The sole purpose of stopping in Astrakhan was to stay for a couple of nights in the exotic little Shchuka (“pike”) hotel which has been built in the style of 18th-century Astrakhan. However it was full and there is not much to see in Astrakhan apart from a very large and impressive kremlin with a beautiful cathedral. We visited it in 2018. The best thing about the city is the Volga embankment with its outdoor cafes, but only in summer when the weather is warm and dry and you can watch the people strolling leisurely by. This year it was bitterly cold and the embankment was deserted so we decided, rather reluctantly, to press on to Groznyi. The large signpost at the edge of the town pointed the ways to Makhachkala (south-west of the city) and Elista to the west. Elista is the capital of Kalmykiya which is nominally Buddhist, and I thought that might be a more interesting route. We got diesel at a filling station where the half-wit who filled the van with diesel left the pump running, poured diesel over the floor and then tried to charge me 4,239 Rub instead of 4,000. A friendly lorry driver helped me explain to the cashier what had happened and I got the correct change. We found a nice official parking area in the steppe and would have had a very relaxing night were it not for a refrigerated truck which parked next to us and left his engine running all night.
The steppe in Astrakhan Province
Kremlin
Army recruiting poster