Lake Sevan Highlands

About this pack

A 5-day mid-range trip to Sevan, Armenia, taking in Sevanavank Monastery, Dilijan forests, Noratus khachkars and Selim Caravanserai.

Inside the Lake Sevan Highlands trip

Lake Sevan Highlands opens at Sevanavank, the monastic complex known in Armenian as Sevan Monastery, set on a peninsula at the northwestern shore of Lake Sevan in Armenia's Gegharkunik Province. According to an inscription in one of its churches, the monastery was founded in 874 by Princess Mariam, daughter of Ashot I, at a time when Armenia was still working to free itself from Arab rule; it was originally built on the shore of a small island, and only became a peninsula after the artificial draining of Lake Sevan that began under Joseph Stalin lowered the water level by around 20 metres. The complex's two churches, Surp Arakelots ("Holy Apostles") and Surp Astvatsatsin ("Holy Mother of God"), are both cruciform structures with octagonal tambours, and the monastery's strict regime was historically reserved for monks from Etchmiadzin who had transgressed — a French explorer visiting in 1830 described a life free of meat, wine and female company, while another visitor two decades later found monks still copying manuscripts by hand.

From the lakeshore the route continues into the forests around Dilijan, a spa town in Armenia's Tavush Province set within Dilijan National Park at 1,500 metres above sea level on the banks of the Aghstev river. Popular legend traces the town's name to a shepherd named Dili, mourned by his mother across the valley after her father had him killed for loving his daughter, and Dilijan's forests — covering more than 34,000 hectares and made up mostly of oak, beech, hornbeam, maple and elm — support brown bear, wolf, lynx, otter, European red deer and golden eagle among other wildlife. The state forest reserve founded here in 1958 became Dilijan National Park in 2002, and its old town on Sharambeyan Street preserves craftsmen's workshops, a gallery and a museum from the resort's growth as a mountain retreat through the late nineteenth century.

The trail then reaches Noratus, a village in the Gavar Municipality of Gegharkunik Province near the town of Gavar, home to the largest surviving cemetery of khachkars — the carved Armenian cross-stones — anywhere in the world. First recorded as a settlement in the Middle Ages, though a nearby Bronze Age megalithic fort suggests one of the most ancient continuously inhabited sites in Armenia, the village's St. Astvatsatsin Church was built in the late 9th century by the Gegharkunik prince Sahak as a domed hall of polished stone; its dome and roof were later destroyed, according to tradition by Lezgin raiders, and the church's fenced yard is now filled with khachkars and headstones, including the oldest recorded example, now held in the State Museum of Armenian History.

The route closes at Orbelian's Caravanserai, also known as Selim Caravanserai, on the Vardenyats Mountain Pass in Vayots Dzor Province at 2,410 metres above sea level — the best-preserved caravanserai anywhere in Armenia. It was built in 1332 by Prince Chesar Orbelian to shelter travellers and their pack animals crossing into or out of the mountainous Vayots Dzor region, its single entrance opening into a rectangular vestibule beneath a gabled stone-shingle roof supported on three arches, decorated with reliefs of a winged creature and a bull above the lintel. Three inscriptions survive at the entrance, in Persian, Arabic and Armenian; the Armenian text, still legible on the eastern interior wall, records Chesar's lineage as son of Liparit, grandson of Ivane and a member of the Orbelian dynasty, dating the building to the year of Busaid Khan's rule — a Silk Road waypoint that closes out a circuit already carrying the traveller from a lakeside monastery through national-park forest and a cross-stone cemetery.

• Sevanavank — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Dilijan — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Noratus — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Orbelian's Caravanserai — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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