A Letter from Tsaghkadzor, Written by the Fireplace at 11 PM

Friday. Two o’clock in the afternoon. The road from Yerevan

From Yerevan to Tsaghkadzor is a little less than hours. I left around noon, after a call that dragged on and several messages that “urgently had to be answered”. Traffic on the way out of the city. Then a sudden feeling that the air begins to change even before you realize that you are already driving into the mountains.

I love this road. It goes upward, and at some point a view of the valley opens on the left, and you understand that Yerevan is already far away, while ahead there are pines, mist, and different air. Literally different: dense, resinous, a little colder than you expect.

SIA Resort & Spa is located in the center of Tsaghkadzor, slightly away from the main road. I had been here before for a corporate event, briefly, but this time I came alone and saw everything differently. The territory is large: the main building, several private cottages, a pool, a garden. Everything is done with taste, nothing unnecessary, no “Soviet sanatorium” feeling, no tasteless new-build style. Natural stone, wood, a lot of greenery. The mountains as a background and as a presence.

I checked in, got the key, went up to the room. Put down my bag. Went to the window.

The view was of the forest and the mountains. The evening sun lay on the peaks. Below, a quiet garden, no one around.

I took out my phone to take a photo. Raised it. Looked at the screen. And for some reason put it back. I did not take the photo. I simply looked. With my own eyes, without the frame of a shot.

That was the first small shift. I did not attach any meaning to it then.

Friday. Evening. Dinner, wine, and the first silence

In the SIA restaurant, I sat by the window. I ordered dolma, then a glass of Areni. I ate slowly. Without a phone in front of my plate. That alone felt strange: I could not remember the last time I ate just like that, looking out the window, without being distracted by anything.

The food here is good. Not “restaurant-style” in the pretentious sense, but real. The lavash is warm, as if from a tonir. The dolma is dense, in grape leaves, with a slight sourness. The Areni is dark, a little tart, with that particular aftertaste that remains.

After dinner, I went outside. It was already nine o’clock, getting dark. I sat on a bench in the garden. The mountains became dark silhouettes. Stars - unexpectedly many stars, the kind you do not see in Yerevan - began to appear one after another.

I sat and did nothing. For about forty minutes, probably. Just sat there.

And at some point I caught myself not thinking about work, or tomorrow, or anything specific. I was simply looking at the mountains and the stars. It felt a little like that childhood feeling when you look out of a train window and your head is empty, and it does not worry you, it calms you.

I returned to the room. Put the phone in the drawer. Said to myself: “Until morning.”

Until morning turned into three days.

Saturday. Morning without an alarm clock

I woke up by myself. No alarm, no vibration, no feeling that I had already missed something. Outside the window there was fog, low and milky, lying between the pines. It was eight in the morning, and the silence was absolute.

For breakfast at SIA, they serve exactly what is needed in the mountains in the morning: fresh lavash, homemade cheese, honey, eggs, vegetables, herbs, sweets, walnut jam. Not a single packet, not a single plastic yogurt. Everything felt alive. I ate more than I had eaten for breakfast in probably five years.

After breakfast, I went walking. Without a route, without navigation. I simply went out onto a trail behind the hotel grounds and walked upward. The pine forest in Tsaghkadzor is special: the trees are tall, straight, and the smell of resin, pine needles, damp earth is so dense it feels as if you could gather it in your fist.

I walked for about two hours. Climbed high enough to see the valley below: Tsaghkadzor, the roofs of houses, the hotel like a small white rectangle among the greenery. I sat on a stone. Reached into my pocket... nothing. There was no phone. I simply sat and looked.

And this is where something strange happened.

I began to think. Truly think — not react to incoming messages, not process tasks, but actually think: slowly, without pressure, not knowing where it would lead. I remembered a conversation with a friend that I had been postponing for a long time. I remembered a project I had been leading for half a year and which I had stopped liking long ago, but continued by inertia. I remembered that I had not read a book just for pleasure in a long time.

None of this was urgent. But all of it was important. And exactly there, on a stone in a pine forest above Tsaghkadzor, I finally had the time and silence to notice it.

Saturday. Daytime. Spa, pool, and the art of doing nothing

After the walk, I returned to the hotel and went to the SIA spa area. Hammam, then the jacuzzi of the indoor pool, then the pool with a view of the mountains.

The pool is a separate story. It is outdoor (there is also an indoor one, warm, for any weather), and the view from it is directly onto the mountain ridge. You swim, turn your head, and see pines, sky, peaks. It is so absurdly beautiful that for the first few minutes you simply stand and look, forgetting to swim.

