Author: Antranik Varosian

Tourism to Armenia reached an all-time high of 2.3 million visitors in 2023, as more people from around the world continue to discover this hidden gem. While group bus trips will always be an easy and efficient way to see the country’s sights, an increasing number of travelers are looking for ways to connect more deeply with the places they visit. Enter the latest travel trend, known as experiential or immersion travel, which creates meaningful engagement between tourists and their destination through interactions with locals and cultural activities. Catering to these adventurous travelers is an Armenian company LikeLocal.io, which offers experiences not just in Armenia but Vietnam and Cambodia as well, with more countries coming soon. 

Co-founder and CEO Gevorg Babayan grew up in a mountain village during Armenia’s cold and dark days of the 1990s, hearing tales from his uncle who worked on a cruise ship of far off places he could only imagine. He developed a fascination with seeing the world, and as an adult got into the travel industry, working at Yerevan’s first hostel Envoy Hostel and developing its spin-off Envoy Tours. In 2008, Envoy Tours had an idea – rather than take its guests to restaurants, guests could have lunch at the homes of ordinary people, starting with Babayan’s own family in Byurakan village. At first, Babayan was confused to discover how, despite all the wonderful sightseeing spots he’d take them to, the tourists would routinely mention the family lunch as the highlight of their day. “Then I understood that authenticity is a power that I can’t fight against,” Babayan told the Weekly.

Babayan expanded on this principle and, fast forward to 2022, he rolled out LikeLocal after a two-year delay due to COVID-19. Travelers can select from numerous experiences with locals across Armenia, including Arus, an artist who makes art out of the food she serves; Arman, a simple man living in the village of Teghut known for its natural beauty; and the family of Maran, who were displaced from Artsakh and now reside in Dilijan. While sharing a meal is a common activity to connect over, there are numerous other possibilities, such as tending a village garden, art therapy and horseback riding, along with personal enrichment activities like lessons in traditional cooking and crochet. The Armenian Weekly went along on one of LikeLocal’s immersions to experience it for ourselves. 

The Avetisyan family

The Avetisyan family has deep roots in one of Yerevan’s most historic neighborhoods, Kond. It’s a place like no other, right in the city center but with a village atmosphere that makes it feel like a world away. The centerpiece of the visit is their home itself, a structure over 200 years old built in the Persian style from when the area was ruled by Qajar Iran. Right next door are the remains of the district’s mosque and other similarly old buildings; you can’t find a historic cluster like this anymore anywhere in Yerevan. Visitors are taken into the basement to see the building’s foundations, with stones reminiscent of those found in medieval churches, leaving the family to believe the building was Armenian prior to the Persian era. Inside the house, the modern drywall hides centuries-old clay walls, which due to their great thickness keep the building cool in the summer and warm in the winter. 

Just as interesting as the structure are the people who live inside it, multi-generational residents of Kond like many of their neighbors. The father Armen’s family moved from Van about 130 years ago, while the mother Lusine’s ancestors were Genocide refugees from Kars. Their son Nikolay is a lead actor at Yerevan’s Dramatic Theater. He can regale you with his fateful encounters with the legendary actor Sos Sargsyan, who encouraged him to take the stage. His wife Karina is a journalist for a major local outlet, and as she speaks English, often acts as translator between the family and their foreign guests. They’ve been with LikeLocal for the past year, but have been welcoming tourists who find their way to Kond for almost a decade. Their homemade gata was always a main draw, which led them to open a cafe in their yard called ‘Kondi Hyatt’. While they all have other jobs, the family members always make sure someone is home to run the cafe and consider hosting guests to be an enjoyable hobby. Not surprisingly, Russians are their biggest demographic, as they make up almost half of Armenia’s total tourists. Italians and Germans come next, as well as quite a few Australians, as LikeLocal is popular with them. Indicative of Armenia’s expanding tourist profile, they’ve also had guests from Japan and China. 

