The little town of Estosadok with the $57 billion main street

JUST a couple of streets behind a five star Marriott hotel and a four storey nightclub called Skybar where Olympic athletes ogle thong-clad pole dancers, lies is an authentic Russian mountain village.

House in Russian village, Estosadok. Picture: Ant Sharwood

JUST a couple of streets behind a five star Marriott hotel and a four storey nightclub called Skybar where Olympic athletes ogle thong-clad pole dancers, lies is an authentic Russian mountain village of 3,000 residents.

The village is called Estosadok, which translates as “Estonian garden”, and was founded in the 1800s by Estonians who fled conflict in their homeland.

The Estonians became bee keepers, and while few locals pursue that trade today, you can still buy the prized local mountain honey in shops and souvenir stalls throughout the Sochi Olympic mountain zone.

Elegant old house in Estosadok. Picture: Ant Sharwood

But the sweet nectar of foreign currency is the main game now, and Estosadok is a town with an uncertain future.

Like all rural folk, the villagers of Estosadok spin some interesting yarns.

The most colourful local tale involves a priest who was travelling on the old rickety one-lane road up the valley — the only road they had before they built a four-lane railway and parallel electric railroad for the Olympics.

The moon rises over mountains at Rosa Khutor, the setting for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

So one day as this priest travelled up the valley, there was a terrible landslide. The landslide carried with it a torrent of rocks and forest debris, and even a very grumpy and surprised grizzly bear.

The bear landed on the priest’s car, killing both beast and priest. True story. So the locals say.

As wild and woolly as that story sounds, it would have been just as fanciful to suggest ten years ago that Estosadok would be ringed on three sides by one of the largest construction sites on Earth.

Everything has changed in the valley where Estosadok sits. Everything. The river, once brimming with fish and lined with trees, is now grey and muddy and cooped up like a caged beast between brick and concrete walls.

Estosadok once consisted entirely of traditional timber cottages and farmhouses but is now dotted with swish ski chalets. Some have been completed in time for the Olympics, others not.

There are now 35 new ski lifts zigzagging all over the mountains above Estosadok and the luxurious new neighbouring ski village of Rosa Khutor. It is the fervent hope of everyone from local authorities to Vladimir Putin himself that these mountains will become Europe’s new Alps.

But will poor little Estosadok be swallowed up?

Temporary Olympic workers’ accommodation in village. Picture: Ant Sharwood

“Maria” is a Polish national who bought a chalet in Estosadok 10 years ago and spends a large chunk of each year in the village.

“I think I am the only foreigner to get land here but I came here and I really liked this place,” she says. “It is so beautiful for hiking, for swimming, for rafting, for skiing.”

Maria bought an old wooden home for $20,000 and says it would be worth at least 10 times that nowadays. But property values matter less to her than the ambience of her little slice of Russian paradise.

“I think a lot of the changes that happened are nice,” she says. “It’s amazing, I have been skiing all over Russia and this is the only place that has such infrastructure.

“But I’m a little worried. Before, I never even closed my house. Nobody would ever steal anything because all the people were local, and there was only one road coming and one road leaving.

“Now this will change, unfortunately.”

A Coke machine used as a front fence. Picture: Ant Sharwood

Maria says that cows and goats used to roam freely in the village and nearby hills, dutifully coming home of an evening. The pigs used to take off into the hills for months in summer, returning in the autumn with stripy little piglets.

Today, all properties have fences and the only farm animals are chickens. Most locals work in businesses which have sprung up along the highway.

The main Street of Russian village Estosadok with a shopping mall. Picture: Ant Sharwood

And after the Olympics?

“I don’t know,” Maria says. “I am falling back in love again with Estosadok because now it’s nice air to breathe after four years of construction when it was really dusty.

“I don’t think it’s possible to forget about this place. When you go up to the top of the mountain, you see the sea. It’s amazing.

“I will keep coming here for sure. But nobody knows here what will happen next.”

In its own humble way, the mountain village of Estosadok is a metaphor for Russia itself.

By staging the Sochi Winter Olympics, Russian President Putin clearly wanted to portray Russia as a can-do, progressive kind of place.

At its best, it is undoubtedly that. But behind the façade lies a less glamorous nation still emerging from darkness and finding its place in the world.

Bowl of borscht, the classic Russian national dish of beetroot soup. Picture: Ant Sharwood

Maybe the Russian and European middle class will come to frolic in these mountains for years to come, and Estosadok will survive as both ski town and rural village.

Maybe the village will eventually disappear, slowly devoured by progress, or maybe it will return to its old ways as the gleaming new infrastructure rusts away.

The river that runs through Estosadok is called the “Mzymta” which means “crazy” in Russian. Maybe that’s what all this development really is. Maybe it is all pure folly.