Arty Maharajh, 39, likes to travel off the beaten path. Literally.

Last month, Maharajh, vice president of research for downtown L.A. real estate firm Cassidy Turley, took 18 days off work for a trip with his wife, Anna, 28.

They flew to Russia to visit her family in Volgograd, a city about 600 miles south of Moscow near the border of Kazakhstan.

Maharajh said one of his goals in taking the trip was to get to know his wife’s family better, a tall task given the language barriers.

“I only get to see my mother- and father-in-law once a year and they don’t speak a lick of English,” he said, “so it’s important that I go over there to spend quality time with them.”

To get to know the family better, Maharajh drove 1,000 miles with his wife and in-laws for 24 hours straight to visit Okunevo, a remote village where his wife’s mother and grandparents were born. He had to go for miles off-road to reach the village, which lacked electricity and running water. In fact, his mother-in-law told him the community was so small that no American had ever set foot in it before.

Maharajh said that while he got a lot of stares, he was honored to have visited.

“Being there connected me with my family in a way that I’ve been trying to do for the last four years since I’ve been married to my wife,” he said.

Sardinian Scene

Another lover of exotic travel is Paige Craig, a local angel investor and founder of the defunct Betterworks. He was in the midst of a worldwide jaunt this summer when he took a break to meet up with his favorite traveling partner, his nephew Vincent Powell.

The two got together in Rome to do some exploring and jogging amid the ruins.

“Running outdoors on the surface where ancient towers stood is a crazy experience,” Craig said. “It feels anachronous.”

Of the several destinations in Western Europe that Craig and his tyro compatriot explored this summer, their favorite was Sardinia. The island off Italy’s coast was the ideal place for the two to indulge their love of scuba diving. They spent a weekend swimming through a maze of underwater caves, amid five-foot-long lobsters and iridescent fish.

“In one place, we popped up through a weird wormhole and went into an underground lake,” Craig recounted. “There was a small airspace where we could breathe musty air. It was a trip.”

Staff reporters Bethany Firnhaber and Tom Dotan contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].