CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
302 km from Goght’ to Goght’, about 5 h 20 of riding. On the way it passes Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin, Archaeological Site of Ani and back through Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,300 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Armenia into Türkiye - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 56 km this is Armenia Selim Pass and Lake Sevan Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Geghard is cut into a cliff. Some of its chapels are built out of the mountain, others hollowed from it, and the effect is of a monastery that grew out of the rock instead of being placed on it. It sits at the head of the Azat gorge, about forty kilometres east of Yerevan, in a narrow valley where the walls rise vertically on three sides and the stream chatters below. The name means the spear, from the relic of the lance that pierced Christ, brought here by the apostle Thaddeus according to tradition and kept for centuries before being moved to Echmiatsin. The monastery was founded in the early Middle Ages, but most of what you see dates to the thirteenth century, when the princely Proshyan family built the rock-cut chapels. Together with the upper Azat valley it is a UNESCO site.
Read the complete Monastery of Geghard and the Upper Azat Va write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monastery of Geghard and the Upper Azat Va is where the day begins. Next is Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin.
Zvartnots is a ruin with a great deal of ghost left in it. The name means roughly the temple of the celestial angels, and it was built in the seventh century by the Armenian Catholicos Nerses III, who wanted a church of astonishing size and shape: a round, three-storey building rising from a cross-shaped plan, with a high central dome and a ring of columns. For a few centuries it dominated this plain between the Hrazdan river and the old capital of Vagharshapat. Then it collapsed, probably in an earthquake some time before the tenth century, and the stones lay forgotten under a mound until archaeologists dug them out in the early twentieth century.
Read the complete Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin comes up about 56 km into the recorded legs. Next is Archaeological Site of Ani.
The first thing to understand about Ani is that you stand in one country and look into another. The ruined city lies on a promontory above the Akhurian River, and that river is the border between Armenia and Turkey, shut since 1993. The ruins themselves are on the Turkish bank, while the nearest Armenian towns, Maralik and the villages around it, are twenty kilometres or more away across open plateau. A rider coming from the Armenian side can get close enough to see the walls and the cathedral dome across the gorge, and that is a strange, quiet, rather moving experience in its own right.
Read the complete Archaeological Site of Ani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 151 km into the recorded legs you reach Archaeological Site of Ani. Next is back through Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin, late in the day. Next is Monastery of Geghard and the Upper Azat Va.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Monastery of Geghard and the Upper Azat Va write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Monastery of Geghard and the Upper Azat Va. That is the ride.
Monastery of Geghard and the Upper Azat Va → Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin → Archaeological Site of Ani is 95 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Archaeological Site of Ani → back through Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin is 95 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin → Monastery of Geghard and the Upper Azat Va is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.