About 70 miles north of Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan sits Lake Sevan, the largest alpine lake in the world. At over 6200 feet above sea level, the lake’s water temperature is brisk – between 60F and 72F degrees. In the summer months when temperatures in Yerevan reach into the 90’s, Armenians travel to the lake’s white sand beaches for what they think of as a refreshing dip in the lake’s cool water.
Lake Sevan is the home of Armenia’s only national park: Lake Sevan National Park. The lake itself covers between 5% and 10% of Armenia’s surface (depending on how you calculate it) and the large park, which includes the lake’s watershed and some nearby nature reserves, takes in about one-sixth of Armenia. It is a beautiful area.
The park includes an industrial zone because Lake Sevan is an important source of fish and electricity for the region. But the majority of the park is set aside either as nature reserve (the park’s core area) or for recreational use.
Among the most striking areas within the park’s reserve is the Artanish Peninsula. Isolated and largely undisturbed, the peninsula boasts three separate bioregions: a shoreline environment, a mid-altitude temperate zone, and a high altitude zone. The peninsula provides shelter from many of the parks 267 species of birds, including coots mallards, Greylag geese, the Armenian gull, the glossy ibis, storks, pelicans and flamingos. The park also is home to some 34 mammals, including leopards, wild goats, otters and wolves.
The natural attractions of Lake Sevan alone would be worth the trip from Yerevan. But it is the developed areas of the lake within the recreation zone that attract most of its visitors. A number of locations alone the northwest shore of Lake Sevan provide free access to white sand beaches. Some of the better beaches are hidden, not visible by road. So it pays to have a guide. A few of the beaches near the town of Sevan charge a nominal fee for parking. But there are also facilities and services here that the less developed beaches lack. You can rent anything from a paddle boat or row boat through a catamaran (complete with pilot).