In the project “Kudablin? Tudablin!” We send completely different people on trips at our expense! Sergei Anashkevich visited Chechnya: he visited the medieval Chechen fortress-necropolis of Tsoi-Pede, saw the stunningly beautiful Argun Gorge, found out why the streets in Grozny are so sparsely populated, and what dishes are worth going to Chechnya for. More details in his report!
Kudablin? Damn it to Chechnya!
Well, what can I say about Chechnya?
Firstly, many are still scared by the very word “Chechnya”.
—Aren’t you afraid to go there?
— I’m crazy to go there? It’s dangerous there.
Well, everything like that.
Secondly, Chechnya is not at all as shiny with money as many people imagine it from videos with wedding and Kadyrov’s processions.
Thirdly, taking a selfie with ten Chechen girls is another task…
If you remember, I did not fly to Grozny of my own free will, but you sent me there with your own votes, thank you for not going to Dagestan. In fact, I have long wanted to visit Grozny and see Chechnya with my own eyes. Unlike many other destinations, there is no special choice of airlines when purchasing tickets to Grozny: only Red Wings and UTair fly there. Saratov Airlines with Yamal, as well as Aeroflot, with S7 and Ural Airlines do not fly there in May.
Okay, I choose Red Wings. Why them and not UTair? And their livery is more beautiful… To be honest, my choice was not very successful, because… The airline postponed both the flight from Moscow to Grozny and the return flight by 2 hours, thereby creating certain inconveniences and causing changes in logistics directly in Grozny.
Grozny airport was a big surprise. To be honest, I don’t know whether it was damaged during the war or not, but I suspect that it was damaged and was restored, like all the other buildings in the city. And they restored it not to a normal modern airport, but to some kind of Soviet squalor. Grozny Airport is more like a bus station and can be safely demonstrated as an example of what a modern airport should not be like. See for yourself. There seems to be a lot of space in the arrivals/departures hall, but it is completely poorly organized. The main place here is occupied by the columns supporting the roof. There are so many of them and they are located so often that you can get lost in them, like in a mountain forest somewhere in the Shatoi region. There is practically nothing else in the hall. No infrastructure, no enough seating, no cafe, not even a reception desk!!!
Where they are usually located (on the left side, opposite the entrance group),
there are doors to some service premises.
And here they are! These are windows, just like the windows of cashiers at a bus station. And there are only two of them! Two check-in windows at Grozny International Airport! They are staffed by not very efficient aunties of pre-retirement age, so queues are always guaranteed.
The first thing a tourist arriving in Chechnya sees is a mosque right opposite the exit from the airport.
Welcome, we are in an Islamic republic and you shouldn’t forget about it even for a minute. You understand that the morals and customs here are very different from what we are used to, therefore, in order to avoid conflicts and troubles, you should take them into account.
Airport building. It looks more modern from the outside than from the inside. Of course, the patriotic slogans authored by Akhmat Kadyrov immediately catch the eye. As it turned out later, these slogans are simply everywhere. Together with portraits of Akhmat and Ramzan Kadyrov. The concentration of the reminder who is boss here is amazing! Everything here is named after Kadyrov. Avenues, airport, stadium, buildings and institutions, museums and mosques.
What is strength, brother? In truth!
We take a taxi from the airport and head to the center of Grozny, to the hotel. The ride takes about 20 minutes, the taxi driver asks for an insane 500 rubles by local standards. He is very offended that I am trying to reduce the price and remains silent the whole way, looking at me from under his eyebrows. Naturally, we are driving a Priora, although not a lowered one. But as playful as a BMW M5.
I decided to stay at the Grozny City hotel. A little expensive, of course, but the location is simply ideal: no other hotel has such a view of the center of Grozny and the Heart of Chechnya Mosque.
The hotel is located in a famous high-rise complex and at the entrance to the complex the taxi driver’s car is closely searched. I note that the private security guards guarding the complex are armed as if they were a combat army unit.
