Dilijan National Park

Dilijan National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Dilijan is the forested hill country of north-eastern Armenia, an hour and a half to two hours from Yerevan by the road that tunnels under the Sevan pass, and visitors who have spent days in the bare, sunburnt landscape of the rest of the country are startled by it. The great majority come on day tours from the capital that pair it with Lake Sevan and its peninsula monastery on the way, and sometimes with the ski resort of Tsaghkadzor or a zip-line park at Yenokavan: in Dilijan they walk Sharambeyan street, a restored lane of nineteenth-century craftsmen's houses with carved balconies, and drive to the monasteries of Haghartsin and Goshavank and to Parz lake, which gives a good idea of the place in a long day.

Those who stay a night or two in the town, which has guesthouses and a few good hotels, can walk. The classic route is the trail from Parz lake to Goshavank, about eight kilometres and three hours over a forested ridge and down through meadows into the village of Gosh, offered as a guided hike from Dilijan or Yerevan with a transfer at each end; the hike-and-monastery tours combine a forest walk with Haghartsin. The Transcaucasian Trail, a long-distance path being built across Armenia and Georgia, has its best-made Armenian section here, some eighty kilometres across the park, well marked and mapped on the Hike Armenia application, with guesthouses at the stages. There is no entrance fee. Parz lake has a café, boats, a rope park and a zip line, for families.

Visiting Dilijan National Park: what you will see

The park was created in 2002 from a state reserve of 1958 and covers about 240 square kilometres of the Aghstev river basin in Tavush province, between 1,070 and 2,900 metres, on the slopes of the Pambak, Areguni, Miapor and Ijevan ranges. It protects the largest and best forests in a country that is nine tenths treeless: oriental beech, Georgian and oriental oak and hornbeam, with maples, limes, wild pear and apple, a relict grove of yew and, on the heights, subalpine meadows, more than a thousand plant species in all. Brown bears, wolves, lynx, wild cats, roe and red deer, the latter reintroduced, badgers and otters live here, and about 150 birds, including golden and lesser spotted eagles, black woodpeckers and the Caucasian black grouse.

The town of Dilijan at the centre, a spa and hill resort since the nineteenth century with mineral springs, was a retreat for Soviet composers, film-makers and writers, who had their own rest houses here, and has lately revived around an international college. The park's monuments are the equal of its nature. Haghartsin, in a wooded side valley, is a monastery of the tenth to thirteenth centuries with three churches, a vaulted refectory of 1248 that is a masterpiece of Armenian medieval building, and an ancient walnut tree, all restored with the money of an Arab sheikh. Goshavank was founded in 1188 by Mkhitar Gosh, fabulist, scholar and the author of the first Armenian code of law, and keeps beside its church door a khachkar of 1291 carved so finely that it is called the embroidered cross-stone. Jukhtak and Matosavank, smaller and half ruined, stand in the woods a short walk from the road, mossy and silent.

Dilijan National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open at all times. May and June are fresh and green, with flowers in the meadows and some rain; July and August are the season, pleasantly cool, around 24 degrees, when Yerevan is at 38, and busy with Armenian families at weekends; late September and October, when the beeches and oaks turn, are the most beautiful weeks; winter brings snow, quiet, and the occasional closure of the Sevan pass in storms.

Afternoon thunderstorms are common in early summer. Allow a full day from Yerevan, two nights for the Parz to Goshavank walk and the monasteries. Lake Sevan is half an hour south, Ijevan and the Tavush wine villages half an hour north-east, and the World Heritage monasteries of Haghpat and Sanahin an hour and a half north towards Georgia.