Background
Dagestan is the province in Southern Russia located in the North Caucasus on Caspian sea shore, known in the world mostly as Khabib Nurmugamedov's homeland. It was not really safe some time ago due to Chechen War, another attempt to build an islamic state taken by Al-Qaeda. The war itself finished in 2000, but the mountain areas were still considered unsafe until mid 2010-s, hence the region is just starting to develop it's touristic potential.
Summary
For those who think 6 mins is a long read you can't afford, sharing emotions: Dagestan is definitely the best place in Russia i've ever been to and 100% is in my lifetime top-3 trips. Here is top 5 reasons to go:
- Mountains. I obviously saw the photos before the trip, but you know mountains in 3D is a completely different story. The landform is very unusual there due to many high plateaus, which creates a lot of canyons and places where you go through almost plain terrain which at some point ends with a few thousand meters high cliffs. This makes the landscapes different to popular areas like the Alpes. I've only seen smth so unusual in Iceland.
- People. Yes, yes, this sounds funny for the typical muscovite, as dagestanians in Moscow are known by their aggressive behaviour and you would better stay away from them in the street (you may say this is a stereotype but it's recognised by dagestanians too). In Dagestan's mountain areas, by contrast, hospitality and mutual help are a kind of reflex: few days we haven't paid for food (at all!): somebody always fed us. At some point we met the stranger on the remote gravel road who invited us to join the dinner at his home few hundred meters down the road.
- Very few tourists (yet). Almost nobody if you compare to any touristic spot in European mountains. In the vast majority of places we were alone or saw one or two groups of people. Even on Sulak's canyon, which is considered as the most popular place and located only in 90 minutes drive from Makhachkala (the biggest city and the airport). It's said that the same situation was observed in Iceland or Georgia some time ago, so seize the opportunity ☝️
- Infrastructure and services are already on an OK level. Roads are almost perfect and the internet coverage is very good.
Price. Here is where Dagestan is an absolute opposite to Iceland 😄it's very very cheap.
Makhachkala
Noisy city looking like Moscow in 90-s (recommended if you want to recognise how Moscow progressed over the past 20 years!). However, dagestanians love eating and cooking, which makes local Makhachkala's restaurants a must to visit. Dagestan has an interesting cuisine, totally different to well known and wide spread Georgian but also super delicious. I recommend "На Лермонтова" for dinner and "Сад" for breakfast. Here you may meet the english speaking staff, enjoy and do not expect to speak english anywhere else 😄
Gunib area
Gunib is the the one-dimensional Aul (village) in the mountains - there's not left or right, south and north here. You can only go up or down, as it's built along the mountain road between 1400 and 1900 meters above the sea level. You can imagine that every turn is the viewpoint. We booked a place on the highest point of Gunib - this one. The car had to stay where the road ended, and we were picked up by the host - Magomed and go up by his UAZ (soviet jeep which can drive where you can't even climb). Once we arrived, we had a delicious home made dinner with Magomed and his family.
It took us 3 hours to get there from Makhachkala, but the road was beautiful, we had a portable cooker and all camping stuff so we stopped for a coffee in the places like this:
Karadakh gorge, Khunzakh and Matlas
So, Karadakh gorge - you follow your nav system route and come to the small bridge in the middle of the road. We also saw three another cars parked there. You then walk for about 15 minutes through the dry river bed and come to the narrow gorge between two high cliffs, where you have another 30-minutes walk. The most scary point is where few huge rocks are hanging over you, you try to instinctively run away from this point 😳
Khunzakh is the typical village, it has school, hospital, small shop and the gas station. Very average one. With just one thing - just behind the gas station, there's a branch of Iceland:
There's another one in twenty minutes drive as well:
Mayak
Next day we planned to climb (actually walk) the mountain Mayak, the highest peak of the Gunib's plateau. The house we rented was located at the base camp so the logistic was not complex. We walked to the closest hill at the morning to warm up and found that we have our personal waterfall. Approx 30 meters high, it would be the top tourist attraction somewhere in the Alps. Here we only met cows. After that Magomed hosted his friends and he also invited us to join the lunch, so we had a chance to interview locals a bit. Briefly:
- Brides are not stolen any longer (almost) as this is considered as criminal offense. However most of the marriages are arranged by parents.
- On driving style: "we do not drive, we fly our own ways"
- Politics: nobody vote in elections (current regime officially gets 90% support in Dagestan - this is not the case)
- Almost everyone at some point lived in big city but returned back: "hustle" (c)
- All children are bilingual. Russian and Avar - this is happening naturally. They normally learn Avar from parents and Russian from TV
After lunch we started the climb. The route was going through the alpine meadows and surrounded by hundreds of cows and horses. Two hours walk, zero other tourists. We met the group of locals on the summit who kindly invited us for a tea cooked in the coil powered samovar. They also had GAZ-69, soviet military jeep, which we obviously used for a photo.
Derbent. Lun
Next morning we went to Derbent - ancient town on the sea shore. I honestly didn't expect much from the city, we actually aimed to visit the parking of Lun. It's unique, it's huge and very impressive. Check it out
Sulak's canyon
Sulak's river canyon is the top-1 attraction in Dagestan, it's one of the world's biggest canyons and deeper than the famous Colorado's grand canyon in America. And the last but not least, as the person who planned the trip to US before covid, i can tell you it's approx 10 times cheaper to get there 💸
This time we booked a place called Rodnik. It's the best agroturismo I've ever been to (though i travelled through Italy few times): guest house at farm, cafe where everything is made from the local products and one of the best views to the canyon. Here the group of locals partied in the farmer's cafe and they also invited us to the dinner. By the way, the parties here are alcohol free and i liked it a lot.
Next morning we woke up earlier to watch the sunrise:
Then we took a boat trip to see the canyon from the river and then were driving to other viewpoints, including the most popular one in the town of Dubki and another one where we enjoyed the brutal view to the HPS:
Final
Next day we left Dagestan to continue our trip along the North Caucasus. Actually we didn't see many cool locations due to different reasons - Gamsutl (dagestanian Machu Picchu), the highest village Kurush with a view to Shalbuzdag mountain, Sarukum dune. Therefore, we plan to get back, while here is some more photos for you to check out: