I visited Mount Athos in November 2017, staying three nights. While I certainly enjoyed my visit, it is also something of a cautionary tale, as I definitely did not get the most out of the experience as I could have.

I don’t need to go into particular detail about the practicalities of visiting from Thessaloniki, as they have been readily outlined by the previous review. As I was with only one other visitor, our request for a diamonitirion for entrance about four months later was granted by email within a couple of hours of requesting it, no issues whatsoever. One point, however, is that all ferries from and to Ouranopolis seemed to ‘require’ advance booking. Upon arrival in Ouranopolis, there was almost an hour before the next ferry. When I tried to get a ticket at this point, the ticket office wrote down my ‘reservation’ and declared that I should come back 15 minutes before the ferry departed. Returning at that point, there was a confusing scrum to try to get tickets, involving a lot of pushing and yelling. A monk was refused a ticket because he had not ‘reserved’, so it was greatly reassuring to have my name called immediately after all phone reservations had been collected. Similarly, the ferry back from Daphni ‘required’ a reservation, and we were told it was full when we arrived an hour before its departure. We were put on a waiting list that ended up being maybe 50 people long, all who managed to board to boat. How it could have been fully booked but so readily accessible to non-reserved guests is rather mysterious. To be safe, though, advance reservation is probably a good idea.

And that is basically the crux of my review: reserving in advance will definitely improve your experience. We were far more casual about our visit than I expect all other visitors are, and the experience suffered for it. After researching the touristic practicalities of the peninsula extensively, I decided to catch a ferry to Kavsokalivia skete for the first night, then hike to Nea Skiti for the second night, hike to Simonopetra for the third, and then leave for Thessaloniki the final day. The internet raved about the majesty of the hiking along this trail, and as I am an avid hiker, this definitely appealed. Doing it again, I would definitely have hiked the extra hour or so past Nea Skiti to Agiou Paulou, as the hiking time estimates on the internet are highly conservative. The ‘6-7’ hours from Kavsokalivia to Nea Skiti was closer to 4 hours, meaning we arrived just after midday.

Simonopetra responded to an email inquiry for accommodation a few months before the trip within an hour, but Nea Skiti never responded and Kavsokalivia never answered their phone after multiple attempts on different days. As the internet proclaimed that the monks often never bothered to respond to emails, but nevertheless logged the reservations, I was not especially concerned. The fact that the Pilgrim’s Bureau in Thessaloniki said that it was possible to just turn up made me confident that it would be fine.

Upon arrival in Kavsokalivia, the single monk we found there seemed confused at our presence, but led us to a guest room with English signage and offered us the traditional greeting of loukoumi and tsipouro. He begrudgingly showed us the church, and soon offered us a meal of cold soup and stale bread in a modern-looking kitchen, alone. As this was the night I thought posed the greatest risk of being turned away, I felt reassured for the future. Yet, upon arrival at Nea Skiti, a location the internet seemed to claim was a popular spot for foreign pilgrims to stay, we were met with nothing but cats. When we eventually found a monk around the guesthouse area, he was visibly confused and angry at our presence, at first trying to ignore us. There was no hope of trying to explain that we had sent multiple emails trying to reserve a spot to stay. By just standing around looking lost, he eventually couldn’t continue to pretend we weren’t there, and he just pointed at a room and then walked off. For the rest of the day and the next morning, the monks pointedly ignored us, offering no food or drink for dinner or breakfast.

Thus, my experience is that reserving a spot in advance at actual monasteries, rather than the sketes, results in an immeasurably better cultural experience. Apart from the fact that that Simonopetra is a stunning building, it was well-geared towards international visitors. As many visitors are Russian Orthodox, and thus not fluent in Greek, English was readily spoken by the monks. The facilities included electricity and hot showers, both of which were a godsend after two days hiking over mountains. I can’t say that it was worth waking up at 3am for the full 3 hour service in the church, as to the layman each distinct one hour consecutive segment is pretty indistinguishable, but being allowed access to such an experience was definitely a fascinating experience. The monks arrived at left at their own pleasure, so other foreigners arriving at 5ish for the final hour was no issue, and probably enough to still get a good experience. Guests are allowed to sit/stand in any of the uncomfortable booths in the church at Simonopetra, though non-Orthodox guests are understandably not permitted to actually take part in the ceremonies. The monks were kind enough to explain the nature of the church’s relics in Russian, French and English, for the benefit of all the foreign visitors. Each group of travellers seemed to attract their own individual monk to discuss life in Athos, depending on the language that they spoke.

Chatting for an hour with a friendly Greek monk about his decades of life in Athos was absolutely the highlight of the visit. He did admit though, that there was a pretty significant schism on Athos between those monks who valued their role as hosts to foreign pilgrims, and those who see this as a crass incursion upon the spiritual sanctity of the mountain. His simple advice was for those monks to simply move to one of the unpopular sketes, which might explain why Nea Skiti monks seemed so affronted by our existence. While he obviously hoped we might one day convert to Orthodox Christianity, the monk (whose name I have upsettingly forgotten) seemed very open-minded and liberal with his ideas, claiming that everyone was welcome to visit Athos ‘even Muslims and Jews’. I didn’t thinking asking about atheists was a good idea, though. Ignoring that ‘everyone’ clearly excludes more than half the world’s population, this was a much friendlier tone than the man at the Ouranopolis Pilgrim’s Bureau who seemed reluctant to give us our diamonitirions because we didn’t seem ‘Christian’ enough. The monk was previously a financial advisor at a Greek corporation, and was happy to talk about economics and other issues outside of Athos, and was interested in our own lives and experiences.

While the hiking along the coast of Athos is indeed rather impressive, I feel that my visit would have been improved by focussing on visiting the monasteries as a cultural experience. Sleeping in a small room without dinner or breakfast being ignored by monks isn’t the best way to visit Athos.