A spectacular road passing through a deep, narrow canyon leads up from Adler to Krasnaya Polyana (Red Valley). At the end, about 70km from Sochi, is a small settlement surrounded by mountains up to 2375m high.
Category: Russian Caucasus
Kislovodsk (Sour Waters), the most popular of the resorts, is hillier, greener, prettier but more expensive than Pyatigorsk. ‘Love affairs that begin at the foot of Mashuk reach happy endings here’, Lermontov wrote. If you’re not staying in Kislovodsk then come for a day trip.
The town of Gelendzhik sweeps around a curving bay that provides shelter for this laid-back seaside resort. The beach is pebbly but the calm sea is clean and inviting.
Mt Elbrus rises imperiously on a northern spur of the Caucasus ridge at the end of the Baksan Valley. Surrounding it and flanking the valley are mountains that are lesser in height but equally awe-inspiring.
Zooming through a winding narrow and forested valley, visitors to Dombay are suddenly confronted with a sheer wall of mountains crowned with white shark-teeth summits. This is the heart of the Caucasus. Only those blasé about mountains would fail to be knocked off their perches by this stupendous vista.
Dagomys resort, 12km from Sochi, stands in its own hilly grounds, between the sea and the Sochi-Dagomys road, 1km away. Built for the peak of foreign tourism in late Soviet times, the resort is not as lively as Sochi. The attraction is for a quiet holiday with everything in one place.
The two mountain destinations most visit- ed by foreigners for wonderful skiing, hiking and climbing are Dombay and Elbrus, accessible from Pyatigorsk, Kislovodsk and Nalchik.
A narrow coastal strip edges the Black Sea from where rolling hills ascend fairly rapidly into mountains in the southeast and low uplands in the northwest. This is Russia’s seaside playground. A long summer from June to October gives rise to warm to hot weather, plenty of sunshine and a warm sea. Several resort towns dot the sometimes-rugged coast and Sochi is the pearl.