The North Caucasus Railway connects hundreds of towns between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea with the total length of the tracks more than 6000 km. One of the most beautiful part of it is situated between Tuapse and Sochi — in so called Russian subtropics. Yes, there are subtropics in Russia. With palm trees, six months of swimming season and snowless winter. This is the largest resort area in Russia and every summer hundreds of thousands people go there for vacation.
Along with nice sea beaches and other resort attractions, there are numerous mountain trails to waterfalls, gorges and summits. The nature of the North Caucasus has extreme diversity from place to place. Very high precipitation causes heavy snowfalls in winter and high mountains becomes covered with thick layer of snow. A traveler who decided to climb a mountain in the North Caucasus would probably be surprised finding glaciers just 40 km away from the subtropical sea coast.
Below are the most famous and easy-to-visit places in this area.
- Tuapse (beautiful sea port, nice beaches)
- Sochi — the largest resort area in Russia
- Big bridge in Zubova Gorge (one of the highest bridges in Russia)
- Krasnaya Polyana (Red Meadow) — the place where 2014 winter olympic games will be
Next are some interesting nature attractions where you can take an excursion tour.
- Orekhovy waterfall on Sochi river
- Agura gourge and Eagle rocks
- Yew-boxtree grove in Khosta (near Sochi)
- Vorontsovskie caves
If you can read Russian, visit the Russian version of this page, which has much more detailed description.