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An e-bike adventure through Armenia: The Financial Times

In autumn of 2024, journalist Tim Moore joined us for our Pioneer Journey through the Armenian Highlands. In his beautiful article for The Financial Times, he recalls his time cycling through ‘remote villages and ancient monasteries in the country’s spectacular highlands’.

Arriving with few expectations, Tim was left enthralled by the country’s beauty and fascinating history. Here is one of our favourite extracts from the article.

“Halfway down the side of our next gorge, the dusty, slaloming trail opens up and presents us with a dumbfounding scene. The sun-washed canyon yawns away in every direction, its distant opposite flank topped with corky cliffs. In the foreground, hunkered up in the shade of a decorously ruined monastery, sits a white-clothed table beckoningly filled with wildflowers, winking glasses and a cornucopia of local fare. Just to the left is a beige-stone church of obvious antiquity, with a few missing walls and the witch-hat steeple that remains a core feature of Armenian ecclesiastical architecture. A quavery drone, mournful and beguiling, leaks through its many holes — the call of the duduk, a woodwind instrument inevitably hewn from apricot, played as I presently discover by a local virtuoso with perfectly hemispherical cheeks.”

You can read Tim’s full article here

If you’ve been inspired to discover Armenia’s magnificent gorges, villages and monasteries, find out more or get in touch.

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Wildflowers, mountains, and gorges seen on a Slow Cyclist journey in the Armenian Highlands

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