My mother's mother's motherland...

So, as the title suggests, this is Nat typing from Armenia! We're actually at the end of our journeys here, and Nick has been asking me to blog for about a week, and I suppose it's time to stop putting it off.

We've been here for about two weeks and have yet again spent most of our time with the boys, Asaf, Kovi and Nick (t'other one aka Shaggy).

First impressions? Yerevan is a much more 'developed' city than Tbilisi or indeed anywhere we've been since Istanbul and in some ways it felt a bit closer to home, with a real modern European feel to it. Cranes line the horizon as there appears to be plenty of money going into making sure that Armenia's capital catches up with the rest of the world after much distraction and devastation has left the country a little behind in terms of it's appeal to tourists, other than Armenian diaspora. Yerevan is home to the genocide museum which we visited on our second day in the country.





Despite the fact that we had all visited various Jewish genocide museums, you can never become hardened to the images and words you find in these places, and as I have been finding throughout Armenian genes are strong and I see in the faces of the photos (and peole who live here) similarities with Omama and even Mum and her brothers, and that made the Armenian genocide museum a bit more personal to me. That Armenian streak seems to have faultered at the 3rd generation in our family, as Nick and I have been told frequently that we look like brother and sister (what?! Me look like that ginga?!).

We hired a car for what turned out to be 7 days and drove around the country. It was wonderful to have the freedom to go and do as we pleased without relying on public transport, especially in a country that despite being small is quite spread out in terms of places to visit.





The first night we stayed near an old monastery in the north (forgive me forgetting the name) and we arrived at a very unsuitable camping location on the side of a road where we discovered many a cow enjoys a good expulsion of waste. Along with that splendid aroma we were also very hasty in putting up the tent (due to aproaching darkness and a fear that we had no idea what was up or down tentwise!) and therefore found on lying down that we had placed the tent on what can only be described as a mound of rocks with a bit of earth to hold them together.

One appalling night's sleep later and we were ready to get out of there nice and early (especially since we'd left the matches and the wood outside to get damp all night and therefore could not start the fire to make a nice cup of tea English style milk and all).

Nick, Shaggy and I set off again, due to meet Asaf and Kovi the following day by Lake Sevan as Asaf had decided to join his friend in seeing the Sabbat in with a fast, and therefore remaining in Yerevan.





We made our way to Lake Sevan that day and found a lovely (?) little spot where we had to pay for the pleasure of camping but where there were very few rocks (a great relief) and a ten metre walk to the lake. The lake was gorgeously cool and not crowded in the area we stayed, and the three of us made a lovely meal and had a leisurely evening. Nick was highly impressed with my firemaking skills, and I reminded him that I had actually picked up some very important skills up in Utopia in Scotland a few summers ago, and it wasn't all about drinking wine at the local pub, going to Tescos and sleeping in Yurts!




So, the following day we were joined by our lovely Israeli boys, only to be left as three again as Kovi returned to Yerevan and Shaggy went off into the world to do some solo travelling before meeting his friends in Euroland soon.

The three of us, Nick, Asaf and I, spent a lovely 2nd night on Lake Sevan, although due to a mega super storm and our cloth 1970s tent, we didn't quite trust sleeping in the tent, so we ended up kipping in Dolores, our trusty Lada circa 1984, bright Orange, maximum speed 110kph, up a hill 30kph, the legend that is Dolores.



Thank my 5 foot 4 lucky stars I got to lie down in the back seat (would've been wasted on the boys) and the other two slept with their feet on the dashboards. At about three Asaf and I tried or luck with the tent, and found it to be very dry inside, leaving Nick to stretch (hee hee) out on the backseat.

We met Kovi in Nagorna Karabagh, an unrecognised country that is wartorn between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The people speak Armenian and it has a very similar feel and of course landscape to Armenia. The only difference is the world recognises it as the property of Azerbaijan despite the fact that the people within the country are ethnic Armenian.

We visited a 'town' called Aghdam which was almost completely obliterated when it was bombed to smithereens by the Azeris. You can climb to the top of the mosque there, which the boys did but I found it all just horrible and didn't want to go any further or see any more of the awful place.

I was relieved to return to Armenia (I think we all were) and here we have been back in Yerevan for a few days, and heading to Dubai tomorrow on our way to India. All the boys (apart from Nick obv) have left and although it is nice to have some alone time after so many weeks, we've had such a wonderful time with them and became quite close. Asaf was the last to leave yesterday morning, back to Georgia, and we miss his big smile and jolliness!

That's the thing about travelling, you meet so many wonderful people, but ultimately you're from different lives and you have to go your seperate ways at some point. But now we have a great reason to visit Israel...but that's for our next trip...

Onwards East...via the Middle East.

Much love,

Nattyxxx