1

The area of Armenia you want to go through is incredibly beautiful, rugged and mountainous, but also very remote. I just remember a few very small and rather impoverished communities, that is about it. Don't recall much traffic. It was night when I went from Tabriz to the Armenian border but I think it is pretty much the same.

2

We did this route "step by step" with my wife last September.
I speak fluent Russian, so Armenia was easy for me.

1st DAY :we planned to go from Yerevan to monastery Tatev,overnight there,with stopover in excellent monastery Noravank.

• from Yerevan we taken minibus"marshrutka" to Yeghnadzor, (several per day,from little van stand showed us by Yerevanian people),route was nice, along Araks river up to closed Nakhichevani Azeri border, then through hilly area to T-junction to Noravank Monastery.(few hours,3?) There we left the bus, and hitchhike next 9 km.Noravank, beautifully set was worth of detour.

Then,we hitchkiked to main road, where we caught another marshrutka( private one) which sould bring us further then Goris,but we liked to go to Tatev so we left the bus in Tatev,s turn.That was bad decision. Weather became totally misty, and we resigned, and stopped car with hunters, going to GORIS,very near to Nagorno-Karabagh.You can see some traces of war on church in center.
There they brought us to small, centraly located inn "ANDRONIKOS" - clean and friendly, quite cheap-we were the only tourists.

2nd DAY
There is one minibus to Meghri, close to the border.It comes from yerevan, and can be flaged on main road, around noon,close to center.
But much easier is to stop any of cars going south-we did it- it was mercedes, illegal taxi with one passenger (Iranian) inside.
We bargained a bit with driver,as proposed price was quite high, and he brought us through mountainous road(good surface), pass circa 2500m to deep and deserted valley of Araks, and immediate checkpoint- Agarak/Nordooz.
There is town Meghri, few km before Agarak Border, but we didnt stop there (btw. there is a motel there)

Crossing is moderately quick, first Armenian post, then walk 500 m across bridge and Iranian post.
Nice and friendly welcome.
There is exchange offic, but with poor rate. Change moderately- you need some rials for taxi to Jolfa aprox.40km. west up the valley.May be possible to hitchhike, but we didnt tried. Valley scenery is superb, specially in low sun of afternoon, you can see Armenian, and then Azerbaijani side of river very near, as road paraleels river.Driver said :NO PHOTOS :) Taxi taken approx.30 minutes.

Jolfa (Iranian one, as there is Azeri Jolfa ,too) is small,clean town, and there is savari(shared taxi) stop in the roundabout in center, just south from bridge crossing to Azerbaijan.Exchange rate is much better then in Nordooz.And tasty and cheap kebabs.
There are savaris to Tabriz, amazingly cheap...maybe 2 euro,or less. 2 hours of nice, colorful mountains on excellent Iranian roads. Just taxi, from huge roundabout (Midan Azerbaijan) where savari stopped, costed to center (5 km?) as much as 200 km on savari....
Any questions concerning North-West Iran,and mountains there, please free to ask.
Now is great time to go to Iran as rial rate is very low. Country is clean, friendly and well developed.Weplan to go back there soon.
greetings

3

This is excellent information, thank you very much for taking the time to write, Marcinio. It's very helpful - I'm planning a trip to Iran but also wanted to see some of Armenia (and maybe also Georgia and Azerbaijan) and was wondering if there was a way to get to Iran without having to go back in through Turkey.

So thanks! Very helpful information.

4

Can I get some elaboratiin on this please. Google maps says it's nine hours from Tbilisi to Tabriz. At 5 hours to Yerevan I was expecting four hours to Tabriz. This seems unlikely according to this post. Is there a single mode of transport from Yerevan to the border and another to Tabriz for example? Can anybody elaborate

5

Stevo, google maps gives uncorrect data of time. You surely cannot get to Tabriz from Yerevan in 4-5 hrs, no way.
There are buses from Kilikia Station in Yerevan, every morning perhaps, to Tehran via Tabriz.Direct, but ticket to Tabriz costs same as to Tehran. This may be the fastest way, but with long waiting on the border.We did this route in segments,as I described above.