Here I go again! Yes, it was my fourth trip in a space of six weeks, as I was jetting off to a new destination for the first time and very much looking forward to travelling to Armenia. I was excited and also a bit tired. The miles do catch up on you as you get older. I’ve done much more intense travel in my youth and not felt a beat. Life catches up with all of us, even though in my head I still think I’m about 21.
The first time I really took a look at Armenia was when, as a Manchester United fan, I saw the club I support sign an Armenian player named Henrikh Mkhitaryan in the mid-2010s. In all honesty, before that, I never took an interest in visiting. However, after reading about its vast history, I thought this was my place to explore. So, when I got an invitation to travel there, I snapped it up with both hands.
New Direct Flights to Armenia
There are many ways to begin a journey, but standing under the harsh, fluorescent lights of London Luton Airport wasn’t exactly the most romantic setting to start my journey. If you were to ask me to list my favourite airports around the world, Luton Airport wouldn’t just be sitting right near the bottom; it would be buried somewhere in the subterranean layers beneath it. Sorry Luton. That being said, I booked a Holiday Inn through Holiday Extras to ensure a comfortable stay and a smooth journey before my flight.
My trip was direct to the capital, Yerevan. Yes, that’s right, June 8th was the first official direct flight with Wizz Air and the first to the country since October 2014. Fantastic, as it meant it would save so much time not having a connecting flight, considering the flight journey was over 5 hours. Though I had a dose of trepidation and I was not particularly looking forward to it, as a budget airline flying for that long means you aren’t going to get a Star Alliance service.
By standard distance, a flight from London to Yerevan pushes right up against the boundaries of what I feel constitutes a long-haul journey. No hot meals are coming down the aisle, no complimentary blankets, and not even a free cup of water to wash down the rising dread of the flight in your throat—a real test of human willpower.
For all the misery of Luton, the sheer convenience of a single, uninterrupted leap across Europe and into the Caucasus was great nonetheless. And what was really entertaining, not that Wizz Air had entertainment for me to either watch a movie or listen to music, was sitting next to a man who was a bit of a Casanova!
Meeting the Mid-Air Casanova
Before my flight took off, I changed seats as a couple with a baby wanted to sit next to one another. This meant I sat on my favourite aisle seat, as I was dreading sitting in the middle for over 5 hours. Thank you to the couple who saved me.
Not long after I sat down in my new seat, an Iranian man next to me, after a short intro, asked if I was married. I told him I was not. So he casually told me he’d been married four times, to a Brazilian, a Turkish woman, a Swiss woman, and most recently, an American. I couldn’t help but laugh.
His life sounded less like a typical conversation on a flight and more like the plot of a romantic comedy. I asked him what had happened, and he said, ‘When you are young (he is only a few years older than me), lust takes over.’ He advised me to marry someone with the same cultural upbringing, as they will understand me. So I asked, ‘Did it take you 4 marriages to figure that out?’ He laughed and reiterated that he was young and lustful.
Curious, I asked him why he was flying to Armenia, and he explained that Yerevan was a stopover before he headed into Iran. I found out from my guide for the trip, Tatev Khorenyan, that the border between Armenia and Iran is easy to cross due to the cordial history between the two nations. I also found out from an Iranian friend after my trip that many will cross over to party. Think of it as Brits heading to Spain or Americans heading to Mexico or Costa Rica.
After a good night’s rest, the following day, the adventure began, and I was exploring with a group of travel agents led by a small yet brilliant family-run tour business, Phoenix Tour, alongside AMTRAVEL and their partners, Strategic Development Agency. I have travelled with agents before, and I like it. I prefer it, to be honest with you: apart from travelling solo, you have a different set of conversations with them than when travelling with travel writers. Only because travel writers that I have been on the road recently with usually like a good old moan about the state of the industry. It’s just energy-sapping and boring.
