The Wild East

Armenia/Nagorno-Karabakh

Pip and I landed in Yerevan, Armenia on a hot summer night in June. A strange language filled the air; the airport billboards carried a script which seemed almost too foreign to be real. We stood in line at customs. When it was my turn, I walked up to the window and showed my passport.

Everything went wrong. I had an "E-Visa" to get into the country, and there was something wrong with their system, so it appeared I had no visa at all. Even worse, my passport was apparently too tattered and worn for them, and it had no microchip like newer American passports. Three or four border officers passed it around, looked at it under a black light, and called various agencies angrily in a language I could never hope to understand. It took an hour to finally get through customs, but we made it. Pip and I burst out of the airport into the night air. The faces of the people around us were dark and beautiful ...

Stop. What do you know about Armenia? If you were like us, not much.

Armenia is a tiny country in the Caucasus, east of Turkey, sandwiched between Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran. It is one of the world's oldest civilizations, with an ancient alphabet and ruins dating back to prehistoric times. Religion is central to every aspect of the Armenian identity. Armenia was the first nation in the world to officially adopt Christianity, in the year 301. (The region's Biblical history is far older than that. Noah's Ark is said to have come to rest on top of Mount Ararat, in what is traditional Armenian territory.) One of the four quarters in the Old City of Jerusalem, of immeasurable importance to three faiths, is called the Armenian Quarter.

It is a Christian country on the doorstep of the Middle East, and its location has always been problematic (or strategic) for its neighbors. The Mongols, Persians, Russians, and Ottomans all once staked claims in Armenia. Armenia was also a Soviet State, and Russian influence is still everywhere, from language to food to education to architecture. Today, Armenia is fully autonomous, though at great cost...

Our friends Armine and Seamus met us at the airport. Armine was BEYOND excited to show us her country. Our good friend Seamus from Dublin was there too. He had come to Armenia, independently, to do a photo documentary of some of the most remote villages in the former Soviet Union. When we found out that our trips to Armenia were lining up in parallel, as crazy as that sounds, we knew it was meant to be.

The four of us jumped in Armine's car and sped through the dark streets of Yerevan, through small neighborhoods of tiny houses crammed against each other in the capital's many twisting streets. Armine's family lives in a lovely house near the center of town. We parked and went inside and met her family. Her mom and dad greeted us so warmly, even though none of us could really understand each other. We offered our Irish whiskey and smoked salmon, and Armine's mom fed us delicious Armenian and Russian food. (Fresh grape leaves stuffed with ground meat. Incredible.) We sat in the warm night air, amongst the strange sounds of neighbors talking, insects buzzing, dogs barking, the trees in the yard blowing in the breeze, our candles flickering in the night. Seamus tried out his Russian, which he had been teaching himself for the past several months in preparation for this trip... but for Pip and me, we relied on hand gestures and on Armine, who was more than happy to help.

We had met Armine at the WSCF Conference in Berlin just months before, although we felt like we had known her for years. At the young age of 21, Armine already knows Armenian, Russian, German, French, and English, has started various non-government organizations in Armenia, plays piano perfectly, performs Armenian folk dance, and is one of Armenia's top parasailers (what??). Her family played an important role in the history of Armenia, and her father is very proud of his country. To hear him speak about Armenian history was fascinating.


We formulated a plan to see as much of the country as possible. The next day, we explored Yerevan. Armine drove us downtown, fearlessly (she was the only woman I saw driving on the road) and we walked around all the important sites. And most importantly, we stopped by the embassy of the Nagorno-Karabakh Region and registered for our visas to the disputed territory. By following a strict set of guidelines, and with special consideration and a bit of luck, we hoped our visas would be approved and we could enter a territory whose existence neither the United Nations nor any country in the world recognizes. (More on that in a moment.)

We drove everywhere. We explored the Garni Temple, a pagan temple that dates to around the year 1. We stopped at roadside huts for cool drinks, chatting with the villagers. We sat by a running stream and ate delicious homemade kebabs for lunch. The hills were a beautiful green, with large mountains rising in the distance, and beautiful fields of wildflowers amidst the desert. Everywhere the roads were terrible. The drivers were worse, passing us by, squealing their breaks around the many twists and turns up and down the mountainsides. The little villages dotted the mountain slopes, and as we would enter them, we'd see the people of Armenia: farmers leading their donkeys carrying a pile of hay; children playing on the side of the road; old ladies working in the fields; young men fixing their cars. The vibrancy of those villages is something I can never forget. But it was just the beginning.

