Catching the bus from Dilijan to Vanadzor

I bought my ticket and sat outside the small bus station in Dilijan. This pretty Armenian spa town quietly markets itself as Little Switzerland & is perched high in the green hills, far away from the dusty earthquake-battered capital, Yerevan. It was the final bus of the day and the sun was dipping into the horizon. It was also twenty minutes late and the driver, in a bid to recover time, accelerated past the terminal. I stood up, flapping my arms around. Two staff from the bus station came out, also flapping their arms & then disappeared back into the station. The bus turned a corner and left town. If I didn’t get to Vanadzor, I couldn’t get to Tbilisi in Georgia. If I couldn’t get to Tbilisi, I couldn’t get home to London. I was travel-stained & tired. So, I did what I always do in situations of utter hopelessness. I kicked my rucksack.

Concrete Beauty

But then the two bus station employees reappeared & ushered me into a mud-splattered minivan. We raced off in pursuit, running red lights and leaning on the horn to scatter the traffic.  Luckily our target was an old American school bus and we glimpsed its taillights a mile out of town, crawling up an incline in first gear. The minivan shunted past and drew to an abrupt stop in front of the startled driver. There followed a further series of arm signals until the bus door hissed open and I climbed the steps waving my ticket and pointing back to the town trying to explain the situation in the absence of shared language.

 

After this unlikely start, the bus inched up a narrow ridge riding above the beautiful villages belonging to the Molokans. Rejecting orthodoxy, the Molokans are an ultra-conservative group who face away from the modern world and live in steep green valley settlements like Fioletovo.

The bus crunched through the narrow passes with the valley spread out below; patterned by hayricks and smoking chimneys & populated by men on horseback and women in black headscarves. Lilac dusk dropped across the valley and as the light diminished and the senses readjusted, the tang of woodsmoke drifted into the bus and I slept the final miles into Vanadzor. This is how I will always remember Armenia; a beautiful journey made possible by a spontaneous act of kindness.