In general, in Chechnya there is an incredible number of armed and very powerfully equipped people on the streets. Even regular police are armed to the teeth.
The hotel parking lot is filled with expensive and very expensive cars. But, it should be noted that I did not notice any particular concentration of them on the roads and streets of the city. Although he believed that Grozny would be filled with expensive cars. Apparently, videos about famous Chechen weddings created this stereotype. On the roads, there are mainly “Priors”, inexpensive foreign cars and the middle class such as Mercedes C-class and Toyota Camry.
Yes, I completely forgot. About expenses. I made all my bookings through the OneTwoTrip mobile app. In general, it is very convenient when you can plan your entire trip in one place – on a website or in a mobile application: booking a hotel, buying train or plane tickets, renting a car, insurance and much more. So, in two taps we look for flights and make a reservation. Directly from the application, you can pay by card, either by entering it manually or using your personal account data. The same goes for hotel bookings. By the way, when you use OneTwoTrip, I recommend making reservations from your personal account, because… in this case, for each air ticket or hotel you are awarded tripcoins, which can be used to pay for future bookings. Moreover, sometimes the percentage is very decent: three or four trips and that will be enough for an inexpensive air ticket.
The most popular review about the Grozny City hotel was very amusing: “guests don’t like the cleanliness.” I had no complaints about the cleanliness, but the food in the hotel restaurant was a problem! I strongly do not recommend eating there.
So, a round-trip air ticket costs 10,066 rubles, a night in a hotel costs 10,000 rubles for double occupancy or 7,500 for single occupancy. To be honest, it’s expensive. It is very expensive for Grozny: contrary to stereotypes, people here live very poorly, the job situation is not very good, and many leave to work in Moscow and other large cities.
Of course, it would be possible to save money and not stay in such an expensive hotel, but … There are only one or two decent hotels in Grozny. From what the booking services offered, in addition to Grozny City, you could choose a couple of hostels or the Caucasus Hotel.
I decided it was better to overpay…
The room for 10,000 rubles turned out to be quite good. Spacious with a good and very comfortable bed. True, there were questions about water. She was hot. In order to take a shower normally, I had to set the mixer position to the coldest position and then the water became a reasonable temperature, but flowed in a thin stream from the shower head. So either pressure with boiling water, or…
But the view from the room is simply amazing. And the sunset, and the main mosque of the Republic, and the river right under the windows, and V.V. Avenue. Putin.
Having listened to the recommendations not to spoil the impression of Chechen cuisine in the Grozny City restaurant, we go for a walk along Putin Avenue and have dinner at the Palazzo cafe, which many recommended to me as the best establishment in the city.
From the avenue there is an excellent view of the famous skyscrapers of Grozny in inimitable color illumination. Whenever I saw photographs of this view before, I wondered why they were lit so strangely. Now it became clear. How many glowing windows do you see? I 6. Now imagine if this neon rendering of the contours of high-rise buildings did not exist. Dead towers.
During the walk, I was struck by the almost complete absence of people on the streets. We asked the locals, they said that there is still no culture here to walk around the city. Everyone is either sitting at home, somewhere in an establishment, or riding in cars. And they walk very little, only during holidays and various events.
A stomach feast awaited us at the Palazzo. Yes, the menu here is quite unique: there is local cuisine, Italian cuisine, and even rolls. But we order amazing-tasting khingalsh and chepalgash. Without anything, it’s worth flying to Chechnya just for them! It’s very tasty.
We decided to devote the next day entirely to a trip to the mountains. Grozny is certainly good, but it was more interesting for me to see something else – the City of the Dead Tsoi-Pede. Many tourist sites include it in the list of the most inaccessible attractions in Russia due to a special access procedure: permission from the FSB of the republic is required to visit, because Tsoi-Pede is located almost on the border with Georgia. In fact, this turned out to be not entirely true and there are no problems getting into the City of the Dead. It is enough to buy a tour on the spot and the company representatives themselves will make all the necessary notifications. Moreover, I ordered the tour the day before and they managed everything.
