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I have already met Stepan, and we’ve planned at least the first day of our journey.  We will head south, and spend Wednesday night in Kapan.  I will write about that when the time comes.   No sense in offering predictions as if this is a football game.

I have a choice; I can head north today and head to Haghbat, Sanahin, and Odzoun, hoping for fall colors, or, skirt Sevan Lake, past Martouni.  But first, a quick return to Zvartnots Airport to pick up my bag.   I don’t really care about the clothes, I have enough here left from previous trips.    It’s my tripod and my 4x5 film holder (oh, and the pound of Peet’s coffee) that I need to have for the journey to Karabagh to even make sense, photographically (the coffee stays in Yerevan).

October 5, 2004, Part II

This was, in the end, an interesting day.  The morning was spent running this errand or that (yes, even in Yerevan, errands don’t elude me). 

My cousin Mookooch and I finally left Yerevan around noon, heading north in his trusty and noisy Mercedes van.  By this time, my trigger finger was itching with the need to depress a camera shutter.   It was nearing 24 hours in Armenia and I had not shot a single frame of film yet.

My first opportunity came right after passing Dodi Gago’s misplaced French chateau, with its private church, no less, on a hilltop in Kotayk.   Here, the hillside to the right of the roadway is being slowly cut away in a mining operation, turning an otherwise uninteresting hill into a multi-layered, multi-shaded vista well-lit by the afternoon sun.   The best place to stop for photographing this is just past a big blue road sign, as the road begins to curve left, away from the hill.