I woke up dry and warm in the trailer as the sun came up, ate something light, geared up and headed north along the mountains. The sun was strong with only a few clouds hanging in the sky, but the wind was strong as well, cooling me down.
As I climbed up and around, what had looked like only a few kilometers actually took all day; the hills here were many and with many canyons in-between, causing me to either climb down and back up or up and along the ridge, out of the way, though at least along the same elevation. As it started getting late, and the clouds darkened, I could hear thunder in the distance and, according to my map, I was still nowhere near Dilijan.
Then, finally, a sign of life: I stumbled upon a group of rangers high up in the hills, and after some explaining, they pointed me back on my trail another two kilometers to reach a nearby village called Kalavan. I had strayed off-track, but their directions were easy to follow: I looped around the other side of the mountain and came down the other side into a valley—a beautiful valley, full of grasses of green, yellow and brown, with tall, gnarled oak trees set among grey mountainous boulders. The sun was peaking out from behind the clouds to the west, emitting fat rays of sunbeams. Coming close to the village, I followed a river that lead me to the outskirts. It was too late to enter unannounced, so I looked for a place to camp when I came across a cleared field, fenced by primitive huts built with branches and roofed with straw: uninhabited and perfect. (It was obviously private, but with no one around, I comfortably entered one of the huts and planned to enter the village the next day.)