View on Mount Ara and Mount Aragats from top of the Jrvezh Forest Park
Very often we want to go on an easy relaxing ride or there is a beginner in the group and we need to make it a relatively painless first trip. But it just happened so that Yerevan is surrounded by mountains on most of its ends with only 1/4th of the circle around the city being flat. So here are a few easy to medium routes that you can take from Yerevan.
To the South
Cycling to the south from Yerevan is the easiest thing to do. It’s both flat and there is both a highway with a wide shoulder and a secondary road parallel to the highway. So depending what is more comfortable for you and your companions you can choose to combine those two. I always recommend to take the highway going out and the secondary road on the way back.
You can cycle as far as you want however I recommend those three destinations:
Khor Virap Monastery Relatively long ride to the Khor Virap Monastery where the famous Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned. Great views of Ararat Mountain.
Perhaps one of the easiest and still very picturesque cycling trips in Armenia is around Sevan lake. The lake lies high at the altitude of 1900 meters surrounded by beautiful volcanic mountains. From the cultural side you can see several medieval monasteries on the shores of Sevan and the unique Noratus cemetery where the largest remaining collection of khachkars stands.
The trip can be done in 2-3 days adding x-amount of days to take rest, swim and lay in the sun. We took 2.5 days cycling, and 1.5 days resting which was also dictated by the logistics. I will talk about it below.
Usually when we have a full cycling day adventure it’s a good idea to look up the routes in advance as we want our cycling to be enjoyable, without much cars (or ideally without any cars), and on a terrain that suits our preferences and time schedule. Of course, the more developed your country’s cycling infrastructure is, the less research you need to do and vice versa.
The factors I normally take into account are distance, elevation profile, road priority (busyness) and road condition. Elevation profile and road condition tell me how long a distance I can cover. Busy roads are normally avoided but if I am under time pressure they can be useful once in a while.
After my trip from Amsterdam to Yerevan was over, I had done little cycling in Armenia. However, I had a plan – when the autumn sets in, continue southwards until the border with Iran.
I planned to do this in the middle of autumn when the weather is milder for cycling and the mountains become painted with the autumn leaf colors. I chose the first week of October and I think it was right on point with the weather; for the colors I could have waited for another week perhaps. But you always have to make a guess with the weather – the best educated guess it is.
After a few basic questions that everyone asks – I call them level 1 FAQ – people move to the next series of questions, a bit more practical and philosophical.
One of them is undoubtedly the money question. Many tend to think that to be touring on a bike you need to be rich. While I am sure that rich people tour too, the majority of tourers give little significance to the budget.
There are certainly things that you need to account for like visas, medical travel insurance, necessary transportation (for example crossing between the continents), telephone bills and national park tickets. Next come accommodation and food.
Your choice of accommodation is huge and so are the expenses. It ranges from 100% free wild camping and community hosting to luxurious hotels every night. In the middle there are campsites, hostels, motels, hotels, airbnb, guesthouses etc.
For example, I wasn’t prepared to camp below 5°C, neither were the campsites open in March when I started, so I used the help from the Warmshowers community and found cheap hostels when there was no host available. Later on I tried to camp when possible, but preferred a guesthouse when I wanted to leave my bike in a safe place and go hiking. And sometimes I was hosted by friendly locals.
My first Warmshowers host in Holland
Camping in Slovakia
Guesthouse in German Alps
Guesthouse in Romania
Camping at Warmshower hosts in Austria
Youth hostel in a medieval castle in Germany
Then food. Even more than the accommodation, the choice is yours. From restaurants to the grocery stores and foraging. And most likely you will end up with a mix of it all, together with the treats from passer-by’s and hospitable locals.
Gift from a passing car in Georgia
Warm & cheesy langos on a cold day
German food from a grocery store
I also decided to share with you my actual expenses for the 99 days of my journey. When planning, I had in mind a daily average budget of 5 euros for food and 10 euros for accommodation. Of course, every day was different but on the average it turned out to be pretty accurate. My average daily spent was 16 euros accounting for all kinds of expenses such as bicycle repair and spare parts, ferry crossing, park tickets and internet & phone.
*ferry ticket of 110 euro is included in the Other category
Assume that you are prepared to wild camp every day and eat only what you make, and your costs can be very very low! But of course sometimes it’s nice to try local specialties, invite friends for a dinner or get into a hostel and explore a city.
All in all, you can see that it’s not an impossible venture, but rather a well thought and tried way to travel the world for little money or simply to explore your own country 🙂
