Still high on life after last Sunday’s hike, we decided to go hiking this Sunday too. Everyone is telling us how the weather is starting get too cold for outdoorsy life, which I as a Swede doubt, but I think that affect our plans and we want to do the most out of Armenian nature as soon as possible. If not for the weather so for the fact that one month has already passed, and we only have two months left here.

For this Sunday we decided to go to Dilijan, a place we looked up before coming here as it is supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful and we have also heard so much about when coming here. The rumors about the place was true, and we started to get them confirmed already in the car over there. Just before Dilijan you enter a long tunnel through the mountains, and it feels almost like you stepped into the closet of Narnia because when you reach the end of it; the amazing differing landscape of Dilijan opens up in front of you. Soft hills covered in trees with vibrant autumn colours, where the road carefully winding down into the valley of the town.

• 

• 

• 

We didn’t stop in Dilijan, instead our driver took us to Parz lake where we started our hike back to Dilijan. We used the really brilliant hiking app Hike Armenia to find our trail, and it showed that it would take around 4,5 hours to walk the 14 km back. We laughed, wondering who would ever walk that slow. But just about 5-6 hours later we arrived at our final destination, realizing that even if we removed the time taken to droning and photographing, it would most likely have taken at least 4.5 hours. Apparently, we haven’t really learned to appreciate and respect the effort behind steep climbing.

Despite the incline, the hike exceeded our expectations in many ways. The weather was perfect; the views varied from magical beech woods, springs and muddy valleys to open fields, old majestic oaks and highlands with cows calmly strolling around. The trail we walked on was sometimes just a foot wide with steep dive on one side, sometimes old jeep roads consisting of more mud than road, at times tractor tracks and sometimes a small creek walking in the waters trying not to slip. Everything combined with the crispiest of air, autumn winds and the fresh scent of woods.

It was really an amazing Sunday, again. Even more so when not having to stand on a truck for 1 hour after the hike. Instead we both slipped into some kind of hike coma in the comfortable car back home, both longing to going to bed but also, already longing for the next hike.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•