Each day we were in Armenia, we went to at least two churches. Since I could never hope to do each the justice it deserves, these photos are from just some of the churches we went into. We explored churches on the tops of mountains, or monasteries hidden at the end of long valleys, or churches literally carved into the rock so that their entire interior was just one elaborate sculpture. And the churches were ancient, reflecting a deep, ever-constant reverence, centuries old.














The official Church of Armenia is called the Armenian Apostolic Church (rather than Armenian Orthodox) because it was founded by an apostle. It broke away from Constantinople in 554, after rejecting the Council of Chalcedon. The Church is very traditionally-minded. Things rarely change. For instance, the Armenian Apostolic Church hasn't canonized a saint in centuries because its instructions for the rite of canonization were destroyed and have been lost to history; thus they believe the rite cannot take place. The alphabet in Armenia, which looks like this:



is based on the Christian cross. Look at each letter and you can see that at its root is the cross.

The architecture in Yerevan alternates between the crumbling concrete slabs of Soviet high-rises, the shoddy modern construction of the recent real estate boom (and bust), and the ancient beauty of a very unique Middle-Eastern-European hybrid unseen anywhere in the world. The oldest buildings are made of a unique pink stone that seems to glisten in the sun. Foreign investment is a rarity -- there are actually no McDonald's in Armenia. Armenians have spent the last twenty years rediscovering their lost national identity, and it has been with many successes and failures. On the whole, the country is energetic and optimistic. "Yerevan is full of the promise."

But the true spirit of Armenia is far outside the city of Yerevan, in a place that almost defies description.

Our new visas were approved and, at 6 in the morning, the four of us hired a taxi to take us deep into the hills of southern Armenia. At first, we drove toward Mount Ararat in Turkey, on a wide, four-lane modern highway. But as time went on, the road turned to a single lane in each direction, and then finally to dirt. This was the road to the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armine said the road was intentionally left in disrepair in order to slow down a potential tank invasion from Azerbaijan.

Our driver was a rough man, who spoke no English, and his Armenian was of the Karabakh dialect, which meant that even Armine had a hard time understanding. He drove like a maniac. We stopped here and there in tiny villages for roadside food or homemade wine. The villagers smiled and laughed, amazed to see us in that place, especially Pip with his long hair and shorts. Our driver allowed us to pull over to take photos of beautiful mountaintops, or to go inside the tiny churches and monasteries scattered throughout the small country. We would walk into the courtyard, slowly approaching the church, admiring the beautiful architecture, the sculptures, the ancient buildings. And our taxi driver would follow us from behind, smoking a cigarette silently. But when we would enter the churches, he would come inside too, cross himself, and say a quiet prayer. Armine would put a veil over her head and approach the altar and bow with such reverence. Pip, Seamus and I were in awe.

As our taxi inched closer and closer to the border, the little villages became sparser. The road was now nothing but potholes, no lines, no signs, no guardrails. Shepherds leading a flock of sheep would often take up the whole road, and we'd veer off into the brush to get around. Sometimes, the shepherd would gaze down at us from the top of his donkey, and smile. Everyone was always smiling. Sometimes a cow would wander across the road in front of our car, and our driver would slam on the brakes. Then the children in the street would laugh.

Our car was an old white Lada, the standard government-issue car in the USSR. Very few other cars would be able to handle the roads, and besides heavy trucks traveling to and from Iran, there were almost no other motor vehicles on the road.

The roads were so bad, in fact, that we ended up getting a flat tire. We stopped in Goris, a small town in the mountains near the border, where we waited for an hour to switch cars. We wandered around the town for awhile to explore and take photos. Seamus was in his element, capturing the streets in his camera: smiling children, old women on their porches, old men playing backgammon. It was just starting to rain as we got in our new Lada and made our way into the foggy mountains. We were going to take a detour to visit the Tatev Monastery.

