8-Day Armenia Cultural Tour with Tatev, Sevan and Areni Wine

Arrive in Yerevan - most flights land in the small hours, which is normal here - and rest. The day begins properly in the afternoon with the city's own geometry: Republic Square and its pink tufa arcades, the Cascade climbing the hillside in terraces full of sculpture, and the view from the top across the roofs to Ararat. Dinner is on Saryan Street, where the wine bars are, with a first taste of Areni-noir.

A full day in the capital. The Matenadaran holds one of the world's great manuscript collections - seventeen thousand codices carried out of every invasion, some of them half-burnt and reassembled - and explains Armenia better than any monument. Then continue to Tsitsernakaberd, the genocide memorial and its museum, which is a hard but necessary two hours. Afterwards, visit the Vernissage market, the covered GUM food hall for dried fruit and sujuk, and end the day with a brandy tasting.

Head east into the Azat gorge. Garni's Roman colonnade stands on its promontory; below it, the Symphony of Stones hangs off the cliff in basalt hexagons, and you walk into the gorge to stand beneath them. Then continue up the valley to Geghard, half-built and half-carved into the rock, still working after eight centuries. Lunch is in a village house where the lavash is baked in front of you against the wall of a clay oven.

Set out early for Khor Virap to see Ararat in the morning light, and climb down into the pit beneath the chapel if you have the nerve for the ladder. Then travel south into Vayots Dzor: Noravank stands at the head of a gorge of red cliffs, thirteenth-century and carved by Momik, and the Areni-1 cave is where the world's oldest winery was excavated. Enjoy a tasting in the village afterwards, then continue over the Vorotan Pass to Goris for two nights.

The Wings of Tatev carries you 5.7 kilometres across the Vorotan gorge to the monastery: twelve minutes and a very long way down. Tatev was a university as well as a monastery, and the site has a swinging column, a working oil mill, and a view that goes on for fifty kilometres. In the afternoon, visit Old Khndzoresk, an abandoned cave settlement in the cliffs below Goris, reached across a swinging footbridge, where families lived in the rock into the 1950s.

Travel north again, over the Selim Pass at 2,410 metres, where a fourteenth-century Silk Road caravanserai still stands complete beside the road, its stone stalls exactly as the camels left them. Continue down to Lake Sevan for the peninsula monastery of Sevanavank, the enormous blue of the water, and a lakeside lunch. Afterwards, continue on to Dilijan.

Enjoy a gentle morning in what Armenians call their Switzerland: Haghartsin, a tenth-to-thirteenth-century monastery in a forested side valley that is at its most beautiful under autumn colour, and Goshavank in the village of Gosh. Afterwards, return to Yerevan.

Enjoy a slow morning - the Blue Mosque, the Ararat brandy cellars, or simply the Cascade with a coffee - before your transfer to Zvartnots. Most departures leave late in the evening or before dawn, so there is usually a full free day; we hold a day room where the schedule needs it. Armenia pairs naturally with our Georgia expedition, and we are glad to run the two back to back through Tbilisi.