Category: Siberia

The golden domes of Chita’s new cathedral entice train travellers to hop off and explore this historic, patchily attractive city. If its architectural gems were less widely dispersed the city might be considered one of Siberia’s more appealing. Sadly, each attractive area is a little too diffuse to make the overall impact particularly memorable. Nonetheless, the friendly, go-ahead atmosphere and lack of (non-Chinese) tourists makes Chita a pleasant place to spend a day or two.

At the attractive junction of the Chemal and Katun Rivers, ever-expanding Chemal is heavily touristed in summer but remains a good base for regional explorations and makes a very pleasant day trip from Gorno-Altaisk, 95km further north.

A stop in Bratsk neatly breaks a Krasnoyarsk to Severobaikalsk trip into two overnight rides, but a day here is plenty. Its raison d’être is a gigantic 1955 dam (GES), which caused the drowning of the original historic town. New Bratsk is a confusing necklace of disconnected concrete ‘subcities’ with a high-rise Tsentralny area that is spirit-crushingly dull. It does, however, have two English-speaking tour agencies: Taiga Tours (413 951; [email protected]; 2nd fl, Hotel Taiga) and Lovely Tour (Lavli Tur; 433 290; [email protected]; ul Sovetskaya 3, Tsentralny; 10am-8pm Mon-Fri, to 5pm Sat). Given two days’ notice, either agency can organise permits and guides to visit the dam’s turbine rooms.

Friendly Biysk, 160km southeast of Barnaul, is not worth a special detour but its modest attractions may warrant a brief stop en route to or from the Altai Mountains, for which it’s the nearest railhead.

Barnaul is a prosperous industrial city and has been so almost since its foundation in 1730 as Ust-Barnaulskaya. Though far from the mountains, it hosts the nearest major airport to the Altai Republic and offers enough cafés and museums to keep you amused between transport connections.

Lakeside Baikalsk is the site of a huge, controversial Baikal-polluting pulp mill which gives the town a faint but unpleasantly pervasive perfume of decomposing cellulose. However, the mountains that rise abruptly behind town offer the region’s best snowboarding (www.worldsnowboardguide.com/resorts/Russia/Baikalsk/) and skiing at the very active Gora Sobolinaya Resort (baikalsk.irk.ru, in Russian). The complex has a handy left-luggage office (per day R80) as well as modern ski-lifts (per hr/half-day/day R150/200/300; 10am-5pm) which cost double at weekends. Equipment rentals range from R200 to R1000 for ski-boot-pole sets or R500 to R750 for snowboards.

At Lake Teletskoe’s westernmost nose, little Iogach village is the main population centre and bus stop. Across the bridge, Artybash is a ribbon of cottages, homestays and mini- hotels straggling three pretty kilometres along ul Teletskaya to the big Turbaza Zolotoe Ozera. June to September, the turbaza offers horse rental and at 10am and 3pm daily runs lake trips (R250, four hours) to Korbu Waterfall. The falls are hardly memorable but the journey is very beautiful despite the blaring commentary. Most accommodation places can arrange motorboat (lodki) rentals. Rafting trips run twice daily from Pensionat Edem. Out of season when the lake is frozen, the village is idyllically peaceful.