Perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say that our hero is one of the most popular repatriates in Armenia, and also one of the youngest. Harutyun Hakobyan moved to his homeland in 2018, when he was 21 years old. Alone, without a family, with only a backpack, on unprepared ground, but with full confidence in the correctness of the decision and that everything will work out for him. And so it happened. And Harutyun’s popularity lies in the fact that he is a famous travel blogger with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of views. The topic of his videos is, of course, Armenia. And more recently, not only video clips - Harutyun wrote the book “Unknown Armenia”, which has already been published in two languages: Russian and English. Exploring your country, talking about it, getting interested in Armenia and making a wide variety of audiences fall in love with it—this is what Harutyun does, and quite successfully, with bold plans and prospects.

 

 

Harutyun did not have the opportunity to explore Armenia since childhood, but after moving he began to greedily immerse himself in the living study of his country, its history, architecture, and nature. Every time he comes to this or that place, he experiences delight. This genuine joy from contact with our amazing land is transmitted to the viewers of his videos - that’s why there is such success in views and interest among those who see Armenia through the eyes of Harutyun.

 

“I want to go around the whole country, get to know every settlement, every mountain, every cave, every building left to us by our distant ancestors. I don’t agree when Armenia is called a small country. Armenia is an incredibly deep country, you can discover it endlessly - there is so much here!

 

How to distinguish a legless lizard from a snake? Where is the 1,700-year-old plane tree, the oldest tree in Armenia, located? What does the herb from which mustard is made look like? Where do bananas ripen in Armenia? Where are the traces of Bronze Age settlements? How to get to exotic farms - hedgehogs, snails, ostriches? All this is told with love by a person who has lived in Armenia not so long ago, but who knows his country better than many who have lived here all their lives.

 

Local guides also carefully watch Harutyun’s releases and, thanks to him, learn new places and build routes for interesting tours.

 

Our conversation took place in one of these hidden corners of unexplored Armenia - in the Kotayk outback, at the foot of the Pambak ridge. Perhaps only residents of a nearby village know about this place, surrounded by mountains, with a small but very picturesque waterfall. And Harutyun, passionately exploring his country.

 

— Your video was recently released about a little-known place in Kotayk - Ermoni vank, where you show amazing khachkars. How do you find out about such places?

 

“I just travel around the country, go into villages and ask local residents: what interesting things do you have here?” And they happily show me various wonderful corners, historical and natural attractions, fortresses, churches, many of which cannot be found on the map or on the Internet. And then I show it to others, and often hear: “wow, and this is in Armenia?!”

 

I have contacts with thousands of different people from different parts of the world, I see their reactions, their interest, I help them discover Armenia, which becomes an attractive place for them, where they feel good. My videos and Instagram postings are currently only published in Russian and English, but with the help of a neural network I am going to translate into Farsi, Arabic, and European languages. After watching my stories, hundreds of tourists from various countries come here.

 

— For example, the other day one family - non-Armenians, who visited Armenia for the first time, after watching my stories, asked for help with finding them housing in Dilijan, where they were planning to come not just on vacation, but for at least six months. And there are many such cases too.

 

- And the Armenians? Did you manage to infect Diaspora Armenians through tourism so much that someone repatriated?

 

- Certainly! More than two dozen people I know personally have moved here fully. These are people from a variety of fields, and their move is not related to the 2022 relocation wave. Many guys, like me, came alone, after a while they started families here, put down roots, and work. They realized that their place was in their homeland.

 

Having shared the stories of some of them, Harutyun moves on to his own.

 

 

— I was born in Stepanakert. My roots are from two villages in the Hadrut region - Sarinshen and Arakel. The grave of my ancestor named Lalazar, who died in the 1750s, is located three kilometers from a place called Jebrail in Azerbaijan. Therefore, when they say that this is not Armenian land, it’s just funny to me.

 

Harutyun knows his family tree thoroughly - he listed all the ancestors by name right up to Lalazar. When the young man became interested in his Armenian heritage, he began asking his grandfather about the history of their family and absorbing his stories. Yes, at first there was no interest - Harutyun continues his story.

 

— When I was 4 years old, my parents moved to Stavropol. And once, when I was 10, I was sent to my grandmother in our village in Artsakh for almost the entire summer. That time affected me and was memorable. And in general, this seems very important to me: if a family lives abroad, and grandparents live in their native villages in Armenia, it is necessary to send children to them on vacation, so that the children spend longer time in the environment of their roots.

 

In Stavropol, I grew up as a rather closed guy and lived among a dysfunctional environment. Many of my friends and peers had problems with the law and became addicted to alcohol and drugs. This environment was, to put it mildly, not close to me, and I did not want to see myself in this circle.

 

 

Like hundreds of thousands of Armenians of the diaspora, in this case the Russian one, I lived like an ordinary Russian, everything Armenian in me was asleep, there was no craving for the Motherland, no interest. I did not speak Armenian and did not strive to learn it. Among my Armenian friends there were no people who were interested in Armenia or their roots. I didn’t go to an Armenian school, nor did I watch Armenian channels.

 

Looking ahead, I will say that in recent years I have come to Egypt, to Lebanon, talked with local Armenians and noticed that there they preserve their Armenian identity. Without exception, all the children with whom I spoke speak fluent Armenian, go to Armenian schools, and know Armenian history. In Russia the picture is completely different - Armenians are assimilating very quickly.

