Bittersweet Ani

Ani was the capital of Armenia during the Middle Ages. The city borders extended across the whole Ararat Valley. Unfortunately after World War 1, Armenia lost Ani and all of Western Armenia to Turkey. Today, Ani and all points west belong to Turkey.

We were lucky enough to get 'invited' to see Ani from the border with Turkey. This is not permitted very often, but our tour guide was a very well known Armenian professor and he apparently had some connections.

So last Saturday we piled into several marshutkas and headed down a long, windy very bumpy road to the border of Armenia and Turkey. The border is bascially an electric fence that dips through hills and valleys. There is also a resevoir that has a fence running through the water. Half Armenian, half turkish. Crazy!

Russian soldiers escorted us through no mans land up to a cliff. On the other side of the canyon, probably about 1,000 meters was the ruins of Ani. We could see tourists walking through Ani pretty clearly from the border. We could also see a turkish flag flapping in the wind. The tour guide told us Turks tell the tourists that come to visit that Ani contains very ancient Greek ruins! Since the border with Turkey is blockaded from Armenia, to get to the Ani side I would have to travel up through Georgia and enter Turkey that way. 1000 meters away but a 12 hour distance to travel.

Seeing Ani in person was a bittersweet emotional experience for me. A Russian soldier was barking at us to turn our cameras off, that pictures were not permitted.I secretly took a few, but it was disturbing to me that it had to be a secret. We perched on the cliff and looked out across the canyon to Ani. I tried to imagine the thriving capitol it once was, but mostly I thought about my grandfather. This was the closest I would get to his hometown of Kharpert, Turkey. I picked some flowers and put them in book to bring home with me.

This upcoming weekend a bunch of us have decided to skip the hiking excursion and instead spend the day at a water park in Yerevan. We also plan to check out the Genocide Memorial. There is a huge flea market that takes place every weekend in Yerevan, so I'm hoping to hit that up!