I spent about three hours in the spa area. It was the first time in a very long time that I did not feel I was “wasting” time. Usually, rest for me is something you have to return from back to business. Here that feeling disappeared. I simply was. Lying in the hammam. Sitting by the edge of the pool. Watching clouds move over the mountains.

Then there was lunch. Lamb barbecue the way it should be: smoky, juicy, with lavash straight from the fire. A salad of fresh vegetables. Another glass of Areni.

After lunch, I lay down in the room. Just lay down. Not to watch a series, not to read the news, but to lie down and close my eyes. And I slept for an hour and a half in the middle of the day. When I woke up, the sun outside was already different, not daytime but evening, golden, and the mountains had changed color.

I lay there and thought: when was the last time I slept during the day not because I was sick, but simply because I wanted to? I could not remember.

Saturday. Evening. Fireplace and something important

In the evening, I asked to move to a cottage, and to my happiness one of them was available. I asked to have the fireplace lit in the cottage. It turned out to be easier than I thought: the staff did everything quickly, without unnecessary questions. They brought firewood, lit the fire, and left me alone.

I had brought with me a paper notebook, which I carry around and never open, and I sat by the fire. Poured some wine. And began to write. Not a to-do list, not a plan, just writing what came to mind.

I wrote about a colleague with whom I had long needed to speak honestly, but somehow it never happened. About the fact that for the last six months I had been working on autopilot and I felt it myself. About wanting to visit my parents not “for the holidays”, but simply like that, without a reason. About the fact that I had not read Tumanyan in a long time, and wanted to.

Nothing grand. But it is exactly these small, real things that are pushed out by daily noise. Notifications, calls, tasks — they are not bad in themselves. They simply take up all the space, and there is no room left for the quiet, important things.

The mountains give this space back.

I do not know how it works physically, maybe it is the altitude (Tsaghkadzor stands at 1800 meters above sea level), maybe the air, maybe simply the absence of the city background. But something here turns off the mode of “constant readiness” and turns on something else. Slower. More your own.

Sunday. The last morning and what I understood

On Sunday morning, I woke up by myself again. The fog was different again, morning fog, light, rising from the forest and dissolving in the air right before my eyes.

After breakfast, I went not into the forest, but simply around the hotel grounds. Slowly. Looked at the flowers in the garden. Looked at the mountains. Went into the indoor pool, where there was no one, and swam alone in absolute silence.

At some point, I went to the bedside table. Took out the phone.

Seventy-two unread messages. Twelve missed calls. Several work emails marked “urgent”.

I looked at the screen. Put the phone back.

That was a small but important moment. Not because I decided to give up my phone or “change my life” — that would be too loud. But because for the first time in a long time I felt: I can choose not to react right now. And nothing will happen. The world will not collapse. The emails will wait. The living people, the important people, will still wait until I am ready to speak normally, and not in a rush.

That was the main discovery of those three days.

Not some philosophy and not a “reset” in the Instagram sense of the word. Just a physical, bodily feeling: I have the right to pause. And this pause does not make me worse, slower, or irresponsible. It makes me myself.

What Tsaghkadzor is, if we speak honestly

I am not a travel blogger and I do not write advertising texts. So I will say it honestly, as it is.

Tsaghkadzor is a place that works not because of attractions and not because of a “program”. There is nothing special here if you look at it as a list. Mountains - yes, but there are mountains in many places. The forest - beautiful, but still a forest. The hotel - good, comfortable, with tasty food and a proper spa. But there are many hotels like that.

What works here is something else: the combination. Altitude + silence + air + absence of the city rhythm. It is like several quiet notes that together create a chord.

SIA Resort & Spa fits exactly into this. Here they do not pressure you with service, no one hovers over you, no one offers you something to buy every twenty minutes. But when you need something, everything is there and everything works. If you want silence, you get silence. If you want dinner by the fireplace, there will be dinner by the fireplace. If you want to talk to someone at reception just like that, you can. This is a rare skill: to be nearby without disturbing.

I checked out on Sunday at twelve noon. Put my things in the car. Looked at the mountains one last time.

I did not take a photo. I simply looked.

Afterword: why it is worth coming here at least once

I do not know what is happening with you. Maybe you are tired with the kind of tiredness that sleep does not remove. Maybe you have not been alone with yourself for a long time, truly alone, without a screen and without background noise. Maybe you simply want to spend a weekend differently than usual.

Tsaghkadzor, and specifically SIA Resort & Spa, is a place that gives space. Not entertainment, but space. And sometimes that is exactly what we need: a little space to feel that we exist.

Two hours from Yerevan. Three days. Seventy-two hours without a phone.

Sometimes that is enough to remember something important about yourself.