Yerevan felt anything but a place people passed through. From my hotel room, I looked directly onto the magnificent, history-filled Republic Square, where people gather each evening. Long after sunset, families lingered, kids chasing one another across the yard; tourists stopped to sit and admire the illuminated buildings, drink coffee at the cafés, and get ice cream, where the shops were still bustling well past midnight.
I had to take myself out there just to breathe in the atmosphere and see what it was all about. Classical music played across the square, and the fountains burst into life with a sprinkling show. I found myself standing amongst locals who, from what I could see, were just as captivated as I was as a visitor. I remember thinking, surely you would expect to buy a ticket for something like this. Here, all it cost was your time.
There wasn’t one moment that captured the essence of Armenia for me, whether I was travelling past Mount Ararat, which was in Türkiye, or passing the borders of Iran, Azerbaijan, and Türkiye. Or going inside Noravank Monastery, dramatically situated among striking red cliffs. It was understanding their culture.
Like, experiencing the duduk master by Karen Hakobyan was breathtaking. The duduk sound is described as melancholic, but sitting just a few feet away from Hakobyan as he played left me with a warm, reflective feeling. Then his wife joined him at the piano, transforming the performance into something even more moving. Together, they created music, leaving me in complete silence between each piece.
What was amazing about the piano was that it had been a gift to the Belgian royal family and somehow ended up with this random Armenian family who were moving out and wanted to get rid of it, so Hakobyan picked it up. He was planning to dismantle it and turn it into something else, but a group of French tourists at his house noticed the piano and told him it was special (he had no idea it was a big deal when he initially took it). So when he found out, he renovated the piano. Apparently, when the Belgian royal family was visiting Armenia, they came to Hakobyan’s place and confirmed it did, in fact, belong to the royal family. Whether it is true or not, I thoroughly enjoyed my time.
Another moment which couldn’t be more different from the duduk experience was my jeep ride bouncing its way through the rugged tracks of Gnishik Canyon, the towering cliffs revealing a spectacular landscape. Hardly touched. The views. Oh my goodness. Again, took my breath away.
What made that particular experience great was that I shared a journey with Beth, one of the agents on the tour, and our conversation as we drove up the gorge. We spoke about life back in the UK, her experiences as a teacher, and why she decided to leave the job, as well as politics, which dominates everyday conversations at home. Surrounded by one of Armenia’s most spectacular landscapes, I was struck by how travel has a habit of creating space for the conversations we rarely find time to have.
Now, if the canyon had a great conversation driving up, Mount Dimats was the opposite.
Known as the “Switzerland of Armenia,” our jeep drove us up, and I looked across the endless mountains surrounding it; talking suddenly seemed unnecessary. It is experiences like that which, no matter how tired I was, were special. Once we reached 2,500m, the altitude wasn’t going to stop me admiring the peaks, which stretched endlessly into the distance. What was even better was having a beautifully prepared picnic lunch, which let me taste Armenia with its sensational views. There was no urge to reach for my phone (I had no signal anyway, as I was in the clouds), just a conversation with my fellow travellers whilst we admired our surroundings.
Laughter, Banter, and Memories Off-Camera
On any journey I take, laughter is the key component. And there was a lot of banter amongst us, and that does make a group great to be around. We were all supposed to go to a local jazz night in Yerevan to enjoy the evening after a long day of touring, and no one had the energy. I jokingly asked our guide, ‘Maybe both of us singles should go together’ (I ended up at a fancy bar called BEM by Karen Sevak, which turned out to be great), and she said no. So, I played on that in the car ride and said, ‘I asked you out twice, and one of the times you said you were washing your hair. What can a guy do to get some attention?’ Everyone laughed, and there were plenty of those throughout my time in Armenia.
Ironically, those are the moments I treasure most from exploring, and they aren’t on camera. Those were all memories that didn’t need staging.
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Shebs Alom
Shebs is an award-winning Broadcaster, Travel Writer, Podcaster, and Co-Executive Producer. His work has been featured in the BBC, MSN, Apple News, The Times, The Express, Travel Magazine, Travel Weekly, and Marriott Bonvoy, to name a few.