SUMMARY :
📍Recommended itineraries
1️ The route through Vladikavkaz
2️ The route through Mineralnye Vody
💰 Total price
🎫 Buy your transport tickets in Russia
🚂 Buy a train ticket
🚌 Buy a bus ticket
💙 Obtain your Russian transit visa in Almaty
➡️ Things to know before going to the consulate
➡️ Documents required for the visa application
➡️ What to do in Almaty while waiting for your visa?
🇷🇺 Crossing Russia
📍Recommended routes
1️ The route through Vladikavkaz
Day 1 : train de nuit Atyrau (Kazakhstan) > Astrakhan (Russia) - 10:45 p.m. to 8:51 a.m.
Day 2 : Astrakhan > Vladikavkaz
Day 3 : Vladikavkaz > Tbilisi (Georgia)
transport cost of this route: 77 euros
advantages of this route : less tiring because you can sleep in a hotel(s).
disadvantages of this route : more expensive including hotels.
2️ The route through Mineralnye Vody
🇷🇺
Day 1 : train de nuit Atyrau (Kazakhstan) > Astrakhan (Russia) - 10:45 p.m. to 8:51 a.m.
Day 2 : bus de nuit Astrakhan > Mineralnye Vody - 11h - 8:30 p.m. to 7:20 a.m.
Day 3 : night bus Mineralnye Vody > Tbilisi - 00:30 to 11 a.m.
transport cost of this route: 83 euros
advantages of this route : you save hotel nights with night buses, and you have the whole day to visit the cities!
disadvantages of this route: it costs 7 euros more in terms of transport alone, and is more tiring.
NB: this map simply shows the overall route, ignore the travel time indicated.
💰 Total price
- Price of transport tickets
1️ For the route through Vladikavkaz
- Billet de train Atyrau > Astrakhan : 29 euros
- Bus Astrakhan > Vladikavkaz : 25 euros
- Bus Vladikavkaz > Tbilissi : 23 euros
Total : 77 euros
2️ For the route through Mineralnye Vody
- Billet de train Atyrau > Astrakhan : 29 euros
- Bus Astrakhan > Mineralnye Vody : 28 euros
- Bus Mineralnye Vody > Tbilissi : 26 euros
Total : 83 euros
- Visa price : 80 dollars (75 euros), to be paid in credit card at the Russian consulate
TOTAL : between 152 and 157 euros per person (Ouch…)
NB: this price does not take into account any hotel(s), food, etc.
🎫 Buy your transport tickets in Russia
🚂 Buy a train ticket
➡️ If you have a Russian blue card, you can book your train tickets on the site Russian Railways. You will therefore be able to travel by train throughout your entire itinerary!
➡️ If you do not have a Russian credit card, you will not be able to use this site. However, you can use the site Railways KZ, and therefore take an entry train into Russia (Atyrau > Astrakhan for example).
For the rest of the route, it will be done by bus!
NB : In Russian, Atyrau is written DETAIL and Astrakhan is written АСТРАХАНЬ 1 (station 1). The train that connects the two cities does not leave every day (every two days a priori)
NB2 : Train tickets can be canceled free of charge before 24 hours before train departure. 70% of the ticket price is refunded if cancellation is made between 24 hours and 1 hour before train departure, and the ticket is not refunded if cancellation is made 1 hour or less before train departure.
Cancellation and refund of tickets can be done online, or at any station in Kazakhstan.
🚌 Buy a bus ticket
To buy your bus tickets in Russia, we recommend the site Cold, very easy to use! This is a third-party service that takes a small commission. The site is in Russian, so we highly recommend using it on Google Chrome, which has a page translator (see the button on the far right in the search bar) - it's life-changing!
NB : The cancellation conditions for your bus ticket depend on each carrier.
