Ahurjan kayarani gyugh
A deserted village by the station

What is this place

Akhuryan kayarani gyugh is a tiny village in Armenia's Shirak Province that grew up beside the border railway station of Akhuryan and is now an abandoned village. Its very name means the village of Akhuryan railway station.

The settlement lies in north-western Armenia, in the Akhuryan municipality of Shirak, about three and a half kilometres north of Yerazgavors. It owes both its existence and its name to Akhuryan station, since kayarani gyugh in Armenian simply means the railway-station village. There were never many households here; censuses recorded only one to three dozen residents, and by 2011 the population had fallen to zero, making it one of Shirak's deserted villages.

The story of the place is inseparable from the railway. Akhuryan station opened in 1892 on the Alexandropol-Kars line, and after the 1921 Treaty of Moscow it became a border station, with tracks running toward Turkey and trains transferring cargo between two rail gauges. In July 1993, amid the Karabakh conflict, the border crossing was closed; traffic stopped, and with it faded the life of the small village beside the station.

For travellers crossing the Shirak plateau, this corner opens out into wide fields and the valley of the Akhuryan river, which flows along the Armenia-Turkey border and gave its name to both the station and the village. The living settlement is gone, yet the river, the quiet borderland horizons, and the memory of the old railway junction still make this part of Shirak quietly eloquent.