Southern Armenia Road Trip: Yerevan to Tatev

Yes, you can drive Armenia’s deep south in three days, and it is the best way to see it. This route runs from Yerevan down the M2 to the Wings of Tatev, the clifftop cable car that is the country’s single most famous ride, and it threads together almost everything worth stopping for in Syunik on the way: the red-cliff monastery of Noravank, the 2,344 m Vorotan Pass, the standing stones of Karahunj, the Shaki waterfall, and the towns of Sisian and Goris with the cave village of Khndzoresk beside them. It is roughly 270 km each way, and it wants two nights on the road, not none.

The one real mistake people make down here is trying to reach Tatev as a day trip from the capital. It can be done, and it is a ten- to thirteen-hour slog with most of the far south seen through a windscreen. Give the same drive three days and it becomes one of the best trips in the Caucasus, with time to walk the Khndzoresk gorge, ride the cable car before the coaches arrive, and sleep somewhere with a view. Settle one thing before you leave: this is self-drive country and you should keep to the M2 the whole way. Armenia’s eastern border areas carry a “do not travel” advisory, so do not improvise shortcuts toward the frontier. The main road is paved, obvious and calm.

Three days, not one

The trick to the pacing is splitting the nights between two towns rather than basing everywhere out of Goris. Sleep in Sisian on the first night and in Goris on the second, and each driving day stays short and each highlight lands at a civilised hour. Here is how it falls out:

• Day 1 (Yerevan to Sisian, about 217 km): the long haul south, stopping at Noravank, cresting the Vorotan Pass, and finishing with Karahunj and the Shaki waterfall around Sisian.
• Day 2 (Sisian to Goris, about 37 km of driving): a short hop to Goris, then the afternoon at the cave village and swinging bridge of Khndzoresk.
• Day 3 (Goris to the Wings of Tatev, and home): the cable car and the monastery in the morning, then the drive back north.

That order also means you tackle Karahunj and Shaki in the cool of the morning if you save them for the start of Day 2, which is worth doing in July heat. Nothing here is rigid; the point is that two easy nights beat one exhausting round trip.

Day one: Yerevan to Sisian over the pass

The first hours are flat and fast: south across the Ararat plain, past the vineyards of Areni, and into Vayots Dzor. Your first proper stop is Noravank, about 8 km up a side gorge off the M2. The monastery sits on the floor of a canyon whose cliffs turn deep red in low sun, and its two-storey Burtelashen church is famous for the narrow stone stair bolted to its face, with no rail and steps barely a boot wide.

Back on the M2 the road climbs hard to the Vorotan Pass at 2,344 m, the watershed between Vayots Dzor and Syunik and the high point of the trip. Two tall carved pylons mark the summit, and half the cars stopped there belong to travellers stretching their legs and taking the same photo. It is a fine place to feel how far south you have come, but treat it with respect: the pass sits high enough to shut in winter, and even in shoulder season the weather turns fast.

Down the far side, just before Sisian, turn 3 km off the road for Karahunj, also called Zorats Karer and sold as the “Armenian Stonehenge.” It is a field of 223 upright basalt stones on a bare plateau, some pierced with clean round holes. The headline about it being a 7,500-year-old observatory older than Stonehenge is a hopeful one - a German survey read it mainly as a Bronze and Iron Age burial ground - but the stones are genuinely old, genuinely strange, and free to wander at your own pace.

A few kilometres northwest of Sisian is the Shaki waterfall, an 18 m curtain of water over a basalt ledge with trees along the top. It is lovely, and it comes with a catch worth knowing: a small hydro plant takes the river into a pipe above the ledge, and under a schedule set by the environment ministry the water is handed back to the falls only between 11:00 and 19:00 from 1 May to 30 September, and 11:00 to 17:00 from 15 March to 30 April and 1 October to 15 November. Turn up at nine in the morning, in any season, and you may find a damp cliff rather than a waterfall. The full timetable, and how to check before you drive out, is in our guide to the Shaki waterfall.

Then it is a short run into Sisian for the night. It is a plain, no-nonsense little highland town rather than a sight in itself, but it puts you within a few minutes of Karahunj and Shaki, and above it stands Sisavan, a compact domed church from the 7th century that is worth the ten-minute climb at dusk.