Tatev contains the soul of the Armenian people. To understand Tatev, you have to come face to face with one of the darkest moments in human history.

The Armenian Genocide was the first deliberate, systematic, ethnic-cleansing of the 20th-century. Over a million Armenians perished, out of a total population of just a few million. Throughout the ninety-five years since the event, Turkey has refused to acknowledge the event as a "genocide" but has instead claimed those deaths were the unfortunate result of civil war. Today in Turkey, it is a crime to affirm one's belief that the Ottomans conducted a deliberate genocide. However, all you have to do is visit Armenia, hear the stories, see the mass graves. Many world governments have refused to acknowledge the truth, but the facts are terrifyingly clear: it was a genocide, which the United States and the UK, in an effort to maintain close relations with Turkey, refuse to fully acknowledge to this day.

All countries must recognize the genocide of the Armenian people so that nothing like this can ever happen again.

Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness — for the present only in the East — with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? - Adolf Hitler, 1939

The Tatev Monastery is so sacred to Armenians because it was the site of one of the most tragic events of the Armenian Genocide. This is the story Armine told us, as our car weaved slowly up the worn path, to the top of the mountain, to Tatev:

As the Ottoman army was approaching the monastery, hidden deep in the mountains of southern Armenia, all the villagers from the nearby villages made their way to the top of the mountain, to the monastery, begging to be let inside. But the monastery was too small to accommodate the many thousands seeking refuge.

The Ottoman army arrived and the general stepped forward. One of the monks came out to meet him and beg for the lives of the villagers, mostly women and children whose men had already died. The general was unbending. Slavery was the only option, and after suffering years of genocide, everyone knew what that meant.

The monk struck a deal: Take whomever cannot fit inside the monastery walls, but you must spare those who step inside. The Ottoman general laughed, knowing that only a few dozen would be saved. Still, the monk was insistent. Finally the general agreed. All who who could fit inside the monastery walls would be spared.

One by one, the villagers entered the walls of the monastery -- and one by one they leaped over the edge of the cliff. No single Armenian was taken prisoner. Tatev means "giving wings" in Armenian. To this day, the event is remembered, not as another massacre, but as a moment of incredible empowerment, because it was on that day that the Armenian martyrs became angels.

We walked around the Tatev monastery, high up inside the clouds. The rain was just rolling in as we explored the silent hallways and rooftops. A group of children was playing around a tree in the courtyard, their mothers sitting on stones as they listened attentively to a monk whose stories made them all laugh. Of course, somehow Armine knew one of the monks, a friendly, bearded man who knew no English but answered our questions with eagerness and joy. He showed us a secret passage that the priests used to come and go from the basement, down to the villages in the valley. It started to rain again, and we huddled under an old stone awning... the children ran after a ball in circles around the courtyard. We left that place in awed silence.














Do yourself a favor and listen to this song. It is a traditional melody from Nagorno-Karabakh. Imagine the four of us listening to it, as we thundered across the open road in the midst of the most incredible natural beauty we had ever seen.

We stopped by some natural hot springs in the forest, and Pip took a quick dip. The taxi driver was less than happy when Pip jumped back into the car soaking wet. (Pip and his little dog have so much in common.)

Now we were getting close to Nagorno-Karabakh. We passed a small, unsuspecting sign that said, "Welcome to Free Karabakh." That meant we had just entered territorial Azerbaijan. The land suddenly became vast and empty. Our road wound round and round until finally we reached the border. Our taxi driver pulled over, collected our passports, and began our plea to cross into Nagorno-Karabakh. Despite having driven for an entire day, one whimsical guard or hint of suspicious activity could send us all the way back to Yerevan. And, of course, there was a problem. Somehow we hadn't brought all the paperwork we needed. The men began yelling and pointing angrily. Armine jumped out of the car and ran over. She pleaded to the guard to let us pass. She cried and begged for him to understand. ...How could he say no? He let us in.

Nagorno-Karabakh has no diplomatic relations with any other state. There are no embassies in Nagorno-Karabakh. There are no US consular services. If you get arrested in Nagorno-Karbakh, Jimmy Carter isn't going to come save you. It is a territory with no official recognition by the UN. Only Transnistria recognizes its sovereignty (and Transnistria isn't recognized either).

