Holiday in Grozny
I'm wondering how long it'll be before Chechnya features on the backpackers trails.
A train service from Moscow-Grozny started up last year and seems to be running relatively smoothly. Although things aren't good at the moment (no electricity or running water yet and 90% of buildings destroyed) Grozny seems to be starting to slowly re-develop and make some sort of progress. Although it isn't exactly a place you'd go for some peacful relaxation, the heavy shelling has stopped and there seems to be some sort of stability.
I can't find any websites relating to tourism in Chechnya yet and I think I'll leave it for a couple of years. But maybe one day...
posted by anton @ 1:27 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
What are the reasons for tourists to visit Chechnya? Any areas of natural beauty/history? Or will it just be war tourism and buying bullets?
To be honest I suppose I wasn't totally serious about Chechnya becoming a backpackers haven in a couple of years, more idle musing on my part. I was thinking whether Grozny is Sarajevo 10 years ago. But Grozny is not Sarajevo. In the 1980s Sarajevo was a big tourist attraction, while I think Grozny has always been a shitty, ugly backwater. Just had a look at Grozny on Google Earth, and there wasn't much there (apart from a few bombed out crators)which represented the city centre and even 20 years ago it would probably have been crappy, while Sarajevo was in all the guidebooks as being beautiful.
The reason I write these random thoughts is that I'm currently reading a book about an ex-British paratrooper who (for his own motives) decided to live in Sarajevo 1993-95 in the midst of the war for the adrenalin rush that it gave him...I was just trying to contemplate what it was like...
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