Russia Travel Tips: How to travel Russia in 2025 (Must-Watch Before Your Trip!)

Russia Travel Tips: How to travel Russia in 2025 (Must-Watch Before Your Trip!)

Hello and welcome to Tallin! We are currently in 
Estonia but this is not our final destination. We are going on an adventure that has been buzzing 
around our heads for quite some time now. We are going to take the challenge of traveling to 
Russia in 2025. It won’t be an easy thing to do as there are lots of sanctions. Currently Russia 
is the most sanctioned country in the world and therefore also for travelers it is quite hard to 
travel there. That is the reason why I want to take you with me to prepare you for your own 
trip to Russia – if you are interested in that. We are going to take a bus and travel to Russia by 
bus, cross the border walking and then end up in the magnificent city of St. Petersburg. Let’s go 
on that adventure together! Traveling to Russia, especially from the west, is not as simple 
as it used to be. There are a lot of logistical things you need to know and as we are going to 
make that journey I’m going to take you along with me and explain you everything you need to 
know to plan your own trip to Russia based on my experience and my research. There are lots of 
things you need to know: from visa, how to get to Russia, how to book hotels, your flights, money is a 
super important topic. We are going to cover all of this so that you can make your trip successful. 
Ever since 2022 there are no direct flights to Russia anymore. That means you will need to take 
a connecting flight either from Turkey, Istanbul or from Dubai. These are two very important hubs 
nowadays. However, this is also the most expensive option you have. There are further options that 
are way more affordable and those include border crossings overland with buses. That’s what 
we are going to do. The border between Estonia and Russia is a very popular route to take but there’s 
a second one in Kaliningrad and Poland which you can also take. However, it is impossible to find 
direct flights into Russia on web pages such as Skyscanner which is what I am usually using. 
You won’t find anything on there. So you need to rely on other web pages that I’m going to link 
in the description below. So make sure to check those out. The next thing you need to take care 
of is a visa. There are lots of visa requirements nowadays. There are Latin American countries for 
example that don’t need a visa at all, but European countries, the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, 
the UK… All of those countries will need a visa. For Europeans it is quite easy to get. The visa 
process will take 4 days only and it is an eVisa so it’s super simple and straightforward. You just 
need to fill out a form and then get it directly via email. However, you will need an insurance and 
there’s the next problem here because there is no European or international health insurance that 
will cover Russia anymore. At least according to my research. If you know anything else feel free 
to drop it in the comment section below. So what I did was I got a Russian health insurance that 
will cover me during my trip. You will need this health insurance for both visa processes even 
if you need to get a physical visa or the eVisa. Having the visa and knowing how to enter 
Russia, we will actually figure out together how this whole process of crossing the border 
is going to work out. We are going to the bus station here in Tallin now and take a bus that will 
take us through the border and to St. Petersburg. We made it to the bus station and I believe our 
bus is already there. I will leave you the bus company in the description below as well if you 
want to get your tickets. It has cost us €38 per person and according to the schedule it is a 6 and 
1/2 hours bus ride. However, I’ve heard stories of the borders… I don’t know how long we will really 
need because some people said it took only half an hour to get through the border. Others said it 
took up to 10 hours. So I have no idea when we will actually be in St. Petersburg today and I’m also 
not sure if we can take the same bus all the way to St. Petersburg or if we have to change buses at 
the border. We’ll figure it out together. Let’s get on the bus. Okay, we are on the bus. Honestly, 
I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous before a trip. Literally nervous, not excited because 
I don’t know anybody who has recently traveled to Russia and there are still so many open questions. 
But I think this is going to be amazing. Seriously, I think this is going to be a super 
interesting trip and I can’t wait to get started. We are on our way to Russia. The bus is super 
empty. There are about 10 to 15 people on here. So I hope that is good for us because hopefully 
this will mean we won’t take too long at the border. Before entering the bus they checked our 
tickets obviously and my visa in my case. They were also asking us if we have some food with us. 
