Where to Stay in Gandzakar: Old Farm and Budur, Four Kilometres from Ijevan
Four kilometres outside Ijevan, at the start of Gandzakar village, there is one piece of ground with two kinds of stay on it: two stone houses and a wooden A-frame cabin. One of them was built by a man who learned how on YouTube.
We stayed there on the fifth day of the 2026 trip and filmed most of it. This page is the practical version — what the two places are, and how to reach them.
Old Farm — the A-frame
Nver was living in Sochi. He watched people there build places and rent them out — houses, rooms, even garages — and the idea followed him home: go back to the village and build a guesthouse.
He built the A-frame in a garden where there had been nothing at all. Local materials, wood throughout, down to the doors. He had never built anything like it.
Two months, and three people counting himself. The hardest part was the sharpest point of the roof — pulling it tight so the rain could not get in. He fell up there once, and caught himself.
It sleeps four — a sofa bed downstairs, a bed up a ladder in the loft, and the window at the top that looks straight into the mountains. It is insulated rather than air conditioned, and it holds the outside temperature, which in a timber building in an Armenian August is not what you expect.
He called it Old Farm — Հին Ֆերմա — for what stood on this ground before: a farm, where animals lived before people did. A second A-frame is going up beside it; the foundations are already in.
He also leads hikes
Into the mountains above Gandzakar — the rivers, the caves, the ridges. There is no company and no schedule.
"Even if it is one person who wants to go, we can still go. The number of people does not matter."
Budur — the stone houses
Two stone houses on the same ground. Plain and quiet inside — white walls, simple beds, a small kitchen — with a garden of roses and a grapevine, and a bench under a tree. The stone building was the farm itself before it was anything else; animals lived in it before people did.
Budur is the old name of the mountain above the village. It has since been renamed Tesilk (Տեսիլք), 1,372 metres, though locally the old name has stuck. The guesthouse kept it.
Booking either of them
They are two separate listings under their own names. Book whichever suits you — the A-frame if you want the wooden cabin and the window, the stone houses if you want space and quiet.
Old Farm Guest House
- Book: Old Farm on Booking.com
- WhatsApp: +374 55 606739 — Nver
Budur Guest House
- Book: Budur on Booking.com
- WhatsApp: +374 94 866064 — Lilit
It is a small place and it books up. If you are coming in summer, message ahead.
Getting there without a car
You do not need one, and we did not have one.
- Gyumri to Vanadzor — shared taxi, about 1,500 dram a head, roughly an hour. Walk into the yard at the bus station and ask; they leave when the fourth seat fills, which is usually quicker than waiting for the bus.
- Vanadzor to Ijevan — minibus from near the station, about an hour and a half, climbing the whole way.
- Ijevan to Gandzakar — four kilometres. A short taxi.
From Yerevan, the Ijevan minibuses run from Hyusisayin bus station and take around three hours.
Why we are telling you about it
We film in Armenia and write up what we find, and we are not paid to say any of this. Nver showed us the cabin he built, gave us coffee in his family's kitchen before we had put the bags down, and then argued with one of us about ceiling fans until ten at night. That is the difference between a guesthouse and a hotel, and it is the reason to go.
The full day — the bus that did not exist, the town nobody talks about, and the whole of Nver's story in his own words — is here:
Ijevan: The Town Nobody Talks About, and a Cabin Built from YouTube