Confined By the Pandemic, Russian Tourists Flock to Dagestan
With foreign holidays ruled out, Russians are warming to a mountainous Caucasian region that, until recently, was seen as dangerous and backward. May 4, 2021 Dagestan combines striking mountains and remote villages with the ancient fortress city of Derbent. Felix Light / MT
CHOKH, Dagestan - Maxim Alyoshin sips sweet black tea from a thermos flask in this picturesque mountain village as he recalls the horror stories his father told him about fighting jihadist militants in the region in the 1990s as part of an elite Russian special forces regiment.
“We always heard scary things about Dagestan, that we’d be kidnapped as slaves if we went,” said Alyoshin, a 32-year-old civil engineer who had traveled 2,000 kilometers south with his wife from their home in central Russia to spend two nights in Chokh.