Day two: Sisian to Goris and Khndzoresk

The second day is deliberately light on driving. It is only about 37 km and some forty minutes from Sisian to Goris, a handsome stone town of steep streets and the odd rock cone rising among the houses, and the standard southern base. Check in, drop your bag, and give the afternoon to the best walk of the trip.

That walk is Khndzoresk, 8 km east of Goris, where a whole village lived in caves carved into a gorge until the mid-20th century. You park at the rim, cross a 160 m swinging footbridge strung over the ravine, and pick your way down among the abandoned cave houses, a chapel and a spring. It is a proper little hike with real ups and downs, so keep an hour or two spare and wear shoes you can grip in.

Back in Goris for the night, you are perfectly placed for the last morning: the Wings of Tatev station is only 15 km away, which is the whole reason to base here rather than push on.

Day three: the Wings of Tatev

Save the headline for last. Drive the 15 km from Goris to the Halidzor station and ride the Wings of Tatev, a 5,752 m cable car that holds the record as the longest reversible aerial tramway in the world. Two cabins shuttle back and forth on a fixed pair of cables, one climbing as the other descends, and the crossing over the Vorotan gorge takes about twelve minutes, as high as 320 m above the river.

At the far end waits Tatev monastery, a thousand-year-old walled compound on the edge of the cliff, once the seat of the Bishop of Syunik and later a famous medieval university. Ride early. From June to August the cableway runs daily, roughly 09:00 to 20:00; in May and September about 10:00 to 19:00; and from October to April 10:00 to 18:00 and closed on Mondays. A round trip is 9,000 AMD (about $23) from March to November and 5,500 AMD in deep winter; the monastery grounds are free, since the ticket buys the cable car. Confirm the current timetable on tatever.am before you set off, because arriving at a shut station after that drive stings. If you would rather have the logistics without a car, our guide to getting from Yerevan to Goris and Tatev breaks down the minibus and the shared taxi.

The car, and the driving

This is a route that rewards your own wheels, because the good stops are strung along the M2 and the short spurs off it, and public transport gets you no further than the towns. The M2 itself is a decent paved road the whole way, and the driving is straightforward rather than technical, with the Vorotan Pass the one stretch that asks for a little care and a car with some pull on the climb. Pick the vehicle up in Yerevan and drop it back there; a small saloon copes fine outside winter, though the extra clearance of a crossover is nice on the rougher spurs to Karahunj and the Khndzoresk rim.

Two practical points before you sign anything. First, work out the fuel: the round trip comes to close to 600 km with a long haul up to the pass, so budget more than the flat distance suggests. Second, keep to the main road, as above; the border country to the east is off limits, and there is no reason to leave the M2. Our guides to renting a car in Armenia and driving in Armenia walk through the deposit, the insurance excess and the mountain-road habits that matter here.

Where to sleep, and what it costs

Two nights is what makes the whole thing relaxed, and neither town is dear. In Sisian the choice is a handful of small hotels and guesthouses, places like Hotel Basen or the Flamenco Hotel, with rooms from roughly $30; confirm the current rate when you book. In Goris the best-known address is Hotel Mirhav, a stone house with a garden in the centre, and there are cheaper guesthouses and the newer BMG and Khoreayi Dzor hotels alongside it.

As a rough floor, a comfortable three-day version on a shared car and mid-range rooms starts around AMD 110,000 per person for two travelling together, and climbs with a bigger car, nicer beds and more meals out. That figure has to carry the car for three days, two nights of rooms, the cable car, fuel for the full loop and food, so treat it as a starting point rather than a quote, and expect the car and the fuel to be the biggest lines.

Fitting it into a bigger trip

Three days is the tight version; four lets it breathe. The obvious add-on is the spa town of Jermuk, with its mineral springs and its own waterfall, an easy detour in Vayots Dzor on the way down or back. Wine drinkers can build in a tasting at Areni, which you pass on Day 1, and anyone with an extra afternoon can turn off into the medieval side valley of the Yeghegis loop near Noravank.

If the south is one leg of a longer visit, our 10-day Armenia itinerary shows how to hang it off the north and the capital, and our roundup of the best day trips from Yerevan helps you decide how many nights the capital is worth before you point the car south. For more ways to string the country together, browse the full routes hub.