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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