Russian Far East – World Travel

Yuzhno Sakhalinsk Russian Far East travel destination

WorldTravelDB.com — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:00:00 +0000

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.

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Yakutsk Russian Far East travel destination

WorldTravelDB.com — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0000

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.

People are particularly friendly in Yakutsk. Visitors often find themselves quickly connected with the local scene.

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Vladivostok Russian Far East travel destination

WorldTravelDB.com — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:00:00 +0000

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.

Quite the port-town bustler before communism (back when the Swiss family Brynner brought a bald Yul into the world here in 1920), Vladivostok’s cosmopolitan urges have slowly returned after the long Soviet snooze. Vladivostok was firmly off limits to all foreigners (and most Russians) during the life of the USSR. Today you can (fairly freely) hop on ferries to far-off beaches on former navy-only islands, tour century-old forts or a Soviet sub, and weave past battalions of Chinese, Japanese and Korean summer tourists.

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Tynda Russian Far East travel destination

WorldTravelDB.com — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:00:00 +0000

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.

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Sakhalin Island Russian Far East travel destination

WorldTravelDB.com — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:00:00 +0000

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.

Most visitors – and there are many – are here on business, with rigs off Sakhalin’s northern shores pulling millions of dollars of crude oil. Travellers will find getting far very difficult (and costly) – but if they do, there’s great natural beauty (three-quarters of Sakhalin is wild terrain of forests and mountains, islands of seals, bears wandering around 1500m mountain tops, clear rivers to fish, slopes to ski). March to June can be wet and grey, mid-September and October brings on foliage.

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Russian Far East travel destination

WorldTravelDB.com — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:00:00 +0000

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.

The southern strips of towns run along the eastern stretches of the pan-Russian trans- Siberian and BAM railways. The former sees more life, as it reaches the region’s cosmopolitan leaders Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, both with tsarist-era buildings and sushi. The BAM is a gritty Soviet effort to connect Russia with some purpose-built ’70s wasteland towns and more appealing, tsar-styled communist creations like Komsomolsk-na-Amure. Across the Tatar Strait is oil-booming Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands, still claimed by Japan.

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Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky Russian Far East travel destination

WorldTravelDB.com — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:00:00 +0000

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.

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Outer Far East Russian Far East travel destination

WorldTravelDB.com — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:00:00 +0000

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.

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Northern Kamchatka Russian Far East travel destination

WorldTravelDB.com — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:00:00 +0000

Milkovo and Esso are easily reached by public transport – much of the rest of the north requires a helicopter, 4WD or 6WD.

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Nikolaevsk Na Amure Russian Far East travel destination

WorldTravelDB.com — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:00:00 +0000

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.

Named after the tsar, this shipbuilding port was founded in 1850 as a fortress near the mouth of the river and the Tatar Strait. Many convicts bound for the tsarist-era penal colony on Sakhalin Island (20km away) came through here, as did Gulag-era convicts in the 20th century. The one-time cosmopolitan flavour was wiped out by Bolsheviks, who killed any Japanese person they could find.

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