Ardenis
Highland village by the Ashotsk lakes

What is this place

Ardenis is a tiny mountain village in the far northwest of Shirak Province, sitting at around 2,050 metres among the steppes and wetlands of Lake Arpi National Park. About 135 people live here, surrounded by a harsh, wind-swept plateau landscape near the borders with Georgia and Turkey.

Ardenis belongs to the Amasia community of Shirak Province and lies roughly seven kilometres west of the village of Tavshut, on the Ashotsk plateau. The settlement was formerly called Gollu; according to the early 20th-century Caucasian Calendar, its inhabitants were mostly Karapapakhs. From hundreds of residents during the Soviet decades, the population fell sharply, with the 2011 census recording about 135 people.

The real treasure of this corner is its nature. The village lies inside Lake Arpi National Park, founded in 2009 to protect the basins of Lake Arpi and Lake Ardenis, the upper Akhurian River, and the southwestern slopes of the Javakheti range. This is the coldest, windiest part of Armenia: high mountain steppes, subalpine meadows, lakes and marshes where the Armenian gull and the Dalmatian pelican nest, and where summer meadows fill with dozens of butterfly species.

For the traveller, Ardenis means silence, open space, and a northern kind of plateau beauty. The park's hiking trails pass through the village, and Ardenis itself has a small guesthouse for the few visitors who come. People come here not for monuments but for clean air, lake views, and the feeling of a remote, almost untouched land.