A subscriber of the TG channel “Roof of the Tourist House” drew attention to the problem – the lack of tickets for convenient train departure times from Anapa to Moscow for the dates of the end of August.
“It is difficult to return from the resort to the capital on August 24-25. There are only seats left for the train departing at 4 a.m. We will rest with a small child, this does not suit us, because we will have to stay up all night, and then drive for a day and a half,” he writes to the editor.
We checked the availability of tickets on the Russian Railways website. Indeed, the only available option on August 24 was a train leaving Anapa at 04.17. There are 16 tickets for it in a compartment worth from 7 thousand rubles and 59 in reserved cars – from 4.8 thousand rubles (here and further availability and prices are indicated, current as of 18:00 on June 10. – Ed.).
On evening trains departing at 20:40 and 22:05, only one compartment was available.
Aleksan Mkrtchyan, the founder of the Pink Elephant travel agency network, whose company is active in the south of Russia, gives such recommendations to tourists. Firstly, regularly, several times during the day, track tickets on the Russian Railways website. They periodically appear on sale, as some passengers refuse to take trips that have already been booked. By the way, on the trains on August 25, we found six compartment seats for evening trains on sale – perhaps just “rejected” ones.
Another option is to catch tickets to Moscow from the Tunnel station, which can be reached from Anapa by taxi in about 40 minutes. There you can take trains No. 30, 288C, 234C departing from Novorossiysk.
Another way to return to the capital is by trains traveling from Crimea via the Taman–Passazhirskaya railway station, which is a 1.5-hour taxi ride from Anapa. On August 24, we managed to find tickets for train No. 164C Feodosia – Moscow, the operator is not Russian Railways, but the transport company Grand Service Express.
It is also possible that in the second half of summer, Russian Railways will add additional wagons to trains from Anapa and other resort towns. Then there may be more places on sale.
Anapa airport has been closed since February 2022. Tourists now use mainly railway transport.
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