Towns and approaches around Mount Ararat
Mount Ararat has been approached from different towns in different centuries, because the frontier around it has moved. In 1829 the way in led from Tiflis through Armenian country to the monastery of Echmiadzin and across the Aras. In 1876 it ran from Erivan to a Russian frontier post at the north-eastern foot. Today the official description starts from the Turkish district town of Doğubayazıt on the south-western side. This page describes those approaches and the places on them. It is geography and history. It gives no timetables, prices or services, and the official transport statements quoted below are dated.
Today: Doğubayazıt and the southern side
The Ağrı Governorship’s page on the mountain (dated 14.09.2020) describes the present approach from the south. Climbers stay in Doğubayazıt, complete their preparations there and travel by car to the village of Eli, where they take on water before walking to the first camp. The same page gives the approach line as Doğubayazıt – Topçatan village – Eli Çiftliği. It says that ascents of the main mountain are made only from the face that lies within Doğubayazıt district (see permits and access).
For reaching the region, the page states that there are daily flights from Istanbul and Ankara to Ağrı. It gives the road journey from Ağrı to Doğubayazıt as 45 minutes and says district minibus services can be reached from the bus station. These statements describe the page’s view in 2020. They are not confirmed timetables, and they should be checked with the carriers before being relied on.
Doğubayazıt is the town nineteenth-century writers called Bayazid or Bayazed. Parrot placed it “only twenty miles south from Ararat”. It then lay on the Ottoman side of the frontier, as the seat of a pasha.
1829: Parrot’s approach from Tiflis
Friedrich Parrot’s expedition came from the north, through what was then newly Russian territory. The chapter headings of his Journey to Ararat trace the road. From Tiflis it ran by Alaverdi and its copper mines, Lori and the Pambak mountains, to the first view of Ararat. It continued to the great Armenian monastery of Echmiadzin in the Aras plain, and then across the ford of the Araxes and the plain to the foot of the mountain.
At the foot stood the Armenian village of Arguri, near the mouth of the great chasm on the north-eastern side, and above it the monastery of St James. Parrot made the monastery his headquarters: from it he made his three attempts on the summit and measured heights, with Fedorov reading a barometer there for comparison. He had also considered Bayazid as a base, for the advantages a town offered over a village. Both Arguri and the monastery were destroyed in 1840 (see hazards and environment).
1876: Bryce’s approach from Erivan
James Bryce came to the mountain from Erivan. Before setting out, he could learn little about the mountain, except that “the point we must make for was the frontier military station of Aralykh, lying on the right (western) bank of the Araxes, about twenty-five miles from Erivan”. His letters of recommendation from the Russian authorities were addressed to the colonel commanding the Cossack detachment there. Aralykh was not fortified, he wrote: “merely a row of wooden barracks”.
From Aralykh his party rode up the outer slopes, past the dome-shaped spur of Takjaltu and a Kurdish autumn settlement at about 6,000 feet. They reached the Cossack station and spring of Sardarbulakh at 7,514 feet, on the saddle between Great and Little Ararat. That station was the base of his ascent up the south-eastern face (see features on a map).
The four sides of approach in the record
Put together, the sources name a starting point on each side of the mountain:
| Side | Starting points named | Period and source |
|---|---|---|
| North-east | Aralykh; Arguri and the monastery of St James | Bryce (1878); Parrot (1846) |
| North-west | Kip Gholl plateau, reached from St James’s | Parrot’s second and third attempts, 1829 |
| South-east | Sardarbulakh on the saddle between the peaks | Abich (1845), Chodzko (1850), the English party (1856), Bryce (1876) |
| South-west | Doğubayazıt – Topçatan – Eli | Ağrı Governorship (page dated 2020) |
Bryce also noted that no one seemed to have climbed the south-western slope, looking towards Bayazid, although Abich had reconnoitred it and thought it practicable. The labels used for these routes are explained on route names.
Settlements on the mountain itself
Very few people have lived on the slopes. Bryce described nomadic Kurds grazing the middle zone in summer, with a few small fields and grass-roofed huts, and a small Tatar settlement at New Arghuri below the site of the destroyed village. The sources used here do not describe permanent settlements on the upper mountain.
Sources
- Ağrı Valiliği, Ağrı Dağı (page dated 14.09.2020). Checked 14 September 2026.
- Friedrich Parrot, Journey to Ararat, translated by W. D. Cooley, New York: Harper and Bros., 1846, contents of ch. IV–VI and pp. 136–137. Internet Archive. Read 25 September 2026.
- James Bryce, Transcaucasia and Ararat, 3rd ed., London: Macmillan, 1878, ch. V–VII and ch. VI pp. 228, 237–239. Internet Archive. Read 25 September 2026.