally, the eventual western-imposed international borders (leaving aside for now the very idea of such borders being an artificial European construct) left almost nobody happy, some without a country at all, and created widespread resentment between groups who had often peacefully co-existed. Of course, history didn’t begin with the end of the Ottomans and many other factors exist, but this is one of the key root causes of many crises in Western Asia today.

Walking back into town along Beirut Street, I was further reminded of those still suffering at the hands of western-backed land grabs and mass violence a century later. I was also reminded of how fortunate we are to allow ourselves the luxury of taking on a nourishing trip such as this when millions suffer and millions more carry the mental anguish of not being able to prevent it. Perhaps I’ll touch more on our reasons another time.

Adding to the feeling of connections between Armenia and a broader geographic wider area, including modern day nation states such as Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, and Palestine, were the food options. We ended the day eating spicy pepper and zaatar lahmajoun (akin to Lebanese manakish and consisting of zaatar, lemon, olive oil on thin baked bread), whilst watching children run happily through fountains blissfully unaware of the injustices of the world they will inherit.