After multiple trips to two Russian embassies, a lot of questioning, and more than a month of waiting — I have been granted permission to enter Russia. On September 30th I crossed out of Georgia and into Russia, where I was held at the border checkpoint for nearly eight hours, questioned by four different agents/officers of variously the police, the army, and the FSB (state security services), before a young soldier walked me through the checkpoint, bid me “Welcome to Russia”, and told me to try Ossetian pies when I reach Vladikavkaz.
The experience put me in a slightly disturbed mood, as though I had entered an intensely liminal world, and afterwards I had the strange sensation of every single little thing feeling different simply because I was now in Russia. Twenty kilometres further inside the border this feeling of strangeness intensified when I discovered GPS was no longer available (GPS is scrambled or spoofed in much of Russia, a measure taken to thwart drone strikes, rendering GPS worse than useless in many parts of the country). For this reason, updates to the map will likely not happen while I am in Russia.
In the meantime, I have 27 days left on my visa, and anywhere from 600 to 900km of Russian territory (depending on the route I take, and how many times I get lost without GPS…) between me and the Kazakh border.