At 9 am we met with our driver Said, got into the Lada Granta and headed towards the Argun Gorge.
Price? 5000 rubles for a permit and a car with a driver for the whole day.
Grozny is located in a flat area, but almost immediately beyond the city the foothills begin, and far on the horizon snow-capped mountain peaks constantly flash, becoming closer and larger with every kilometer.
On the road we pass through many settlements, the names of which are known to everyone. From television news of the 1995-2000s, from magazine publications, from documentary and fiction books about the Chechen war. 15 years after the end of the war, there are practically no traces of it, and once upon a time, according to Said, in almost all these villages there was not a single intact house.
Now everything has been restored and the villages and towns look very clean and well-groomed. This is understandable, after all, almost 100% of the buildings are new, not yet burnt out, not weathered, not dilapidated…
At the entrance to Shatoi, our car is stopped by a police patrol. They are interested in where we are going. Having heard the answer, everyone is asked to get out of the car and present their passports. Data, including registration, is copied into a special journal. They warn you that you must mark the return exit from the area.
For fun, we ask why this check is done, why the data is recorded. The policeman’s answer smiled:
— This is so that stones do not accidentally fall on you from above along the way.
In general, we have received protection from stones on the mountain road, we don’t have to be afraid and move on.
Behind Shatoy the asphalt ends and a very beautiful mountain road begins. Somewhere it is carved right into the rocks, somewhere it goes along the very edge of the gorge…
There is an abyss below, a rock above. Here drivers do not trot like in Grozny. Frisky driving can be expensive…
Argun Gorge is incredibly beautiful! Along the way, you want to stop every 500 meters to photograph another beautiful view. Historically, this was the most fortified place in Chechnya before the invasion of Tamerlane.
From time to time we come across military transport: “tablets”, “Urals” loaded with people, fuel tankers. Documentary books about the war come to mind again. Probably, military convoys didn’t travel here so calmly back then. I can imagine what it was like for the soldiers: you are in full view, there is nowhere to go, there is a cliff on top, a gorge and a stormy river below. I don’t even want to think what hell happened on such mountain roads during the war.
On the way we stop near the famous Ushkaloy twin towers. One of them was recently restored – it was shot by the military. Said says that there is rarely a case when there is no one near the towers.
The Argun in this place is very narrow and very fast. You definitely won’t be able to swim without consequences.
The further you go into the mountains, the less traffic there is and the more animals there are. Cows, sheep, goats.
These merino sheep do not react at all to cars passing by. They just turned around and stood there, thinking about something personal.
There are a lot of horses in Chechnya. Lean, shiny, well-groomed. Very beautiful!
Refueling from the early 90s. Apparently, all is not well with crime if the pumps still need to be locked at night.
One of the famous views of Chechnya is the local history museum in Itum-Kali. We decided not to go inside, because… The time has already passed well after noon, and there is still a border post and the end point of our route ahead – Tsoi-Pede.
Immediately beyond Itum-Kali, the asphalt road ends again, a grader and a series of border posts begin.
And about 10 kilometers away there is a border post. All passengers are disembarked here. You need to register with the border guard, the car is inspected separately while you walk along a separate corridor. The border guard emphasizes that before dark we must leave the border zone and proceed back to Itum-Kali.
And then another 25 kilometers along a dusty grader, a steep hike up the mountain and we are finally near the famous crypts of the Metro City. I talk about them in detail in the second part of the report.
Yes, selfie! I didn’t say a word about selfies. I understand that those who voted for the option “Take a selfie with 10 beautiful girls” smiled sarcastically. Well, I had to get out. It’s really very difficult to take a selfie with Chechen women. But there is always a way out…
I had to run through shopping centers and take selfies with mannequins in hijabs under the amazed glances of saleswomen.
Exactly 10 selfies. 8 with mannequins and 2 with Chechen women… Counts?)
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Text and photo author: Sergey Anashkevich