In their living room, the family laid out a table in front of their Christmas tree with food full of personal touches. The dolma leaves came from their mulberry tree outside, the delicious pork came from a friend’s farm, the wine was homemade, and the pasuts (cabbage) dolma was hand-rolled by Lusine’s mother. The family is also open to requests if guests have something special in mind, such as the famous Armenian khorovadz (roast meat). They enjoy meeting people from other countries, but even more important is the chance it provides them to introduce foreigners to Armenia. “We love telling others about our culture, because Armenia needs to be advertised,” Nikolay said. “We want to spread the word about our culture, share this historical place with them and protect it.”

Despite Kond’s fascinating history and rustic charm, the fact it even still exists is a wonder of its own. According to Karina, “The government wants to destroy Kond, but people live here and love this place. That’s why they can’t do anything. The people are holding it together.” With Yerevan property valuations through the roof, Kond’s proximity to the heart of the city makes it an extremely lucrative place to build. This situation has replayed itself many times in Yerevan, from the evictions in the early 2000s to build Northern Avenue to the recent controversy over the redevelopment of the 19th-century Firdusi neighborhood. In fact, according to Armen, successive governments going back to Soviet times have had their eye on destroying Kond, and residents had to rely on communal toilets and a lack of running water until the mid-2000s. Nobody bothered to create the infrastructure, as the intention was to knock it all down anyway, Armen said. 

Offers are made regularly to residents to sell their homes, which can be enticing, as many of the residents are impoverished. Yet they are also very wary, as they’ve seen others get taken advantage of in the past. Armen figures the developers will eventually get their way, but Karina has hope: “I think some will remain like us who don’t want to sell, and we will do everything to protect this place. While people in other places of Armenia are already becoming strangers to each other, Kond is a place where everybody still knows each other and helps each other out. Its people are also getting better educated, more cultural and are producing talented people.” 

While some of the development discussions have shifted to making Kond a tourist center, its residents don’t buy it. “Tourists want to see Kond as it is now, not some new artificial one, and to get to know the people who live here. Everybody here has their own story to tell,” said Karina. This brings us back to the very reason Babayan created LikeLocal in the first place. Babayan said, “Travelers are tired of regular tourist traps, the displays the travel industry creates for everyone. They showcase the best of the best, but it’s not the reality. It’s not the real life of the people of that country. LikeLocal brings needed diversity to the field in Armenia and gives other options and choices to travelers. And most of all, we open the locals’ doors to travelers while bringing the world to the locals, and that is big!” 

From December 8-15, the President of Armenia, Vahagn Khachaturyan, visited Argentina and Uruguay to attend the inauguration of the new Argentinian President Javier Milei. President Khachaturyan also met with leaders of the local Armenian community. I had the opportunity to interview him on December 11 and asked him about some of the government’s decisions regarding the negotiation process with Azerbaijan, as well as its diplomatic strategies with South and North America. 

The trip did not receive much coverage in Armenian media or Diaspora newspapers, but it left many concepts and issues to be analyzed, especially in a community as politicized as the Argentine-Armenian community.

The inauguration of the President of Argentina

President Khachaturyan began his visit with a meeting with the newly-elected President of Argentina Javier Milei on December 9, whom he invited to visit Armenia. It was Milei’s first protocol activity with a foreign delegation that arrived in the country to witness his inauguration.

The next day, Khachaturyan attended the Argentine Congress and Casa Rosada to participate in the inauguration ceremony, along with the President of Uruguay Luis Lacalle Pou, whom he met later in Montevideo, the King of Spain Felipe VI, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban, the President of Paraguay Santiago Peña, the President of Bolivia Luis Arce Catacora and the President of Chile Gabriel Boric.

When I asked him about these meetings, the Armenian president confirmed that he met with Zelensky: “We have many issues to discuss, especially related to the Armenian community of Ukraine, where 500,000 Armenians live. It is important for Ukraine to know and understand our position: we are not allies of anyone in this war. We are always ready to demonstrate humanitarian assistance, and we have done it by sending humanitarian assistance to Ukraine two months ago,” he said.