NB2 : the La Route du Soja team encountered some difficulties purchasing tickets on the Tutu website. The reason: the fact that Victor had a total of 3 first names, and that the boxes where he entered his contact details were not really suitable. So they simply wrote First Name #1 + Last Name, and we did a photoshop behind to add the other 2 first names, just to make it work for the visa. In short, if the site tells you “Choose another flight” or a message like that, contact them at victor.fighiera@zaclys.net
💙 Obtain your Russian transit visa in Almaty
➡️ Why a transit visa?
- Impossible for French people to apply for a tourist visa in Kazakhstan.
- For the e-visa, it does not allow crossing the Russia-Kazakhstan border, upon entry or exit. However, it will be valid if you wish to enter Russia from or towards Mongolia or China.
So you still have the transit visa!
You can apply for your transit visa at any Kazakhstan embassy or consulate, including Astana, Almaty, Uralsk or Ust-Kamenogorsk. We did it in Almaty and our testimony is therefore only valid for this consulate.
➡️ Things to know before going to the consulate
- Contrary to what you may hear, you do not need to be a Kazakh resident to apply for a Russian transit visa to enter Kazakhstan!
- THE opening hours of the Russian consulate in Almaty are Tuesday and Thursday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. You need an appointment, otherwise you cannot come in and submit your application. You have to take it on this site.
[Information in this paragraph updated on 05/13/2024 by Angéline ALLIOT].
- Consulate address: on Google Maps // on 2GIS // on Plans
- You have to ring the front door (always closed) and say “Visa”.
- If you apply for your visa on Tuesday, you will get it the following Tuesday. If you apply for your visa on Thursday, you will get it the following Tuesday too! If the consulate exceptionally has a lot of visa applications to process at the same time, you might wait a little longer.
- Your transit visa may be valid for 10 days maximum. You choose your start date and your end date of validity, to be specified on the form (see below): there is therefore no time limit for entering Russia, YOU choose your dates. https://alma-ata.kdmid.ru/queue/
For the documents, you will need:
1️ Your passport, with at least two pages free. They will keep your passport while they process your visa application!
NB : attention ! You sometimes have to show your passport to go to the surroundings of Almaty (notably Altyn-Emel and the Kolsai lakes), so you may have to give up wandering around while waiting for your passport to be returned...
2️ For EU citizens, a medical insurance certificate valid in Russia throughout your stay.
- Ours was provided to us by our travel insurance, GObyAVA. It was also helpful for our Chinese visa!
- A fake insurance certificate has worked for some. You can fake real insurance by modifying the name and contract number, or go to an agency which will issue you with a false certificate.
NB: We will not be held responsible in the event of failure, or worse! 😄
3️ The visa application form, completed on This site and printed! Here are some instructions for filling out the form:
- Purpose of Visit : Transit
- Visa category and type : Transit TR2
- Number of entries : Single (one entry)
- Date of entry and exit in Russia : this is where you choose the validity dates of your Russian visa! The total duration cannot exceed 10 days.
- You must answer “yes” to the question “Do you have travel insurance?”.
4️ A 3.5 x 4.5 cm ID photo, to stick on your printed visa application form (you can do this at the consulate, they have scissors and glue).
5️ Entry and exit tickets from Russian territory. Please note, the travel dates must be included between the date of entry and exit from the territory provided in the visa application form!
- If you plan to travel with your own vehicle, you will need to provide a copy of your driving license and vehicle documents. We also advise you to provide the planned itinerary in Russia.
NB: To print your documents and/or take an ID photo, we advise you this place, 10-15 minutes walk from the embassy and run by a very nice gentleman! His shop is on the first floor of a shopping center (Dapxah).
➡️ What to do in Almaty while waiting for your visa?
You will therefore have a week or four days to occupy while waiting for your visa! That’s good, Almaty and its region have a lot to offer!
- In Almaty, discover the Zenkov Cathedral, the Green Bazaar, the Abilkhan Kasteyev State Museum of Arts, the botanical garden (except in winter! We were there in April and the trees were still leafless...), and enjoy the many restaurants and cafes in the city.
