I confess that visiting Dagestan for tourism purposes in the coming years was clearly not part of my plans..
But life often presents us with surprises, and in March, due to the cancellation of all Baku-Moscow flights, I had to to get home through the pedestrian checkpoint Yarag-Kazmalyar on the border of Azerbaijan and Dagestan to Makhachkala, from where it was possible to fly to Moscow without any problems.
I will not go into details, but it so happened that I missed the flight to Makhachkala, and I had almost two free days before the next flight. I decided to stay in Derbent, which is 55 km from the Azerbaijani border and 107 km from the Makhachkala Uytash airport.
it is clear that in Makhachkala, apart from seeing local monuments and museums, there is nothing much for a tourist to do.
I don’t like boring museums and nondescript monuments, even with a good history, I prefer beautiful photogenic places where you can take good pictures. Therefore, usually only architectural sights and nature appear in all my travel reports.
Derbent was no exception, and given that I had only one full day, I chose five places to visit:
- Naryn-Kala Fortress
- Old Town with Fortified Walls
- Derbent Juma Mosque
- Seaside Park and Beach
- Ekranoplan “Lun”
All of them are located directly in the city, with the exception of an unusual aircraft ship resting on the shores of the Caspian Sea, in the area of the Patriot Park under construction, which is 20 km from Derbent.