For example you are not allowed to bring either eggs, meat or cheese. So if you have that on the 
bus make sure to eat it before getting to the border. They also ask us if we have Euros with 
us. It’s important to know that you are not allowed to bring Euros with you if you’re coming from 
a European country. Since we are starting this journey in Estonia we decided to bring US Dollars 
with us. Cash is king. So yes, you will have to bring some kind of money. It is impossible to use credit 
or debit cards that were not issued in Russia. Due to the sanctions all of these are blocked. They 
aren’t going to work on web pages, you won’t be able to pay in supermarkets or go to the bank 
with them. So make sure to calculate your cash well. You can subscribe to the channel because at some 
point I’m also going to create a video to tell you our expenses here in Russia so that you can 
plan more or less how much money you need per day. There’s another option of opening a bank account 
in Russia but again, if you want to open up one you will also need cash to put it into the bank 
account. So in any case it is definitely necessary to bring cash with you as a tourist. There’s 
another option to trade with cryptocurrency and to transfer cryptocurrency to a Russian bank 
account. That could be an option. I am personally not an expert on that. So I only recommend you to 
do that if you know how this works. In any case, if you need any support feel free to contact me 
and I will do my best to support you. We are now in Narva which is the town in front of the 
border of Russia and we are waiting in line which is super long. I’m going to stop the timer to 
see how long it’ll actually take us to cross. We don’t really know what’s going to happen because 
the bus driver only spoke Russian I think. So we’re just going to follow our group and hopefully end 
up on the other side where there will be hopefully another bus waiting for us. I was very optimistic 
at that moment but just a few minutes later rumors started to spread that we may not make it 
across the border on that day. We arrived at 5:40pm and the border would close at 11 p.m. Seemed 
enough time to me but in the end we were some of the last people who were let through that day. I 
guess we were lucky because yes, it has happened that they wouldn’t let people pass anymore. When 
we were in between the Russian and Estonian side of the border I started to think, is this really 
such a good idea? Am I even doing the right thing here? And what is awaiting me there on the other 
side? Europe clearly has its standpoint. And while I am absolutely against any war, I also don’t want 
to judge a whole country by political decisions. Crossing that border was me walking into the 
unknown, staying open-minded despite all we hear in the news and the desire to create my 
own opinion about a country and its people. I can’t believe it! As you can notice probably 
it is dark meaning, we took a long time. 5 hours and 14 minutes later we made it to Russia. I 
cannot believe this but we are finally here. We waited on the Estonian border five hours. 
So once we crossed the Estonian border it took us only 14 minutes to do the rest here 
in Russia and that’s it. So yeah, the problem is on the European side, definitely. I can 
only again emphasize do not bring Euros. There was a lady that wasn’t being 
allowed to enter because on the European side, on the Estonian side. They found a 5€ bill in 
her pocket and with that she had been returned to Estonia. We only have US dollars, so we are fine. 
We now have to find our bus. I hope it is still there and then we will at some point today also 
end up in St. Petersburg, finally at our hotel. Even though we are now almost 2 hours late there 
is a bus waiting for us on the other side. I don’t know how exactly the system works but don’t worry 
about that, there will be a bus waiting for you on the other side. For us it is now a 2 and 1 half hours 
drive to St. Petersburg more or less. It’s dark. It’s late. Right now it’s 11 p.m and we will arrive… I 
don’t know… Not before 1 in the morning. So super late. We won’t do anything else today. Just find our 
hotel. And speaking of hotels, there are two major web pages where you can make your hotel bookings. 
The usual ones such as booking.com aren’t going to work for Russia. There won’t be anything on there. 
So make sure to use one of those two web pages. I personally used ZenHotels because there you can pay 
with your currency and your normal credit card. So that was super helpful and it is especially 
helpful if you do not want to bring a lot of money in cash with you. If you don’t want to use that web 
page you can also talk to the hotel directly and ask them to pay at your arrival in cash. They will 
most likely accept it. It’s quite common currently and it might even be a little bit less expensive 
because as far as I know, ZenHotels in your foreign currency will be a little bit more expensive. 
There is a second option that you can take if you don’t want to enter Russia via Tallin and that is 
