INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Tosya Gharibyan asked her husband to dig a basement
He dug her an underground labyrinth (AFP)Arinj, Armenia: When Tosya Gharibyan asked her husband to dig a basement under their house to
store potatoes, she had little idea the underground labyrinth he would eventually produce would prove to be one of Armenia's major tourist
draws.Their one-storey house in the village of Arinj outside the capital Yerevan may not look like much but today it brings in visitors from
all over the globe after a 23-year labour of love by Tosya's late husband, Levon Arakelyan.They come to see a twisting network of
subterranean caves and tunnels known as "Levon's divine underground."In the cold and quiet, Tosya leads tourists through corridors that
connect seven chambers adorned with Romanesque columns and ornaments like those on the facades of medieval Armenian churches.When Tosya
Gharibyan asked her husband to dig a basement under their house to store potatoes, she had little idea the underground labyrinth he would
eventually produce would prove to be one of Armenia's major tourist draws (AFP)"Once he started digging, it was impossible to stop him," she
said of the project that began in 1985
"I wrangled with him a lot, but he became obsessed with his plan."A builder by training, Levon would toil for 18 hours a day -- only pausing
to take a quick nap and then rush back to the cave, confident that he was being guided "by heaven"."Levon's divine underground" is a 23-year
labour of love by Tosya's late husband, Levon Arakelyan (AFP)"He never drew up plans and used to tell us that he sees in his dreams what to
do next," his widow told AFP.Over more than two decades he hammered out the 280-square-metre (3,000 square-foot) space, 21 metres deep into
strata of volcanic rocks -- only using hand tools.Over more than two decades Levon Arakelyan hammered out the 280-square-metre (3,000
square-foot) space, 21 metres deep into strata of volcanic rocks -- only using hand tools (AFP)"My primary childhood recollection is the
loud knock of my father's hammer heard at night from the cave," said his 44-year-old daughter Araksya.At the start he had to break through a
surface layer of black basalt, but at the depth of a few metres Levon reached much softer tufa stone and the work progressed.In the cold and
quiet, Tosya Gharibyan leads tourists through corridors that connect seven chambers adorned with Romanesque columns and ornaments like those
on the facades of medieval Armenian churches (AFP)He pulled out 600 truckloads of rocks and earth, using only hand-held buckets.Levon died
in 2008 at the age of 67 from a heart attack after destroying the last wall that separated two tunnels.'Amazing Place'A decade on from the
project's completion, Tosya also runs a small museum commemorating her husband's work in the village of some 6,000 people.The underground
complex has several analogues in the world.At the start Levon Arakelyan had to break through a surface layer of black basalt, but at the
depth of a few metres Levon reached much softer tufa stone (AFP)An eccentric man named William Henry "Burro" Schmidt spent more than three
decades digging a half-a-mile tunnel to transport gold through a granite mountain in California, beginning his work in the early 1900s
during the state's gold rush.In Ethiopia a man named Aba Defar began carving churches on a mountainside after claiming divine inspiration
from years of dreams.A builder by training, Levon would toil for 18 hours a day -- only pausing to take a quick nap and then rush back to
the cave, confident that he was being guided "by heaven" (AFP)Today the Armenian cave features prominently in travel brochures, regularly
drawing busloads of visitors.Milad, a 29-year-old Iranian tourist, called the maze an "amazing place".He said it made him realise just "how
boundless the spiritual and physical capabilities of a person can be".(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by
TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
