Dagestan. Family trip

After a delicious breakfast, we set off further south along the Caspian Sea, to Derbent, one of the oldest cities in Russia.

The trip is short, it will take about 2 hours, and you can catch up on sleep, look out the window, or ask each other riddles with the whole family.

In Derbent, we check into an apartment, have a little rest.

After lunch at a cafe, we drive to the village of Arblyar.

Here, on the sand by the water, the Soviet Lun ekranoplane is resting and waiting for its finest hour. Ekranoplan is a bizarre hybrid of a ship and an airplane, developed by Soviet military designers. In the evening we return to the apartment, share our impressions, chat and play.

• transfer time: 2 hours;
• Accommodation: 6-bed apartments, rooms for 2 people.

Today we are walking around Derbent.

And, first of all, we go to see the fortress of Naryn-Kala.

We will look at the excavation sites of ancient settlements, admire the views of the city from the height of the walls, and learn how the church on the territory of the fortress became a water reservoir.

After an interesting tour, we will walk around the old town, go to the embankment and have a delicious lunch with national dishes in a cozy cafe.

By the way, there are wonderful recreation areas for children with modern ladders and swings, let's visit one of them so that the children can run around.

No moving, we walk a lot.

Take a leisurely walk and explore the city.

Dagestan continues to amaze us. Today we will go further into the mountains, to the cozy village of Gunib.

Translated from the Avar language, "Gunib" is a pile of stones. The village fully justifies its name, located on a mountain plateau at an altitude of 1,500 m.

The road here lies along a steep mountain serpentine, and outside the window there will be stunning landscapes of peaks, valleys and stormy rivers.

On the way, we will stop at the Saltinskaya gorge to see a unique underground waterfall, the only one in Dagestan.

We arrive in Gunib in the afternoon, check into a separate house, have dinner and relax. At night, we will listen to national Caucasian fairy tales and go to sleep sweetly in our beds.

• Transfer time: 5 hours;
• a comfortable hotel in the center of the village.

Today we can lie in bed more – we take a break from moving and walk a lot. Guniba has the purest mountain air and 300 sunny days a year, so the place is ideal for long walks with the whole family.

You can explore the village, which lies on three tiers of mountains.

We suggest visiting the Gunib Fortress, picking up cones for crafts in the Upper Gunib Nature Park, and visiting the White Cranes memorial, opened by poet Rasul Gamzatov (this departure day falls on May 9).

The most active and restless can arrange a mini hike in the mountains with a picnic on the observation deck.

In the evening, we will gather the whole company in the house, share our impressions, take part in a creative master class with our parents or play board games.

We walk a lot.

You can go light trekking.

Get your cameras ready and let out enthusiastic gasps! Today we will visit the business card of Dagestan – the abandoned village of Gamsutl.

You won't be able to get close to the village, so you'll have to take a long but extremely scenic walk into the mountains. If desired, it will be possible to drive jeeps.

Not so long ago, Gamsutla was bustling with life, and children were playing ball on its streets. But gradually all the villagers moved closer to the big cities, and the last indigenous inhabitant, Abdulzhalil Abdulzhalilov, died in 2015. Now only tourists and mountain winds walk along the streets of the ghost village.

And we will also walk through the medieval streets between houses closely glued to the rocks and look at the neighboring mountains and gorges from a height.

In the evening, we move even higher into the mountains to the village of Khunzakh (1700 m).

Here we will admire the incredible canyon and the Tobot Waterfall.

In winter, it freezes, turning into a giant icicle, but we will see the waterfall in late spring during the period of maximum high water.

If we have the strength and desire, we will stop at the Karadakh gorge on the way. Let's warn you right away that a walk through the gorge can be very difficult for children!

We check into a cottage in Khunzakh, and in the evening we can go to one of the observation decks on the edge of the canyon and watch the sunset.

Before going to bed, we will arrange a reading of traditional Avar fables and nursery rhymes by roles.

The journey takes 1.5 hours.

Today is the day of a big road trip back to the capital of Dagestan.

Along the way, we will stop to look at the famous Cherkesskaya hydroelectric dam, photograph the azure expanse of the Irganai reservoir and the rugged shores of the Chirkei reservoir.

In the middle of the day, we will make a long stop at the observation deck overlooking the Sulak Canyon. We will stop at a fish restaurant to see the farm, have a snack and go boating.

If desired, you can take UAZ trucks to the canyon itself and take a boat ride along it.

Well-fed and rested, we rush to Makhachkala on a good road. We check into a familiar hotel, where we have dinner and go to bed. It's been a long and eventful day!

• moving: about 5 hours + long stops;
• Accommodation: hotel, rooms with 2 or 4 beds.

In the morning, we'll have our last breakfast together, and then we'll pack up, collect our thoughts, and head towards the airport.

If time permits, we recommend staying in hospitable Dagestan. It's warm, sunny and delicious!

• Transfer: 40 minutes to the airport.