hike – DR WANDERLUST

Having lived in Volgograd for slightly more than 5 years now, I feel like I’m in a pretty good position to recommend 5 of the best things to do in this city. 🙂

Here we go:

1. Hike the Mamaev Kurgan.

These are the most popular historic grounds in the city, built to commemorate the Battle of Stalingrad. The hike needs you to be fit though, because it’s a hill. 🙂

Read more about this here.

2. Enjoy a Volga Cruise.

Let me introduce you to the longest river in Europe, Yes, the Volga River. There are a number of cruises offered for a very small price.

Read more about this here.

4. Barbeque on the shores of Volga.

On the other side of the river are sandy beaches where a good number of people choose to spend their weekends and holidays. Everything is allowed over there. No rules. No restrictions.

Read more about this here.

5. Visit the city’s recreational parks.

One of the things I fell in love with in Volgograd…the gorgeous, well-thought-of, beautifully sculptured parks. I wrote a post about one of them not so long ago.

Read more about this here.

Always be kind.

Dee.

❤

On the last week of August, I took a solo day trip to Naivasha. Yes, a solo day trip.

I woke up at around 7 in the morning, on a Tuesday, with no agenda. So I lay in bed thinking of how I should spend the rest of the day. Then it hit me. A day trip! 🙂

I needed to find an interesting place to visit that wouldn’t take me more than 2 hours to get to. Also, I wanted to get sorta physical. Sporty, if you will. It had been a while since I’d gotten a good workout in so I had to include something challenging in this trip.

And that’s how I decided to take a solo day trip to Hell’s Gate National Park!

I was so unsure of the whole idea since I’d never been to Naivasha by public means. Google came in handy though. I left the house at 11, four whole hours later, because I was still trying to convince myself that taking that trip would probably be one of the best things I would’ve done during my summer holiday.

It took about 2 hours to get there, rented a bike for 5 USD at the gate, paid another 3 USD because I was getting in with a bike, and another 7 USD (I don’t remember the exact figure but it was around that much) for my entry to the park. Non-citizens are charged way more by the way.

There are a couple of local tour guides who’ll want to rip you off, but thanks to TripAdvisor, I was already aware of that. The park has road signs inside so getting lost is not an issue.

It was a downhill ride from the gate with the most amazing and peaceful scenery. I saw a whole lot of zebras, warthogs and antelopes on the way.

Once at the gorge, you might want to ask for a little help from the rangers and guides at that post. It’s pretty twisted in there. But boy is it beautiful!

Everyone I ran into was surprised that I was travelling alone and kept asking if I’d left “my group” somewhere along the way. Haha! 😀 They were all super nice to me though.

I got really tired after all the hiking that I hitched a ride from the gorge back to Naivasha town. That was at 6 in the evening. It goes without saying really, that the trip was totally worth it! 🙂

Oh, and by the way, according to Wikipedia, the setting of the animated film, The Lion King, is “heavily modelled after this park”.