Driving to Garni and Geghard from Yerevan

The classic half day

The road east, leg by leg

Two sights, one road, one morning. A Hellenistic colonnade standing on a promontory above the Azat gorge, and a monastery at the head of the same valley with half its chapels cut straight into the rock. What follows is the drive rather than the guidebook: what the surface does, where it narrows, and the one place it stops being tarmac.

City

Out of the basin

The city sits in a bowl beside the Hrazdan, so the first thing the road does is climb. Traffic lights thin out past the eastern districts, the lanes widen, and the driving stops feeling like city driving sooner than most people expect.

Open road

Across the open ground

Two lanes, sound asphalt, long sight lines. You share it with farm traffic and the occasional lorry rather than with queues, and on a clear morning Ararat sits in the mirror behind you. This is the easy part, and it is most of the way.

Village

Down into the village

The approach to the temple is the slowest driving of the morning. The road narrows between garden walls, parked cars take a lane out of it, and people walk in the carriageway because the pavement gives up. Nothing difficult, just nothing quick.

Unmade

The gorge floor, if you go

Behind the temple the surface changes completely. A single unmade track drops in tight turns towards the river and the basalt columns, loose on top and rutted where water has run down it. This is the one stretch a hire saloon has an opinion about.

Valley

Up to the monastery

Back through the village and on up the valley, tarmac the whole way. The rock walls close in, the last bends are blind, and the road simply stops in the car park beneath the monastery. There is nowhere further to drive.

Three of the cheapest on the list right now

Live from the Yerevan feed, sorted by daily price. Any of them will do this drive.

No cars came back for those dates. Change the pickup day in the search below and the list refills.

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The two stops, as the morning finds them

Car hire in Garni & Geghard, Yerevan, photo 1

Car hire in Garni & Geghard, Yerevan, photo 2

The descent, and whether to make it in a hire car

The columns on the gorge floor are the only part of this trip the paved road does not reach.

Under the temple, where the river has cut down through old lava, the rock has fractured into hanging hexagonal columns. People call it the symphony of stones, and it is the picture most visitors have in their heads before they set off. Getting to it means leaving the asphalt behind the temple and taking an unmade track down the side of the gorge.

That track is loose on the surface, corrugated on the straights, and tight enough in the turns that you will be using every bit of the width. Dry, firm and driven slowly it is manageable in an ordinary car, and ordinary cars do it every day of the summer. Wet, it becomes a different surface with the same name, and the lowest part of your car is the part that discovers this.

Height is the honest issue, because the Yerevan list barely has any. Something like eight cars in a hundred are SUV shaped, so the odds are you booked a saloon, and a saloon sits low. That is not a reason to skip the gorge. It is a reason to decide at the top of the track rather than a third of the way down it, where turning round is harder than either continuing or stopping.

If you would rather not find out, leave the car with the others by the temple and ride down with one of the local drivers who work the gorge in high vehicles. You pay them directly, you get the same columns, and you are not the person describing a scraped sump to a supplier at the end of the week.

Before you point a saloon downhill

Weather first, view second

Dry ruts are firm and wet ruts are not. If it rained overnight, the sensible plan is to look at the columns from the rim.
Know what you are sitting in

Ground clearance is the whole question. The saloons that dominate this list sit low, and the track does not flatten itself for them.
Read the damage terms there and then

Underbody and tyre damage is commonly carved out of rental cover. Those terms are printed on the listing before you book, which is the moment to read them.
Keep the easy option open

Local drivers run the gorge in high vehicles from beside the temple. Paying one of them is not a climbdown, it is usually the cheaper afternoon.

Where you actually leave the car

At the temple there is no parking at the temple. The village road runs out at a cluster of souvenir stalls and a ticket window, and the cars stand on the open ground and along the verge in front of that. Come early and you stop close to the gate. Come in with the coaches and you walk the last part of the village, which is a pleasant walk and not a punishment.

At the monastery the question answers itself, because the road ends. One car park sits directly under the walls with the stall row down one side, and that is the whole of it. Coaches use the same ground, and they tend to arrive in waves rather than in a steady trickle, so the space can look impossible for a few minutes and then open up again.

Neither stop has a barrier, a machine or a numbered bay. You are parking on open ground among other people, so the usual applies: nothing visible on the seats, the rental paperwork with you rather than in the glovebox, and the car left where somebody else can get out past you. Nose in towards the rock at the monastery and you will not be the one holding up the queue when a coach wants to turn.

One thing to keep in the back of your mind for the return. You come back down the valley on the road you went out on, and the afternoon flow into Yerevan is heavier than the morning flow out of it. If the car goes back the same day, that is the part of the plan to leave room in, not the sightseeing.

Both in one morning, in the order that works

They sit on the same road, so the only real decision is which end you start from. The answer is the far one.

The running order

Four decisions, taken before you turn the key.

Take the far stop first: Both sit on one road and the monastery is at the end of it. Driving past the temple and collecting it on the way back costs you almost nothing.
Get in front of the groups: Coach parties build through the morning rather than arriving in one lump. The earlier you are in that car park, the more of the rock-cut chapels you have to yourself.
Then the temple, then the gorge: The colonnade needs less of your morning than people allow for. The gorge is the part worth doing unhurried, and worth doing in the dry.
Be back for lunch: Run in this order the whole thing stays a half day, and the car is yours for whatever the afternoon turns into.

What actually eats the morning

None of it is the open road, which is the surprise.

The village, not the open road: The run out of the city is quick. The slow driving is the last stretch at either end, between walls, parked cars and pedestrians.
Arriving behind a coach: It does not cost you the visit. It costs you the walk up from further back, which nobody has ever regretted.
The descent to the columns: Down and back up is the single largest block of the day, whoever is at the wheel and whatever they are driving.
Bread baked in front of you: The stall row at the monastery sells sweet gata still warm. Plan on the basis that you are going to stop.

The car you will be doing this in

99 in 100

Cars in the sampled list are automatic, which is the gearbox you want for the valley bends and the village crawl.

about EUR 39

The middle of the daily rate across the live list. The floor sat near EUR 28 and the dearest near EUR 45.

8 in 100

Are SUV shaped. If the gorge track is the reason you are hiring, filter for height on day one, not on the morning.

roughly a quarter

Include free delivery, so the car can reach you on the morning you actually drive east rather than days before.

Read off the first hundred cars of the live Yerevan list, which carried roughly three hundred and fifty in total. Supply shifts during the day, so these are proportions and not a promise about any one morning.

Asked before people set off east

Treat it as half a day rather than an errand. The two stops share one road and the driving between them is short, but the village stretches at either end are slow and the monastery holds people longer than they planned. Leave after breakfast and you are back in Yerevan for lunch. Add the descent to the basalt columns and you have used the morning properly, with nothing left over.

Paved and in sound condition from Yerevan to the temple, and paved again all the way up the valley to the monastery. For most of the run it is two lanes of open country with farm traffic rather than congestion. The only unmade surface on the whole trip is the track down into the gorge to the columns, and that is a separate decision from the drive itself.

The road ends in a car park directly below the monastery walls, with the stall row along one side. There is no second car park and nothing resembling a garage, so you are on open ground among the coaches. Early arrivals take the near spaces and everyone else parks further back and walks up, which is a short walk on a good surface.

Yes, and most visitors do. Because they sit on the same road, the efficient running order is the monastery first and the temple on the way back. The thing that turns a morning into a full day is the gorge: if you want the basalt columns as well, give the day the extra room rather than trying to compress all three.

Take the car for the morning you drive east

Automatic saloons from suppliers based in Armenia, deposits measured in single figures, and free cancellation across most of the list.

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