Dagestán III. - Derbent II.

After the post-apocaliptic coast I went to discover the inner parts of the city and a castle. The city of Derbent charmed me by its original atmosphere. You can see a specific combination of orient and post-soviet visage  l. There can be a mosque and couple of steps further a statue of Lenin and in between of these two there is a churche that was rebuilt to a museum with a help from UNESCO. Yes, Derbent is covered by UNESCO as a cultural heritage. Derbent was one of the gates on the old Silk way because of its strategical position between the Caucasus mountains and the Caspian sea. There is a long wall still standing in the city that served to control the traffic between the Middle East and the Eurasian plains. It supposed to be the oldest Russian city with its 5000 years.

As you can see on the picture lower the dress code in Dagestan is not so strict for women.

What I really liked about the city of Derbent was that this place is not spoiled by the turism industry at all and keeps its atmosphere. The second thing that I liked was architecture, decaying buildings and somehow chaotic streets that reminded me of Moroccan medinas.

Recycling of garbage in Derbent is still a dream from the future. The only way of recycling that you can find there are cows wandering around the streets and eating whatever they find in dumpster. So probably you can drink a milk with the taste of carton paper later.

At the castle that oversees Derbent from the top of a hill I saw this wedding. It is actually very expensive event for the husband in Dagestan to get married in relation to their low salaries (if they are lucky and have some work).

After I got back to Makchakchala later that day I hanged around with a friend of my host in his brand new white Lada. Car tuning is very popular in Dagestan and there is a big tuning community. There used to be illegal races in the city of Makchakchala. Nowadays there are some legal races every week. That night we visited a view from which there is a magnificent view on Makchakchala. However it is not allowed to go there now because the youngsters used to drink alcohol there and make randez-vous with their girlfriends ther. We were let in by a police patrol that controlled the only road coming there because there was some friend of the friend of my host or something like that. Riding Makchakchala at night is nice. There are some lakes and swamps and different smells and sounds like grasshoppers or tuned engines. Accompanied by locals I did not feel any danger.