Marshrutka Journeys

I left Moscow on Monday afternoon. The flight to Volgograd was about an hour and half, on DonAvia. This is one of the BabyFlots that have been spun off for regional service from the Soviet monopoly Aeroflot since the end of the Soviet Union. In general, the safety record of Russia’s domestic airlines is pretty poor (and that is understating things…), and it’s especially bad among the BabyFlots. After the most recent crash, outside of the Siberian city of Perm in September 2008, Aeroflot rebranded all of the BabyFlots, changing the names, for example, from Aeroflot-Don to DonAvia. It’s still basically Aeroflot (they codeshare almost all of their flights), but this way Aeroflot doesn’t get the poor press in the West in case something goes wrong.

I arrived in Volgograd at 6:30. To get from the airport to the center there are a couple of options: gypsy cabs (psst…meester, you need taxi, very cheep) or a marshrutka. For those not familiar with the post-Soviet wonder that is the marshrutka, they are basically mini-buses for the masses. They ply set routes, and have cost anywhere from 8-15R, which is a range from a quarter to a half-dollar. That’s in comparison to the $12 bus ride from Denver International to Boulder; plus, there is so much more ambience, not to mention the aromatic bouquets of your fellow passenger.


In Volgograd I stayed in the Hotel Volgograd, which is located in one of the few buildings that survived World War II. I didn’t get a chance to explore Volgograd much, given the length of the trip (again via marshrutka) to Elista, Kalmykia’s capital. This was a six-hour journey, covering 300km. If you do the math, we weren’t moving very fast. It is, however, better than the alternative of travelling across the steppe in the traditional fashion of Kalmyk nomads, via horse. The weather started off nice, and deteriorated into a ground blizzard by the end of trip. Fortunately, we had one of the few responsible drivers in the Russian Federation, and I only feared for my life a handful of occasions. This is well below the median of seven for the average long-distance marshrutka trip.


The first photo is of one of the main roundabouts in Volgograd. The sign reads: Glory to our City and our Victors. The other two photos are from the village of Ketcheneri, in Kalmykia proper, one of our stopping points on the way to Elista. The depth of the snow increased suddenly once we got to this town; we had to get out and push at one point to extract ourselves from a drift.