This meeting and the visit to Argentina were especially relevant in light of the current geopolitical context of Armenia. Milei, a far-right populist politically aligned with the former presidents of the United States and Brazil, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, announced on several occasions during his political campaign that he would not have diplomatic relations with what he called “communist countries” such as Russia, China and Brazil. Russia did not send any representative to Milei’s inauguration and, weeks after taking office, Milei announced that Argentina would not join the BRICS bloc with Brazil, Russia, India and China. Armenia’s gesture of sending its president to the inauguration must have resonated in Russia, especially since he was one among few presidents to travel to Argentina for the occasion.

Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan with Argentinian President Javier Milei (Press Office of the President of Armenia)

Gratitude towards Argentina

Asked about diplomacy with South American countries, the Armenian President emphasized, “We have to make our work more active in South America,” because “in many cases it seems to us that the presence of the community is enough to have close relations, but we realize that we must also have relations with the state authorities of each country, establish relations and develop them.”

“The recent events of 2020 showed us that there are no primary and secondary countries. We have to establish relations with all countries, and if those relations are warm, even better,” Khachaturyan said. He referred in particular to the former Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez and the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo, two Argentine figures who have been very important in telling the world about events in Armenia and Artsakh.

During his visit, Khachaturyan also met with the outgoing President Alberto Fernandez, who was awarded the Medal of Honor after having condemned the genocidal blockade of Azerbaijan against the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). On September 9, 2023, Fernandez criticized the Artsakh blockade during his speech at the First Plenary Session of the 18th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the G20. On September 13, Fernandez again denounced the blockade against the population of Artsakh during the Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Peace Operations of the United Nations Organization in Buenos Aires. Finally, on September 19, Fernandez referred to the attacks unleashed by Azerbaijan against the population of Artsakh during his speech at the 78th U.N. General Assembly.

Under Fernandez’s administration, a plane carrying 15 tons of humanitarian aid collected by the institutions of the Armenian community of Argentina and a team of volunteers from the Argentine Foreign Ministry were sent to Armenia to help the forcibly displaced population of Artsakh at the beginning of November.

On January 5, Armenian Ambassador to Argentina Hovhannes Virabyan awarded the Medal of Gratitude to Luis Moreno Ocampo on behalf of the Armenian President, thanking him for his reports on the genocide against the Armenian population of Artsakh by Azerbaijan. “Every step in favor of the recognition and condemnation of the crimes committed against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh is a signal, a particular warning to all those who are still trying to normalize relations and achieve their objectives through the use of force and violations of human rights,” said Khachaturyan in a recorded message that day.

Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan with former Argentinian President Alberto Fernández (Press Office of the President of Armenia)

Closed-door meetings with the Armenian community

In both Argentina and Uruguay, the President held meetings with representatives of the Armenian institutions in which, in summary, he defended the decision of the government of Armenia to sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan and presented the “Crossroads for Peace” project.

The community leadership engaged in an internal debate about whether or not to participate in the meetings. Hagop Tabakian, president of the Armenian National Committee of South America (ANC-SA) and member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) of South America, explained to the Weekly that even though they “have many differences with the administration,” “our organization has as a fundamental idea the strengthening of the state of Armenia.” “We believed that not participating in that, beyond the people in power, would affect the presence of the state of Armenia in South America. The last thing Argentina did was to support the people of Artsakh and denounce what Azerbaijan was doing with the blockade and the attacks, so that was what turned into our internal debate of going or not going in the case of the President’s presence,” he added.

“There are sensitive differences that separate us with the current government of Armenia on such transcendental issues such as its position on Artsakh and its future, the relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan and the cession of the rights and future claims of the Armenian people. We remain committed to the strengthening of the Republic of Armenia, the defense of the violated rights of the Armenian people in 1915 and today, the protection of the security of the borders and the sovereignty, and basically the existence of the Armenian people,” Tabakian continued.

