Sprawling between mountains, landlocked Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is the booming cap- ital of Sakhalin. At times on its main strips (ul Lenina or Kommunistichesky pr – still keeping Marx happy with newly made street signs) you have to struggle to see Russia. There’s not a lot to do – that is if you’re not in town bound for oil rigs or construction projects – but it’s a good (and the only) starting point to the rest of the relatively unexplored island or the Kuril Islands, and it offers some flashy restaurants and bars.
Category: Russian Far East
For somewhere that’s over 1000km from any- where much, Yakutsk comes as a pleasant, and sometimes surreal, surprise. Over half of its inhabitants are Yakut – and a good portion of the remainder are Chinese immigrants – so it feels (despite the Lenin statue) less Russian than many places across the Far East. Most of its buildings stand on stilts above a cruel permafrost that never thaws. It’s most isolated when the weather’s misbehaving – as winter frozen-river highways thaw, and earth turns into an unnavigable slop.
It has the rep, everyone around the Far East seems to look up to it, and Vladivostok is indeed pretty good to look at for a couple days. Some streets are a bit drab, but the setting is remarkable: a series of peaks and peninsulas curl around Golden Horn Bay (bukhta Zolotoy Rog; named after Istanbul’s similar-looking harbour), which is home to huge icebreakers and the Russian Pacific Fleet.
If BAM gets you giddy, Tynda’s your town. Flanked by low-lying, pine-covered hills, Tynda is BAM HQ and a hub for trains between Severobaikalsk and Komsomolsk-na-Amure. The ‘Little BAM’ connects with Blagoveshchensk to the south; the AYaM (Amuro-Yakutskaya Magistral) heads north, getting as far as Aldan – plans to reach Yakutsk remain on hold. Tynda shows off its Soviet roots: it was a shack village before BAM centralised its efforts here in 1974.
Fought for, lost, won, debated over, called ‘hell’ by a literary great, sought after by oil-eyed businessfolk – Sakhalin is the 948km-long heart of the Sakhalinskaya Oblast (Sakhalin Region) which includes 59 islands, including Moneron Island and the disputed Kuril Islands. By map, the area looks pretty darn Japanese but since WWII, the region has been all Russian.
Commonly mistaken for ‘Siberia’, the Russian Far East is actually further from Moscow, more remote and colder. It’s also pretty big. Larger than Europe, it is comprised of taiga forest, snow-splattered or forested mountains, and northward rivers. Few foreigners make it here. Even trans-Siberian goers usually cut south from Baikal to Mongolia, missing the Far East entirely. There’s a lot of thrillingly untouched turf though, with great (often costly) options for hiking, rafting, cross-country skiing, dog sledding and fishing. Best are encounters – on streets, in train carriages – with locals who may be surprised you made it here at all.
Some see Petropavlovsk as a necessary evil, a hub to Russia’s most beautiful scenery, others focus on the setting, one of the world’s most beautiful – facing Avacha Bay and looking out at two giant volcanoes (when the fog behaves) and a long line of snow-capped mountains. Though it’s one of Russia’s oldest towns in the Far East, Petropavlovsk’s 25km-long bay is filled with mostly grim Soviet block housing, but there are enough attractions to warrant a day (maybe two), and people are quite nice.
Looming like a tip of a giant inverted iceberg north of the BAM line, the sprawl of remote Sakha Republic (the country’s largest), Khabarovsky Territory and (further up) Magadan Region take time and effort to reach (or an air ticket). Life is noticeably different here. The buildings of Yakutsk – a friendly place where Russians are the minority – stand on stilts. Built by Gulag labour, Magadan embraces its natural setting of mountains, salmon streams and rocky beaches facing the Sea of Okhotsk.
Milkovo and Esso are easily reached by public transport – much of the rest of the north requires a helicopter, 4WD or 6WD.
Historic and humbled, the grim port town of Nikolaevsk feels like a lost corner of earth compared to Komsomolsk, 12 hours south via the northward-drifting Amur River. It’s a bit rough at the edges, with some leering locals and crumbling concrete apartment blocks mixed with more evocative wooden homes.