But it is gorgeous. The one winding road made its way laboriously, patiently, around the mountainsides. The beauty of the valley laid out far below. The thickest forests I've ever seen. No trace of human settlement for miles and miles. Even the road had been mostly overtaken by nature. Alongside every hairpin turn was a steel tank block that could be pushed onto the road to prevent the Azerbaijanis from moving in.

And just like that, on the radio we heard that several Armenian soldiers had been killed by sniper fire in the mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh, by the Azeri army. The taxi driver, who had driven in silence for hours, spoke with sudden intensity. Armine gasped and explained what happened. Minutes later, an ambulance flanked by military vehicles sped past us, back toward Yerevan. The taxi driver crossed himself, and Armine began to cry. Now known as the June skirmish, the incident became one of the most tense moments in years between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Pip, Seamus and I began to realize the tragedy of Nagorno-Karbakh. Azeri snipers still dot the mountains, firing on whatever moves, as Armenians continue to mobilize their military in the region... It's all just another part of the dark history of this troubled region.

We drove for what seemed like hours to reach the town of Sushi, twisting and turning, sitting now mostly in silence. When we finally got to the town, we got out and said goodbye to our taxi driver. The fee was just a few US dollars per person, even for an entire day's drive. We gave him a generous tip for showing us so much... and he refused it! We had to force him to take the money! Where else in the world does that happen?

We stayed in the only hotel in Sushi. The owner couldn't believe his luck. It was a new hotel, built out of the rubble of the town after the incredibly destructive war against Azerbaijan in 1992. The Azeris used the mountain town of Sushi as a launching-ground for bombing the capital city of Stepanakert in the valley below. Most of the town still lay in ruins, except for this modest hotel. The owner made us tea and food, allowed us to use the piano, let us use his computer, and waited on us hand and foot. We soon discovered we were the only guests there.

We explored the town that night, walking the dark streets. Everything was empty. An eeriness was on every street corner. The bombed out shells of buildings sat alone, hollow and quiet in the shadows. One or two cars drove by, slowing as they passed by with curiosity. No shops were open. No shops seemed to even exist. Such a strange place.

Back in the hotel, there were no TV stations we could find, except a very fuzzy broadcast of some folk music on Iranian TV.

Armine's friend lives in Nagorno-Karabakh in the larger capital city of Stepanakert. Armine contacted him, and he couldn't be more excited to have visitors. He sent a friend to pick us up and show us around the country. We drove far out into the countryside, exploring little towns, the ruins of others, and the reconstruction efforts that seemed underway in almost every corner of the country. One place we went to was totally devastated. We got out of the car in the middle of a mine field, and took pictures of the vast wasteland. Soviet tanks were flipped on their sides, blown apart by explosions twenty years ago. In the hazy distance was Azerbaijan, not more than a few miles from where we stood.

Our driver was friendly and helpful, though he knew no English. (I wish I could remember his name.) Having a local driver is critical here. One wrong turn and you could wind up blown apart by a mine, or face-to-face with the entire Azerbaijani army. Nagorno-Karabakh has the second-largest concentration of landmines in the world, second to Afghanistan. Many people today are still affected by the conflict: Armine found out that our driver's brother was killed by a landmine while they were playing together as children.

We stopped at a tiny, open-air museum in the desert, near the Azerbaijani border. Built on the site of an archeological dig, the museum had just opened weeks before, and we were the first non-Armenian visitors. Our tour guide spoke a little English, and he was very excited to show us every exhibit. Afterward he insisted that we sit and have a homemade lunch with him and his family. We sat in the shade and ate the famous Armenian flatbread (called lavash) that is served with every meal.

After lunch (and since there were no other visitors, of course) the guide led us outside the museum and alongside a small stream. Springs are very important in the Armenian world. At the base of each spring is always an inscription, sometimes centuries old, with Armenian letters, dedicated to some famous figure or local hero. Here we sat beside the ruins of an Azeri smokehouse, where Azeris used to smoke hookah in the little oasis beside the spring. Now the smokehouse was covered with Christian graffiti.

