Trip to the South
On May 6, 2016, we set off on a road trip to the South in our own car. It was not a short route: in total we covered 6,300 km. We visited Kamyshin, Volgograd, Elista, Elbrus, Pyatigorsk, Adler, Sochi, Krasnaya Polyana, Anapa, and the Taman Peninsula.
We fit the trip into 16 days. The journey itself went smoothly, without surprises or unpleasant incidents. I planned it with spare days so that we could stay longer in one place or another if the weather let us down. For example, we had to stay near Elbrus longer while waiting for good weather to go up by cable car. In Adler, we also spent one extra day waiting for better weather before going up by cable car in Krasnaya Polyana. In the end, we even had a little free time left to walk around places that had not been part of the original plan. For instance, I added the Taman Peninsula to the route only after we unexpectedly got one spare sunny day.
Traveling in early May turned out to have several advantages. One of them was cheaper accommodation: it was still off-season, many hotels were half empty, and prices were lower. For example, a really nice hotel near the village of Elbrus cost only 1,650 rubles per night, and in Adler we paid just 900 rubles. Once we got back, I calculated that the whole trip had cost us 56,000 rubles. The expenses broke down like this:
- fuel - 13,770
- hotels - 13,200
- activities - 11,200
- food in cafes and restaurants - 10,000
- groceries - 3,900
- miscellaneous - 3,150
- parking - 750
- toll roads - 500
The trip was fairly simple overall, so I am not even sure what else to add. On the road we bought groceries at Pyaterochka or Magnit, with Magnit being more common in the south. We tried to refuel at stations like Lukoil or Rosneft. We looked for places to eat on TripAdvisor. Near Elbrus we mostly ate in the hotel canteen.
Many people still have a stereotype that it is better not to go to the Caucasus at all, because you will get stabbed or shot there. We had those concerns too. We had also read about the Baksan Gorge, which we had to drive through on the way to Elbrus. People wrote that there were checkpoints there and that militants sometimes came down from the mountains. In reality, everything turned out to be the opposite. The area was quiet and calm, the people were kind and friendly, and there simply were not that many people around. Perhaps it is crowded with tourists in summer, but in May there was almost no one there. In that area, you feel safer than in a crowd in Moscow.