Journey from Dubna to Elista via Kamyshin and Volgograd. Days 1-4

So, on the morning of May 6, I packed the car and drove to Moscow to pick up my girlfriend after work so we could set off on the trip together. Our first destination was Ryazan, because we also needed to pick up her mother and take her to Kamyshin, which was conveniently on the way.

We spent a long time in Moscow traffic jams and reached Ryazan only by evening. The next morning we got up early, because we had to cover about 960 km that day. We left around 7 a.m. and arrived in Kamyshin at about 9:30 p.m., when it was already dark there. The next morning we walked around Kamyshin. It has a very beautiful embankment:

A relative of my girlfriend showed us this ditch, which had been dug under Peter the Great in an attempt to connect two rivers. It was never completed.

The next morning we packed up early again and headed for Elista. On the way we stopped in Volgograd. It was the morning of May 9, so we visited the Motherland Calls monument.

Next on the route was Elista. The road leading there was beautiful: steppe in every direction and almost nobody around.

When we reached Elista, which is only about 300 km from Volgograd, we were struck by how abruptly one culture can change into another.

That evening we also visited the local temple and then headed to the hotel.