Local guides · Small groups · Pay on the day
Monasteries carved into cliffs and six thousand years of winemaking. We are an Armenian tour operator, and Armenia is where we are from.
Pay on the day
No prepayment for day tours
Free cancellation
Up to 24 hours before
Eight languages
Guides, not translators
Small groups
Sixteen people maximum
Why Armenia
Armenia adopted Christianity as a state religion in 301, before anyone else. Its capital was founded in 782 BC, twenty-nine years before Rome. The oldest leather shoe ever found came out of a cave here, and so did the oldest winery — six thousand years old, with the press and the vats still in place.
None of that is why people fall for the place. They fall for it because the whole country is about the size of Belgium, so you can eat breakfast on a plain at 900 metres and stand on snow at 3,200 by lunch. Because the monasteries are still working buildings rather than exhibits. And because someone will invite you to their table within about forty-eight hours of arriving, and mean it.
What we do is straightforward. We are Armenian, we are licensed, we keep groups small, and we do not ask you to pay before you have met us.
Day tours from Yerevan
Everything worth seeing in Armenia is within a day of the capital. These are the trips we run most often, and the ones people write to us about afterwards.
Classic Armenia
Armenia's only standing Greco-Roman temple, a monastery carved into solid rock, and bread pulled hot from a clay pit oven.
Classic Armenia
The pit where Armenia's Christianity began, a red-rock canyon monastery, and the valley where wine has been made for six thousand years.
Lakes & forest
An alpine sea at 1,900 metres, a forest monastery with a vaulted refectory, and the green town Armenians call their Switzerland.
The deep south
A long day south: the world's longest reversible cable car, a ninth-century monastery on a headland, and a canyon of cave houses joined by a swinging bridge.
Faith & stone
The mother church of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the ruins of a vast seventh-century rotunda, and a monastery on the lip of a canyon.
Yerevan
A half day through the pink tuff city Alexander Tamanyan drew in 1924, ending in the cellars where Armenian brandy has been made since 1887.
Since 2026
We are not the biggest operator in Yerevan and have no ambition to be. What we can promise is that the person who plans your trip is the person you can call from a roadside in Syunik, and that they will pick up.
Multi-day journeys
Hotels, transport, guide and most meals arranged, so the only thing you decide each morning is what to have for breakfast.
Best for a long weekendShort break
YerevanGarni & GeghardKhor VirapAreniLake Sevan
The essential country in four days — Yerevan, the two great monasteries of the Azat valley, Ararat from the plain, and Lake Sevan.
Our bestsellerClassic journey
YerevanKhor VirapTatevSevanDilijanHaghpatGyumri
A week from the Ararat plain to the Debed canyon, taking in all three of Armenia's UNESCO World Heritage properties and the cable car to Tatev.
Grand tour
YerevanAragatsGyumriLoriDilijanSevanSyunikVayots Dzor
Ten days for people who would rather see six places properly than sixteen from a bus window — including the corners most itineraries skip.
Where you will go
Armenia is roughly the size of Belgium. The furthest we take you is Tatev, and that is a long day rather than a different holiday.
How we work
Most of them exist because they annoyed us as travellers first.
Book with a name and a date. Pay your guide on the day, in cash or by card. Multi-day journeys take a 20% deposit and the rest on arrival.
Everyone who works with you is Armenian, licensed, and working in your language — English, Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish or Arabic.
Sixteen people maximum on a day tour, and eight to ten on wine, food and hiking days. When we say small we mean a number, not an adjective.
If the snow has not come, if Ararat is hidden all week, if a site is closed for restoration — we will say so before you pay, and suggest something better.
A real person in Yerevan reads your email and writes back the same day, usually within four hours, with a route and a price rather than a brochure.
We use family guesthouses, village kitchens and small producers wherever the standard allows. It is better travel and it is better economics for the places you visit.
When to come
Spring and autumn are the obvious answers. Winter is the underrated one.
April – June
The best months, if we are honest. The plain is green, the gorges run with snowmelt, and the wildflowers on the Aragats slopes are extraordinary in late May. Ararat is at its clearest.
Yerevan 16–28°C · mountains still cold
July – August
Yerevan gets genuinely hot — over 35°C is normal. The answer is altitude: Sevan, Dilijan, Aragats and Jermuk are all pleasant. Ararat often hides behind haze until evening.
Yerevan 30–40°C · Sevan 22–26°C
September – October
Harvest. The wine villages are working, the forests in Tavush and Lori turn, and the light is the best of the year for photography. Our busiest season, and deservedly.
Yerevan 18–30°C · cool nights
November – March
Quiet, cheap and rather beautiful. Skiing at Tsaghkadzor, monasteries under snow with nobody in them, and long lunches. Some high roads close — Aragats and the Selim pass among them.
Yerevan −5 to 8°C · snow in the mountains
What travellers say
Reviews written by people who travelled with us. Nothing here is invented, and nothing appears until we have read it.
We would rather show you nothing than something invented. If you have travelled with us, yours would be the first.
The table
Bread out of a clay pit oven in forty seconds. Barbecue over vine cuttings. A whole pumpkin baked with rice and dried fruit and opened at the table. Wine from clay jars buried in the floor, poured out of a jug by the man who made it.
We build a meal into almost every day we run, and most of them are in somebody's house rather than a restaurant.
Common questions
Visas, safety, money and the regional situation — answered plainly.
All questionsCitizens of the EU, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Russia and the other CIS states, and a long list of others, enter Armenia without a visa for stays of up to 180 days.
Russian citizens may enter on an internal passport. Citizens of many other countries can obtain a visa on arrival at Zvartnots or apply for an e-visa in advance.
Rules change. Check the official position with the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs before you travel, and tell us your nationality when you enquire — we will confirm what applies to you.
For day tours, a day or two is usually enough outside the peak. For multi-day journeys in September and October — our busiest months — six to ten weeks is sensible, mainly because the good small guesthouses fill up.
That said, we have put together a decent week at four days' notice more than once. Ask.
Yes. Armenia has consistently low violent crime and Yerevan is a city where people walk home late without thinking about it. The ordinary advice applies — watch your pockets in crowded markets — and little else.
Solo women travellers generally report feeling comfortable here.
The borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan are closed. This does not affect travel within Armenia, and none of our routes go near a contested area.
Travel to Nagorno-Karabakh is not possible. Following the events of September 2023 the territory is under Azerbaijani control and its Armenian population left; no operator can take you there, and any that offers to is not telling you the truth.
The borders with Georgia and Iran are open and used normally. We run overland trips into Georgia regularly.
Check your own government's current travel advice before booking — it is the only source that speaks for your insurance.
No deposit to get a plan
Your dates, your pace, and what you actually care about. Someone here reads it and writes back the same day with a route and a price — not a brochure.