Russia travel guide

A beautiful island located in the equally beautiful Lake Baikal. The only village, Khuzhir, is inhabited by tough-looking people who live in weather-beaten wooden cottages and get around on the dirt roads by Russian jeeps – or horses. There are several shamanic areas on the island with colourful clothes-wrapped poles. The only way to get here is by ferry or, in winter when the lake freezes over, simply by driving on the lake. Explore the island by jeep, foot, horse or even dog-sledge, is the main thing to do, besides enjoying the tranquility of the Siberian island life.

If visiting Pereslavl-Zalessky try to set aside a couple of days for on foot exploration of this quietly beautiful 12th-century gem of a provincial town which, perhaps as a result of being bypassed by the train line, has been spared heavy development and has preserved a charming rural atmosphere that makes for a pleasant escape from Moscow. At the same time an impressive number of monasteries, churches and cathedrals ranging from the quaintly pretty to the simply jaw-dropping, the oldest of which was built in 1152, hint at Pereslavl’s former glory as a major centre of culture. As well as these main sites, hidden gems constantly pop up to surprise the visitor who takes the time to explore Perevslavl’s network of dirt lanes lined by log cabins with traditional carved window frames. In summer, camping on the shores of pretty Lake Pleshcheevo is popular.

Those with a few days on their hands will be well-rewarded if they make the effort to get out of Perm and explore the surrounding area, as many beautiful spots in the Ural Mountains can be visited on a day trip. A good place to start is Usva, a lovely village of traditional wooden cottages spread out on the banks of a river and surrounded by taiga forests. From here you can walk along the river bank to a natural 150 m stone column protruding into the air, known as Chyortovy Palets ('Devil's Finger'). From Usva you can also access Kamenny Gorod ('Stone City'), a large area in the forest strewn with huge boulders and monoliths. Climbing the tallest gives you a spectacular view of the surrounding taiga forest. Other attractions near Perm include perhaps the best-preserved of Stalin's gulag concentration camps, Perm 36, and the Kungur Ice Cave. Well equipped for excursions, these grottos receive 100,000 tourists a year who come to see the ice formations within, both natural and man-made. The best time to visit is March or April when there is still a lot of ice left over from winter.

During the 18th century, one of the greatest mathematicians of all times, Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), lived in Kaliningrad, or Königsberg at the time. He solved a problem known as the "Seven Bridges of Königsberg", which was to decide whether it was possible to find a walk through Königsberg that would cross each of the seven bridges once and only once. Euler figured out that it wasn't possible - and invented a new branch of math, graph theory, along the way. The seven bridges connected the two islands Kant Island (formerly Kneiphof) and October Island (formerly Lomse Island) with the north bank and south bank of Pregel River. Today, there are only five of the seven bridges left (if you count the new highway bridge, Leninskl prospekt, as two), where only two are "originals" from Euler's time (High Bridge and Honey Bridge). Mathematically, that means it's possible today to walk a route, where you cross each of the remaining five bridge once and only once.

This rough-around-the-edges Soviet town on the beautiful, little visited northern shore of Lake Baikal was built from scratch in the 1970s during the construction of the BAM railway. At first BAM workers who arrived from all over the Soviet Union lived in tents in the forest, then small cabins, then, after many years, apartments. Now the grey concrete of the centre contrasts the wooden bungalows of the outskirts, the BAM worker monuments pay homage to the Soviets while the holy spots like the one in the photo above remind one of the area's indigenous Buryat people, and the grimness of the town itself is starkly juxtaposed against the jaw-dropping natural beauty that surrounds it. There is a hostel in town with English speaking staff and it’s possible to organize driving or skiing on the frozen lake in winter, and trekking, boat trips, wind surfing and water skiing in summer. Alternatively you can explore the surrounding area on your own. Locals are very surprised to see foreigners, very hospitable and very proud of local history and their work on the BAM.