Rubén Kechichian, Honorary President of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) in Argentina, also gave his opinion on the visit to the Weekly: “We must divide the evaluation of the visit into two parts. The protocol and diplomatic part seemed impeccable to me, since not many delegations had meetings with President Milei and different representatives of the government and the political circle. At the community level, it was reduced only to the meeting at the Hilton Hotel with a limited presence of leaders and personalities, which left a wide spectrum of the active and educational community without the possibility of listening to it. Personally, I am convinced that visits of this magnitude have positive consequences that mobilize national and patriotic feelings in broad sectors of the active community,” Kechichian said.

Maral Masrian, President of Armenian Relief Society (ARS) of South America, said that Khachaturyan underestimated community representatives during internal meetings by “saying that we only got the news here and not the realities.” “He wanted to convince us. He kept saying what he wanted, repeating his speech and not answering our questions,” she said.

Many community members from Montevideo criticized the organization of the meeting: “The invitation was very informal and disorganized, not at all in line with the planning required by a president’s visit,” said members of the ARS of Uruguay. “According to the information we continually receive from our ARS colleagues from Armenia through the Central Commission, who work tirelessly to assist the forcibly displaced population of Artsakh, it seems to us that what the President of Armenia reported does not coincide with the reality that we know they live. Faced with this distance between words and reality, it is not possible to rate the view positively.”

Luciné Varjabedian, representative of the Armenian National Committee (ANC) of Uruguay, called the meeting a “meaningless formality, to which we participants were called by WhatsApp messages, which reveals an alarming level of improvisation.” “The message that the President of Armenia has left towards the community was the continuation of a self-deprecating speech, where apparently all the tragedy that occurred in the last months of 2023 with the loss of the territory of Artsakh and the forced displacement of our 120,000 compatriots have been overcome thanks to the government of Armenia, conveying that the issue of Artsakh was a settled issue, despite the latent danger to the security and territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia,” Varjabedian said.

Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan meeting with the Armenian community of Argentina

International sanctions, military aid and a peace treaty with Azerbaijan

During our interview, I asked Khachaturyan if Armenia would support sanctions against the Azerbaijani authorities and the project to encourage the United States to stop providing military aid to Azerbaijan. “We have to be able to understand what our interest is. In many cases, not understanding our interest, we end up serving the interests of others. This is nothing new. Even the most friendly country has its own interests. We have to understand what are its objectives when the United States limits the sale of arms to Azerbaijan. If the aim of this decision is to defend democracy in Armenia, it is of course acceptable for us. It is important. We have to be able to work in that direction. Their proposal does not have to be without a specific purpose,” he said.

“Of course, we can also ask various countries to impose sanctions, but would that not disturb our main purpose, which is peace?” he continued. “Any initiative that is made by the members of the Armenian communities in the Diaspora has to be done in the sense of not disturbing the process that has already started, which is the peace process. In many cases we realized that a careless gesture, a careless word, could have a negative influence on the whole process.”

One of the questions that is not generally asked of the Armenian government is why it seeks to sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan, a country that it accuses of failing to comply with signed agreements, especially the trilateral ceasefire declaration of November 9, 2020. “In politics you have to be pragmatic, and pragmatism often does not accept emotions. I believe that we do not have to go too far. There are historical facts that prove what I am saying. Our countries and our region need peace. To reach peace we have to engage in direct talks with Azerbaijan, or indirectly with mediators but dealing with certain issues,” he said. 

Khachaturyan also called the blockade of Artsakh a “very painful” situation. “We could not use the possibilities of our partner countries or explain to them that in case the Lachin Corridor would remain closed, it would mean that Artsakh would be practically emptied of Armenians,” he said. He stressed that the forced displacement was “foreseeable” for the Armenian government: “We knew it from our own experience. We knew that Azerbaijan was going to act like this. But many were surprised by what happened on September 19.”

In conclusion

The Armenian President’s visit to South America was well received by the states of Argentina and Uruguay. It was a necessary visit, given all the selfless support from Argentina and Uruguay to Armenia. The leadership of the Armenian communities understood this, leading to their decision to participate in meetings with the president, despite the general criticism of the current administration.