Kaliningrad. We are going to do that when we leave Russia. So we will experience that as well and I 
will also provide you a guide – a full guide on my Russian trip. So if you need any further details, 
any information and especially all the times and prices for all the buses you can take or flights 
you can take, all the websites and so on… All of these information will be in the guide. So make 
sure to check out the link in the description below if you still feel a little bit lost with 
this whole process of planning your trip to Russia. Tomorrow I will take you with me to a currency 
exchange place and we will figure out together how we can exchange our Dollars into Rubles. See 
you tomorrow! And here we are! Back with energy. We slept very well. We got some nice rest 
and we are excited to start our first real day here in St. Petersburg. We arrived here at around 
2:00 a.m and then we had to walk to our hotel. One thing that I completely ignored was the fact 
that of course we don’t have cash, so we cannot pay a taxi, neither the public transport. So we had to 
walk more or less 45 minutes to get to our hotel. The good thing was that we already had internet 
and that is something that I would also recommend you to be prepared for. In my case, I use an eSIM 
and this is not a paid collaboration or anything. This would just be an honest recommendation as I 
think it is extremely useful. You also have to remember that here in Russia apps like 
Instagram and YouTube don’t work. So you will need a VPN. The eSIM I have has that included. 
So my internet worked from the first second of arriving here in Russia. I will leave you a link 
in the description below which will also give you a discount for your own eSIM on your next 
trip. So if you want to use that, feel free to do so. Otherwise, I do recommend you to get an 
VPN before coming here if you want to continue to use apps such as Instagram. For us the eSIM was super 
helpful because as I said, we had to walk to the hotel. So I was able to navigate with Yandex Maps 
which by the way is an app that you should keep in mind and download before coming here. It’s the 
Google Maps of Russia and it works perfectly fine here. So now for us it is time to finally find 
an currency exchange office because we don’t have cash still and we are hungry. So that’s the 
first thing we are going to do now. We are going to an office close to our hotel. I will leave you 
a name of the street of an exchange office here in St. Petersburg here. That is supposedly 
the best office you can find with the best rates of St. Petersburg. We will figure out how 
the currency exchange works in there together. Mission completed! We’ve got our first 
rubles. We’ve exchanged them in the office here behind me. They are open every day. Today is 
Sunday. So they are even open on Sundays. We’ve got 8,250 rubles for $100. Anyway, it was pretty 
straightforward and quick. They exchanged it easily without any problems. But make sure to bring 
dollars or bills in general that are perfectly fine. Literally, they shouldn’t have any marks, 
they shouldn’t have any folded corners or whatever because you will pay more for those bills. It is 
super important to have bills that are impeccable. There will be an extra charge in case there is a 
folded corner for example or if there are marks and even if you use dollar bills that are older 
than the year 2006. So make sure to also bring the new ones, the colored ones with you to not pay 
any extra fee on the exchange rate. We are now going to spend some rubles and get some breakfast 
finally. If you want to join us on the tour through St. Petersburg make sure to subscribe to 
the channel and I will hopefully see you next week!

Russia in 2025 is a hard country to travel to due to all the sanctions. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to travel to Russia in 2025. In fact, travelling to Russia will be the most unique experience as now is the chance to experience Russia in a very local way. However, it is important to prepare yourself well for your trip to Russia.

In this video I will discuss all my Russia travel tips and take you on my journey from Tallin, Estonia to St. Petersburg, Russia. Together we will cross the Estonian-Russian border and figure out how to travel to Russia in 2025.

Make sure to watch the full video to plan your own trip to Russia and to come prepared and have a smooth and enjoyable trip to Russia.

Timeline:
00:00 Intro
00:54 Current situation in Russia for Travellers
01:24 Flight to Russia and how to enter Russia
02:16 Visa Requirements Russia
03:28 Tallin Bus Station
04:19 Bus ride Tallin to St. Petersburg
05:20 How to pay in Russia
06:38 Arriving on the Russian Border, Narva
07:06 Crossing the Border Estonia to Russia
08:10 Arrival in Russia
09:38 How to book hotels in Russia
11:12 First morning in St Petersburg
11:42 Internet in Russia
12:38 Exchange money in Russia
14:06 Outro

#russia #travelrussia #travelguide2025 #russia2025 #traveltips2025

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