Our tour guide had served in the military, he told us as he leaned on a rock, soaking his feet in the water. Between puffs of his cigarette, he boasted proudly of the number of times he had been shot, and about how the Armenians shouldn't stop until they push all the Azeris into the sea. He labeled the Azeris, and all Muslims, as dogs. He laughed in a very simple and flippant way, as one who lives under the constant but steady threat of war, and whose moral code is understood only in polarizing black and white... it was all too much for me. We decided to leave our host and move on. Armine was ashamed of the whole episode, and she explained that this sort of militant nationalism was actually detrimental to the Armenian cause. Still, I wondered whose justifications for Armenian statehood were more common among the general public.

We drove on. Nearby beside the road was an ancient Azeri cemetery, with Turkish engravings in dark stone. Armine explained: When the Armenians regained this territory, they had allowed the Muslim cemeteries to remain intact. When the Azeris controlled the area, they had destroyed every last Christian cemetery. Still, the words of the tour guide were so contradictory to this decency. Morality is never black and white.

We drove to Stepanakert where we finally met Armine's friend, Marat. He owned a new coffee shop in Stepanakert in a bustling downtown area with shops and restaurants that seemed to be in the midst of being built. Marat generously ordered us lattes and asked us in English how we liked his country. Then he told us that he had made arrangements for us to stay the night with a friend in a small village outside the city. No way!!

We soon found ourselves in another car, bumping up and down the dirt roads leading into the center of a small village near Stepanakert. Pip, Seamus, Armine, Marat and I drove into the village at twilight. The car couldn't make it all the way, so we walked up the hill the rest of the way until we arrived at the house. We were staying at a friend's grandmother's house who had passed away. The friend joined us as well, and we met him excitedly as he showed us around the place. He gave us some containers to take to the well to fetch water for the evening. He set up some candles, and then boiled some water on the fire to make traditional Karabakh tea from herbs he collected in the mountains. WHAT.

We spent the twilight walking around the village, watching people as they watched us, taking photos of smiling old men and women, a group of children playing volleyball beside a bombed-away building, each of whom wanted us to take their photo, and the many cows, mules and dogs that seemed to follow us everywhere we walked. We made our way to the top of the hill, and were surprised to find a military base there. "No photos," Marat told us. We tensed up as our friend walked up to the gate and asked the guard for his brother. I have never before wanted to take a photo as badly as that one: the evening light just catching the tired look on that young man's face, as he stood there in his military garb inside his ramshackle guard post, rifle over one shoulder, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, slowly dialing the old Soviet rotary alarm. It sounded over a wire at the barracks to summon the soldier to the front gate.

A new cemetery was there too. Our friend's father had been killed during the war with Azerbaijan, when he was so young. His photo on the tombstone looked as recent as one taken that day, and it became clear to me that the war wasn't that long ago. (Armine had mentioned that as a child, she remembered waiting in line for hours for bread, only to find that it was gone when it was her family's turn. She's 21.)

It rained that night and we ran into the streets to photograph a group of cows that were on their way home from the fields, as an old woman hurried them along the street. I fell asleep transformed.




















The next morning we woke up and washed ourselves in the community spring. A little old lady walked slowly over to us and smiled, carrying a bar of soap and a towel. After a picnic in the hills, we made our way back to Yerevan by another taxi. It was another 12-hour ride, stopping everywhere we could. When we arrived in Yerevan, we had only one more day before I had to begin my journey back to the US. (Pip and Seamus would stay on in Armenia for another week or two to take photos.)

Yerevan's old market was my favorite part of that entire city. We spent the last day at Lake Sevan up in the mountains. There's just too much to tell. What a fantastic country.











Armine's family was so incredibly hospitable to host the three of us for all those days. Thanks so much, guys! You are welcome to stay in Pittsburgh anytime!

My many flights back to Dublin began with a flight out of Tbilisi, Georgia. I had planned to travel the last day to Georgia alone, but my friends wouldn't have it. They wanted to come, for more adventures (of course) and to see me off. We all had a sense that this had been one of the greatest trips of our entire lives, and we didn't want it to end. Pip, Seamus, Armine and I joined our friend Ripso (whom we had met in Kiev at the WSCF, who was also from Armenia and also a close friend of Armine's) and we took a taxi-bus on the long journey to Georgia.