Travel Guide Meghri

To get to Meghri, you have to really want to... or have all the necessary authorizations to continue your journey into Iran, crossing the Arax which marks a well guarded border between the two friendly neighboring countries. As much to say that the tourists are rare in this small locality languishing between the bank of the river and the arid and rocky mountains. If the road has been redone between Kapan and Meghri, it is mainly to facilitate the circulation of the numerous trucks between Armenia and Iran. However, it is not lacking in interest, winding after Kapan, in the wooded mountains of the Shikahogh Park, which give way to high altitude pastures at the level of the mining town of Kadjaran (at 2000 m, at the foot of the Kapoudjouk). The further south you go, the more scarce the forests become; the landscape, radically different, is more reminiscent of the East behind the rocky ridges that dominate Meghri and the Arax valley. The landscapes of Iran, on the other side of the river, are announced on this side by arid and jagged rocky mountains, of a bright red sublimated by a dazzling sun. In summer, the stifling heat, which is also explained by the fact that the city is only 300m above sea level, confirms this impression of the East, especially since on the other side of the Arax, behind barbed wire materializing a border that should not be approached, the glazed earthenware domes of Iranian mosques loom.Meghri boasts two churches whose interior walls are decorated with frescoes betraying the Persian influence. If you take the trouble to climb up to the Sourp Hohannes church, opposite the main bridge, you will enjoy an unbeatable view of the city. This small town has kept something of its oriental past, with its terraced houses communicating with each other. A veritable no-man's-land during the Soviet era, it has been displaying, without much excitement, since the opening of the border with Iran, a commercial activity that would like to remind it of its caravanning past, to which the Chinese Silk Roads programme is giving new life