It was surprisingly difficult to find out the train timetables in Armenia. For example, in the Yerevan tourism office they told us that there are no passenger trains at all. Eventually, however, we found that tehre is at least one daily train from Yerevan to Gyumri, leaving at 7:40 AM.
The trip lasted nearly five hours. It was still a good choice. There was lot of space in the train and it was easy to watch sceneries, if compared to faster buses or marshrutkas (minibuses).
Although Gyumri is located to the northwest from Yerevan, the train began its journey by travelling south towards the Ararat valley. First half of the journey was in a flat valley where the scenery was rather boring with the exception of Mount Ararat that could be seen in the distance. In the border area of Armavir and Aragatsotn provinces the terrain begins to rise and the landscape becomes more scenic.
The last section of the track before Gyumri was occasionnally close enough to the Turkish border to see border guard towers and slogans that the Turkish have drawn on the mountainsides.
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