Any option to do Elbrus over land?

Living in Bulgaria now and only flights seem to go over moskou to the area. Is there a cheaper option? Like taking the ferry from varna to odessa and travelling by train to elbrus region or take a flight from sofia to tbilisi and go over land from there?

Cheapest option so far:

Veliko Tarnovo - Istanbul: 13.5 euro by bus
Istanbul - Sochi: 100 euro by ferry
Sochi - Min Vod: 17 euro by train

There must be a cheaper option by this route but cqnt find it

Veliko Tarnovo - Ruse
Ruse - Odessa
Odessa - Min Vod

But if i do that i need 2 visums, one for ukraine and one for russia ...

There's trains from Sochi to Mineralnye Vody, but they are more likely to set you back around 50 euro's - if you don't get in trouble. Honestly, if you can't spare 117 euro's, you've got bigger issues ;).

WouterB wrote:There's trains from Sochi to Mineralnye Vody, but they are more likely to set you back around 50 euro's - if you don't get in trouble. Honestly, if you can't spare 117 euro's, you've got bigger issues .

Going with some bulgarian people who are all pretty fluent in russian so things will be more easy

train is 20 dollar from sochi

Why dont you go by car? If you are 4 people splitting the petrol cost and you depart from Bulgaria, I belive it will be pretty cheap.

In 2007 me and some friends drove from Stockholm to Elbrus via the Baltics, Poland, Ukraine and ferry between Kerch - Port Kavkaz. It was a lot cheaper option than go by air via Moscow. And the petrol gor cheaper and cheaper the closer we got to Elbrus..

Petrol is 1.40 euro here, almost like belgium ... looking for trains that go through ukraine ... Want to compare costs with car if we need to ... Would be there way faster though ...

Why did you take the ferry? Cheaper in the end? Are there train stations near that ferre? Would reduce travel time big time!

Well, it would probably been cheaper/faster to go directly by car via Rostov-on-don, but we wanted to have some slack days on the crimean beaches before entering Russia. Plus we had some spare days before our visas got valid, drove faster than planned...

There was railways in Kerch, but if they were used for public purpose our industry I do not know.

Sounds like I have to buy and sell a crap trabant or lada here (100 - 150 euro) drive there come back to bulgaria and sell it again lol.

Renting a car is around 10 euro a day so also an option and bigger cars ...

how was crossing the border into russia? Did you have to pay a lot of bribes due to a swedish car?

Not a single bribe or police hustle on the whole trip, I believe our strange appearance (4 bearded hobos in a rustly old golf with all luggage tied on the roof) might have had an impact on this!

We met a gang from a serbian alpine club who hade drove from Beograd in a new fancy mini van, they had alot of trouble on the way and had to pay bribes, etc. If you speak russian, keep low profile and sound like a dumb tourist even though you understand what they are saying. To be able to take our swedish registered car into Russia we bought a car insurance from an office in the harbour of Kerch (next to the ferry). It was pretty cheap, dont remember exactly how much it was, but it was cheap...

Advantage is i go with eastern european people, not with western european people so i think the hassle will be less already ... or at least i hope.

No need for extra car insurance from bulgaria, got that figured out