Our Noraduz Adventure

To continue our adventures, last Sunday we packed up the car and headed out towards Lake Sevan to investigate Noraduz, which is a cemetery that has more than 1,000 khatchkars. Some date back as early as the 13^th century. We also stopped at a church along the way called Hairavank right on the shore of Lake Sevan. It was a pretty beautiful place. The original church was built in the 10^th century.

Our destination was on the south eastern shore of Lake Sevan, a place we had never been. The shoreline on this side of the lake was beautiful. Although the weather in Yerevan has already become spring (and the cherry blossoms are in full bloom), the weather at Sevan was still winter. It was cold and snow was still on the ground. It was interesting to see that the shoreline at some spots at Sevan had clearly risen. This is purposely done to try and preserve the lake after the Soviets had attempted to drain 80% of the surface area. You can clearly see that attempts to begin to restore the lake’s level are working.

The church was quite nice perched on a hilltop. Near the church were Bronze Age ruins and some very large boulders. It was picturesque.

Noraduz was quite amazing. This is supposed to be the location of the largest collection of old khatchkars anywhere. It was located just outside of a small village. We stopped and admired the khatchkars and walked around the cemetery. We were followed by an old woman, who ultimately told us to take her picture. Then she asked for some money. I gave her the Armenian equivalent of about $1.20 and she looked at it and said something to herself like “oh, good.” It was pretty funny. The drive back was nice and all in all it was a great day.