I just got back from Georgia/Dagestan excursion a few days ago. I travelled around Tbilisi, Derbent and Makhachkala for a bit. Some relevant takeaways:
Tbilisi is awesome. Highly recommend. Food is great, people are wonderful. We visited Gymnasia Tbilisi who produced Roman Dolidze (no one cares). Coaches and participants were cool enough to let us hang out for warmups. Don’t have much to say about it.
From Tbilisi, Makhachkala is only like 1.5 hours if you fly. Dagestan is a weird place. If you visit, make sure you have a Russian friend with you, or at least have basic knowledge of the language. We tried to visit the Eagles MMA gyms in both Makhachkala and Derbent, but were politely declined entry. I think they are renovating both locations.
DagFighter in Makhachkala were super cool and allowed us come in and visit. Zabit and Omari Akhmedov were produced by DagFighter. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see either and were told Zabit travels to BJJ gyms and will likely compete soon. They gave us suggestions of places not to eat at, and where not to go. This was helpful because whereas most were indifferent toward us, we definitely stood out and drew eyes (one of the guys with us was black and everyone who addressed us called him ‘negr’/негр).
Not a bad experience. Was expecting hostility and received none. Wouldn’t stay there a prolonged period of time, especially with a black person in your group. It was kind of disappointing because I thought the place would be something more than Little Islam Russia, but that’s all it was. There are gyms clustered all over Makhachkala, but they are open at really weird times of days. One we visited was allegedly open every other two hours, but we never saw anyone there. Food was OK. Vistas around the coast were nice.
I’d give Dagestan a solid visit Georgia instead / 10.