road to bakhchisarai

Balaklava, outside Sevastopol', site of the Crimean War battle memorialized in "The Charge of the Light Brigade."
Sunday morning commerce outside Bakhchisarai. Once you get away from the coastal resorts, Crimea is extremely impoverished. Large numbers of Crimean Tatars--Turkish people who descended from the Mongols who invaded Eurasia in the 12th century--are returning to their homeland from Siberia and Central Asia, where they were exiled by Stalin. Many live in metal shacks or squat illegally in dumps. A lucky few seemed to have some goats or chickens, but most survive by hunting/gathering--the land here is too dry even for farming (except viniculture).
The cliffs of Bakhchisarai.

The Uspenskii monastery--allegedly the oldest in the former Soviet Union--is built into the cliffs. It dates back to the 9th century. Christianity came to Russia through Crimea, which had frequent contact with Byzantium through Black Sea trade.