Siberia doesn’t have the greatest reputation in modern pop culture. The region is often equated with intense cold, secret missile silos, and gulags. We are happy to report that southern Siberia has none of these things, though if there are secret missile silos I’ll have to admit that they weren’t anywhere I could see (Russians are sneaky like that).
Siberia was a much-welcomed respite from the burning heat that we had been dealing with in our A/C-free car for the past few weeks. The days hardly went over 25C, and the evenings dropped down to single digits! There were trees! Gas stations with markets and proper toilets! I cannot hate Gazprom anymore, because they have the best gas stations east of the Czech Republic. In short, Siberia was heavenly.
Our first stop was Novosibirsk. Novosibirsk is built up and very modern, it certainly looked lovely in the sunset! The city is on the banks of the Ob River, one of the major rivers running through Siberia. We didn’t have much time to explore as we were only staying overnight, but it’s worth more than the 12 hours we spent there. Given this was our first full day in Russia, you’d think we’d take the chance to enjoy some authentic Russian food for dinner. That could’ve been a good plan, but a Mexican restaurant was near by so we had burritos instead:
After Novosibirsk came Krasnoyarsk. Krasnoyarsk is a gorgeous city surrounded by natural splendour, or so we would have seen had we not arrived after sunset. I thought Kazakhstan was huge, but Siberia is positively MASSIVE. That night, the effects of the drop in temperature in Russia compared to the rest of the countries we’d visited hit me pretty hard: I got a bad case of the chills, that were thankfully gone by morning. No longer shuddering like one of those bumble balls, we began our big push to Irkutsk.
Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk is over 1,000km, much to our shock. Sadly I had come down with a kind of 24-hour flu that wouldn’t let me ingest anything, but we both still enjoyed the forested landscape that looked much like northwestern British Columbia. We could even see how the produce being sold on the side of the road reflected the change in climate, going from melons and fruits near Omsk, to potatoes, cabbage and berries towards Irkutsk. There were even some grizzled guys selling hunting trophies from the back of their Ladas! We also saw a couple of these:
Though the region was very remote, dotted only with small villages that had clearly been built up around the run-down Soviet-era factories near each one, the road was filled with vacationing Russians heading to campsites for gool ol’ hunting fun. I’m surprised people even tried to bring camper vans and caravans with them on this road, as construction was being done everywhere and the “detours” were almost always gravel:
Some locals did have a little trouble understanding what ‘detour’ meant…
Russians are also obsessed with all things American, as observed by this chain of gas stations with a fun ‘wild-west’ theme:
Unable to reach Irkutsk in one day thanks to the constant construction, we slept by the forest and I recovered from my unfortunate day-long illness. The next day we pushed on and, once we’d reached and surpassed Irkutsk (a lovely historical town!), we were well rewarded with the awesome sight of Lake Baikal.
The water was so blue! The mountains the perfect backdrop! The weather was perfect! All at once, we could see why Russians are so proud of their country.
We needed only to drive around the southern tip of Lake Baikal, but that alone took 5 hours. We drove into the mountains, and though we didn’t see any bears, Mom did end up getting swindled out of 480 rubles for one entire litre of fresh blueberries:
The blueberries were delicious as evidenced by our purple fingers and tongues, but there was no way we could eat the entire thing and we couldn’t exactly make a pie on the road, so we just ate as much as we could.
Later that day we arrived in Ulan-Ude, our last major stop before Mongolia! Ulan-Ude was where we began to see the true Asian side of Russia; you would not find a ‘stereotypical’ Russian here, but more like “Little Mongolia”. This didn’t stop expansionist Russia back in the day, and modern Russia left its stamp on the city in the form of a MASSIVE statue of Lenin’s head:
We could feel how close we were to the finish line. The next morning we would say goodbye to the evergreen forests, and say hello to the soft, grassy steppes.
Kia
September 21st, 2014 11:38
Been to Novosibirsk a couple of times and really enjoyed myself both time. They don't see foreigners too often, so they make you feel really welcome!