Moscow
Moscow is a city of superlatives.
Moscow is a city of superlatives.
It seemed like a lark.
From the Ural Mountains to the great Lena River, the sheer size of Siberia is hard to comprehend.
In St Petersburg or Moscow it's oddly easy to be unaware of the great expanses of Russia that stretch north.
Commonly mistaken for 'Siberia', the Russian Far East is actually further from Moscow, more remote and colder.
The Volga region (Povolzhye - literally 'Along the Volga River') is the heartland of Russia.
Ancient Rus grew up in the clutch of towns northeast of Moscow that is now known as the Golden Ring.
With its birch forests, idyllic rivers and endless rolling steppe, Western European Russia is an enticing vision straight out of Russian folklore.
The Ural Mountains - the celebrated division between Europe and Asia - stretch 2000km from the arctic Kara Sea in the north to Kazakhstan in the south.
Travel Alert: The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office recommends against all travel to some areas and against all non-essential travel to others in the Russian Caucasus, please check with your relevant national government.
Running from south of Lake Baikal, the eastern stretch of the famed trans-Siberian mostly flattens east of the Yablonovy Mountains before reaching Khabarovsk and turning south into the mountains of Primorsky Territory and on to the lovely naval...
Novosibirsk, 530km east of Omsk, is Siberia's biggest city.
The highlight of these regions is the historic and delightfully ramshackle old town of Tobolsk, but en route you could happily spend a day strolling and dining in the vibrant cities of Tyumen or Omsk.
The Kola Peninsula is a 100, 000-sq-km knob of tundra, forest, lakes, bogs, rivers and low mountains between the White Sea and the Barents Sea, making up most of the Murmansk oblast (region).
Scenically magnificent, Buryatiya crouches on the Mongolian border like a cartographic crab squeezing Lake Baikal with its right pincer.
Crystal-clear Lake Baikal is a vast body of the bluest water, surrounded by rocky or tree-covered foreshores behind which mountains float like phantoms at indeterminable distances.
Subscribe now and receive a 20% discount on your next guidebook purchase
© 2013 Lonely Planet. All rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced without our written permission.