Kyakhta lacks the cinemascope landscapes of Novoselenginsk but retains three once-grand churches, a great museum and a surprisingly good hotel. Formerly called Troitskosavsk, Kyakhta was a town of tea-trade millionaires whose grandiose cath- edral was reputed to have had solid silver doors embedded with diamonds. By the mid-19th century, as many as 5000 cases of tea a day were arriving via Mongolia on a stream of horse- or camel-caravans, which returned loaded with furs. Compressed tea ‘bricks’ were used as money, a practice continued by Buryat nomads as recently as the 1930s.
This gloriously profitable tea trade was brought to an abrupt end with the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Almost overnight, all commerce was redirected via Vladivostok or Harbin and Kyakhta withered into a remote border garrison town, bristling with weapons instead of gilded spires.
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