 

After graduating from school, I began to earn money in network marketing and filmed social experiments, combining this with my passion for tourism and mountain hiking. Mountains have been imprinted on me since early childhood and have always drawn me. That's when I started blogging. I lived like that until I was 21…

 

...until one fine day I came across an educational video about Armenia by Vadim Arutyunov (Antitopor project). This was in the fall of 2017, and this was the impetus. I was drawn in, I began to read and watch about Armenia, subscribed to various Armenian pages, communities, and began donating to the “VOMA Survival School” project, a course in which I completed a year later. In a word, I was completely immersed in Armenia virtually.

 

- Can you say that your world turned upside down and fell into place?

 

“That’s right, and it happened quite quickly.” After a couple of months, I decided to move and began to prepare. As a result, having saved a small amount and purchased the necessary equipment, on April 1, 2018, I arrived in Artsakh.

 

— At first I lived with relatives in the village, then I began to stay in Stepanakert - either in a hotel or in rented housing. I received some money for advertising in my videos on YouTube, enough for a modest life. Even before moving, I decided what I would do in Artsakh - I wanted to film a series of programs about our beautiful region, about its nature, about the fact that Artsakh is first and foremost a land of life, not war. I filmed a couple of pilot episodes and came with an offer to Artsakh-TV. They liked the new, unusual format with an extreme focus, and they agreed. I started working, receiving a salary, paying taxes. As a result, I produced two cycles of 12 programs on television - “My Land” and “City in the Forest.”

 

During the war, Harutyun was in Artsakh and filmed military video chronicles in different directions of the front. After November 10, like most Artsakh residents, he hoped that Artsakh would remain a land of life, and continued to shoot his videos, introducing the outside world to the life and nature of this region. Having made connections in the blogging world, at first he invited popular bloggers from different countries so that as many people as possible would know what Armenian Artsakh is like. In addition, Harutyun intended to organize a large-scale bushcraft festival (the art of survival in the forest) with the involvement of famous media personalities, such as the famous American blogger Matt Graham, so that Artsakh would “sound” on their channels with an audience of millions. Harutyun was preparing, in the area of ​​the village of Lusadzor he built with his own hands original, quite durable huts from branches, moss and clay, without cutting down a single tree. He wanted this to later become an unusual recreation area for local residents. But soon access to Artsakh for foreigners became difficult, and then completely closed.

 

On the day of the first anniversary of his arrival in Artsakh, he met his future wife, Angelina from Shushi. At the end of November 2022, the newlyweds got married in Stepanakert and a few days later went on a honeymoon to Sri Lanka. But they were no longer able to return - as is known, the blockade of Artsakh began on December 12.

 

 

Now the guys live in Yerevan, rent an apartment. Although rising real estate prices have pushed back their dream of purchasing their own home - their own house outside Yerevan, they are still moving towards their goal.

 

After the loss of Artsakh, the couple had no thoughts of leaving Armenia. “Our Motherland is Armenia, and Artsakh is one of its provinces, which we are now deprived of, hopefully temporarily,” says Harutyun, who dearly loves every corner of Armenia and makes both Armenians and foreigners fall in love with it, to the best of his ability promoting our country.

 

 

The book “Unknown Armenia” has been published on Amazon for the second printing, and this is just the beginning. Harutyun has planned a whole series of books in this cycle: “Animal World”, “Children’s Encyclopedia” - especially for children from the diaspora, “Places of Power” - this book will be released in a couple of months, as well as more details on regions and cities: unexplored Lori, Kotayk, Yerevan, Gyumri, Kapan...

 

 

— All these books will be translated into dozens of languages ​​and sold in different countries. In addition, I am going to make 40-minute BBC-style films about the animal world of Armenia to be shown by National Geographic.

 

- This is very difficult, a completely different level...

 

- Yes, this is a completely different level, but I have an understanding of how to do it and how to achieve it. This is in the plans in three years. If we learn to show our country on a professional level, then interest in Armenia and the inflow of tourists to us will greatly increase. I see my task as PR for our country.

 

Harutyun has interesting views on the development of tourism - for example, how to receive Arab sheikhs, Japanese tourists, and big business people. But he talks more excitingly about rural tourism.

 

— I want to help rural residents develop village tourism. For example, I recently went to the village of Artsvaberd, in the Berd district of Tavush. This village has great tourism potential, various interesting products and activities are offered there, and there are guesthouses. The people of Artsvaberd have already created a high-quality tourism product, but the problem is that they do not know how to properly present it, and here they need help. My task is to draw attention to rural tourism so that local residents work, earn money and do not want to leave their villages.

 

— Our villagers have everything except the skills of effective self-presentation. Therefore, I decided to organize a blogging school: this winter it will start working in Yerevan. We have a lot of talented, bright people connected not only with rural tourism. They need to be able to offer their product online. I come, do PR for them, a response arises, for some time their products are in demand, but whether they will be able to promote it later on their own is a question. It is necessary for people to manage their own social networks and correctly present their products and services through their video content - the school of blogging, which will work in Armenian and Russian, should help them with this. And for villagers, classes will be held free of charge, and not only live, but also online - at their convenience. If after the course of training I see that this will benefit them and bring results, then I will pay much more attention to this school and the development of rural tourism.

 

Harutyun is confident that every person can make his village famous thanks to his unusual ideas, and social networks are a powerful tool that can be used for good, which is what he is trying to do. And he is happy because he lives in his homeland and does what he loves.

 

His wife Angelina helps Harutyun in everything, travels with him around the country, films his broadcasts. They are now preparing the “Tourism in Armenia” conference, which will be held in Yerevan in September with the participation of experts, guides and travelers.

 

As for his native language, lost for a long time during the years of living in Russia, Harutyun quickly regained it: he is fluent in the Artsakh dialect and is now “returning” literary Armenian.

Zhenya Yengibaryan