Cycling from Switzerland to the Pamirs: Debed Valley

Sadahko - Alaverdi: 48
Alaverdi - spitak: 74
Day Rest in spitak
Spitak - Erevan: 75
Visiting monasteries near Erevan by car

Cycling up the Debet Valley was definitively one of the nicest part of our trip. The road was winding in a canyon with impressive walls on both side sometimes. The canyon was widening at some points, so that we never felt stuck in it.

The first km in Armenia gave us the impression that we were in a forgotten world: a lot of huge deserted soviet buildings, cable cars, almost nobody living and a road with much holes.

We reached the highlight of the valley at the end of our first day when we entered alaverdi. It felt like in a James Bond movie , huge deserted factories, huge buildings in a kind of mountain desert environment and at the top of it , mont doom! Some kind of pipe seemed to climb up the mountains and 500m over the city let an impressive smoke go out of it. Leila cycled 50km more that day to meet Scott in vanadzor, we stayed with Moritz at na old lady's place who was renting a room.

The next day went up to vanadzor, the landscape still amazing in the valley but a bit less of soviet buildings and less deserted feeling. We began to see the snowy peaks of central Armenia and reached spitak, where we stayed at YMCA centre, which provides rooms. Because of the bad weather and Kim not feeling well, some kind of angina, we decided to take a day rest in spitak and reach Erevan the next day.

On the road from Spitak, we reached the highest pass so far of our trip at 2100m. After that, we expected a nice downhill but it almost never came and we had to cyclo 40km on a plateau with headwind :( the landscapes were at least nice. We met then Scott and Leila 20km before erevan where we loaded our bikes in their car to avoid the highway entering erevan.

The next day, moritz had to stay at the hostel to work for university but Kim Leila and Scott visited some monasteries in the area, and drove on a nice dirt road with an ugly Kia SUV.

Debed Valley