- 30 minutes from Almaty (with bus 12), enjoy a day of skiing in the Chimbulak resort (30 euros per day, package, rental and chairlift included). If you're not much of a skier, we recommend the Medeo - Furmanov Swing hike (available on AllTrails), which starts right next to the chairlift. It lasts 4-5 hours and is magnificent in summer and winter (although difficult with snow).
- A few hours from Almaty, visit the Charyn canyon, the “singing dune” and the Kolsai and Kaindy lakes. We advise you to rent a car, since the rental costs 60 euros per day! For our part, we tried hitchhiking, but we don't recommend it if you have little time: everyone can take a taxi in Kazakhstan, so many cars stop but all require money! We only took two whole days to get to the Charyn canyon (note that the return will be much less complicated than the outward journey, since from there most return to Almaty).
NB: be careful! As explained above, you sometimes have to present your passport to go to Altyn-Emel and the Kolsai lakes, so you may have to give up wandering around while waiting for your passport to be returned... On the other hand, you don't need a passport for Charyn Canyon !
- If you don't have the budget to rent a car, or to join a bus tour (which are overpriced...), La Route du Soja has found the best plan in the world: the “Ecotourism Information Resource Center” offers all on weekends, 1 or 2 day tours to lakes Kolsai, Charyn Canyon, and sometimes even Altyn Emel, for unbeatable prices (8000 tenge / person for the day in Charyn, for example). Only drawback: the tours are in Russian.
To get to the Ecotourism Information Resource Center office (rather a crazy apartment lost in a Soviet complex), the truth adresse (pas celle de Google Maps) est : Shevchenko street, house 14, apartment 2. Trouvez-la trouver sur l'application “2GIS” (indispensable pour les transports en commun d'Almaty), en recherchant le nom russe du Center : Ecotourism Information Resource Center
🇷🇺 Crossing Russia
💡 Things to know and advice
- Don't forget to exchange cash into Russian Rubles before entering Russia! Foreign bank cards are not accepted anywhere, and Russian banks only accept dollars to exchange (and sometimes euros).
If you haven't thought about it and you are already in Russia, go to the bus station and ask the drivers of the bus coming from/going to Russia. This is what we did in Astrakhan, and the driver had a contact who could exchange Kazakh Tenge for Russian Ruble for us! Sometimes, you can also come across people getting off the train who are changing money.
- At Astrakhan station, you can leave your luggage in secure lockers to go visit the city!
- Sometimes bus drivers may ask you to pay extra on the spot for your luggage. We are not sure this is justified. We told them we had very few Russian rubles, and they left it straight.
👮 The border crossing
Kazakhstan→ Rusia:
We fall asleep on the Atyrau-Astrakhan train. At 5 a.m., we woke up to leave Kazakhstan. We briefly look inside our luggage, we are asked what we did in Kazakhstan, and we stamp our passport.
We are woken up again at 7 a.m. to enter Russia. The guards search our luggage even more briefly (only one of our two backpacks). A man dressed in civilian clothes arrives and asks us a multitude of questions, including:
- What will be our itinerary in Russia?
- What do we do for a living, and where does our travel money come from?
- Do we have acquaintances who work in the army or live in Ukraine?
- What do we think of the war in Ukraine?
- Do we have cameras with us?
Then, this same man asks us for our phones and looks at our Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram conversations and our contacts.
We finally fill out a country entry form, and we fall asleep until the train arrives at the station.
Russia → Georgia:
This border crossing was very quick. For the exit from Russia, we were only asked what our itinerary would be after Russia. No questions from the Georgian side, we only got our passport stamped.
To conclude, although the passage to Russia is very expensive and will have required a lot of research (information being scarce at the time we wanted to go there), we do not regret this option. It allowed us to discover a portion of this immense country that is Russia, and we are very proud not to have taken the plane!
I promise, crossing Russia is less complicated than you think.
join us on our journey!
Commentaires