Ever since it was first mentioned in the year 863, Smolensk, sitting on key East-West and North-South trade routes, has been fought over time and time again. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that much of what remains, though extremely impressive, is in fact reconstruction. Nevertheless, the red towers of the old city walls and the simply jaw-dropping Assumption Cathedral would make it a mistake not to stop here if entering Russia from Belarus or vice versa. Heading uphill towards the town centre from the grim train station area will take you into pleasanter parts of town and past a lovely view of the city walls across the River Dnepr. Continuing further up the hill brings you to the town centre and peaceful Glinka Garden. Smolensk was the birthplace of Russian concert music in the 19th Century and opposite the Glinka Garden stands the appealing old Concert Hall. Plenty of concerts are played here to this day, often using balalaikas instead of violins, and an annual music festival is held.

Russia's second largest city and former capital was founded in 1703 in the middle of a swamp, tens of thousands of conscripted serfs dying during its construction. In the calm and relatively traffic-free centre, built around an intricate web of canals, much of the old, beautiful Tsarist architecture has been preserved although often in a slightly dilapidated state. A number of enormous cathedrals and churches built in a dazzlingly varied array of styles simply take your breath away. Major attractions include the Hermitage, the world's largest art museum and several palaces and castles outside the city. In remoter parts of Leningradskaya Oblast, the province in which St Petersburg is found, the grandeur of the city is almost unimaginable. Here people live in tiny villages of log cabins only accessible by hours of driving down dirt tracks and waiting for ferries to cross bridgeless rivers. Villages like Gimreka and Shchelyeyki have incredibly beautiful, centuries-old log churches while the one in Rodionovo, built in 1493, is one of the oldest wooden buildings in Russia.

A twenty-minute bus ride from the centre of Krasnoyarsk brings you to the Stolby National park. The park is famous for the 60-90 metre-high karst peaks (stolby) scattered throughout the area that the locals say ressemble "a land of forest giants". The bulbous formations were created by pulses of magma squeezed out of the pores of the earth's crust. A little like squeezing Vegemite between crackers! If you come in the colder months, hiking can be challenging to say the least but if you manage to climb to the top of a stolby and look out away from the rocks into the taiga forest, the view is incredible.

The Tersky Coast, its shores lapped by the White Sea during the few months when it isn’t frozen, is home to a people called the Pomors whose ancestors left Russia in the Middle Ages to live here in the Arctic. They remained free from the yoke of serfdom and landownership that blighted the rest of the country, developed their own way of life based mostly on fishing and certain aspects of their culture became affected by the indigenous Saami. To this day they have preserved a remarkable amount of traditional log architecture including homes, churches and freezer huts full of ice-blocks. The Tersky Coast starts at Umba and a rough asphalt road continues to the beautifully located village of Kuzreka. From here a dirt track leads on to Kashkarantsy and Varzuga. The former has a huge number of traditional log cabins, some more than a century old. The latter’s central square has three beautiful wooden churches on a river bank. After Varzuga the road ends and Pomor villages such as Chavanga and Chapoma remain in isolation. Even further is Sosnovka, a Saami reindeer herders’ village.

While most travellers have heard of Russia's longest train ride east along the Trans-Siberian, not even many Russians have heard of this other epic journey heading 2.5 days northeast from Moscow to Western Siberia's Arctic Circle. Day one takes you directly north past historic towns such as Yaroslavl and Vologda. On day two you branch off northeast on a different line. The track is hemmed in with dense taiga forest and you pass small huddles of wooden huts in clearings. This stretch of track was built by gulag concentration camp victims and, according to the author Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, "beneath each tie two heads were left". On the third day you branch off east onto another gulag-built line heading towards the Polar Ural Mountains and, on their far side, Siberia. You are now well beyond any road network. There are no real stations any more - the train just stops and people get out and wander off into the snow. You may well see fur-clad nomadic reindeer herders or their encampments of conical reindeer-hide tents. The final stop is Labytnangi, gateway to the Yamal Peninsula.