SIBERIAN TIGERS AND SOVIET ALLURE
August 01 ⇾ August 12
In addition to our regular group departures to the Russian Far East, we also offer tour services for private travel parties and lone wolves alike. As a traveller-oriented boutique operator, tailored trips and bespoke adventures are our bread and butter. Get in touch for more info on our customised journeys to the Russian Far East!
DAY 1 TO DAY 2 - Vladivostok
Meet-and-greet at Vladivostok International Airport and transfer to our hotel of choice in downtown Vladivostok.
Slow-paced short city walk (depending on your arrival time) for your first day in town and, on the following day, a full Soviet tour around and about Vladivostok: socialist architectures, Soviet public art (mosaics, monuments, and memorials), loud and colourful fish markets, melancholic city beaches, rickety piers and lonely lighthouses.
If time allows, we’ll also indulge in a half-day excursion to Russky, a large island located just one kilometre off Vladivostok’s shores (and about 9,334 kilometres east of Moscow).
The island is connected to the mainland by the gargantuan Russky Bridge, the world's longest cable-stayed bridge spanning across the entire length of the Eastern Bosphorus, and is rich in natural attractions, postcard-like viewpoints (such as the Tobizina Cape), Soviet history and post-Soviet frenzied development projects.
Overnights in Vladivostok.
DAY 3 - Peter the Great Gulf
We’ll leave Vladivostok in the morning and travel south along the western shores of Peter the Great Gulf, the largest gulf in the Sea of Japan.
Our goal for the day will be the frontier town of Khasan, located just next to the tripoint on the Tumen River where the borders of Russia, China and North Korea converge.
Descending towards Khasan, we’ll break the journey several times to relish the beauty of the landscape and the irresistible allure of its many Soviet-era leftovers.
Main stops along the route will include the peaceful Troitsy Bay with the twin cities of Zarubino and Andreevka and their fair share of Soviet monuments and memorials, the scenic Gamov Peninsula, home to the Vityaz Natural Area, a now abandoned early XX-century eclectic castle-like mansion and the lonely Tsarist-era Gamov Lighthouse, the many coves, inlets and fjords of the marvellous Posyet Bay and the village of Kraskino, in which proximity we will visit a striking sculpture dedicated to the Heroes of the Khasan Battle.
Once in Khasan proper, we will venture on a Soviet-themed tour around this former military outpost that gained world-wide notoriety thanks to nearby namesake lake and the battle the Soviets victoriously fought for against Imperial Japan and its Manchukuo puppet state. Peeping Tom’s views over Russia’s Asian neighbours (China and North Korea) are, of course, included in our city tour!
In the late afternoon we’ll then head back north towards the sleepy Soviet harbour of Slavyanka, the administrative centre of the entire Khasan District.
Overnight in Slavyanka.
DAY 4 TO DAY 5 - Land of the Leopards
We’ll devote the morning to the beautiful natural areas around Slavyanka (charming inlets and rocky promontories) and, after a filling seafood lunch, we’ll head for the Russian section of the Eastern Manchurian Mountains, a low-altitude mountain range covered by a dense mixture of northern subtropical and coniferous-broadleaf forests that are home to the rarest big cat on our planet: the otherworldly beautiful Amur Leopard.
We'll stay overnight at a local guesthouse and spend the following day in the reserve tracking the elusive Amur Leopard and enjoying the pristine nature of the area.
Besides harbouring the aforementioned almost-mythical big cats, the Manchurian Mountains also house a thriving and much-easier-to-spot bestiary of big and small fauna, which includes Himalayan bears, forest cats, roe and musk deers, flying squirrels, wild boars, badges, tube-nosed baths, giant owls and kingfishers as well as a wide range of reptiles, amphibians and endemic insects: a true paradise for nature lovers and zoology-enthusiasts!
Overnights in the reserve.
DAY 6 - Nakhodka
Today we’ll move back east and, bypassing Vladivostok, head for the Nakhodka Gulf on the northern shores of the Sea of Japan.
During our long drive along the coastline east of Vladivostok we will visit:
the sleepy Soviet towns of Dunay, Yuzhno-Morskoy and Kozmino featuring behemoth housing blocks, seaside USSR-architecture glorious monuments, hidden mosaics and many other socialist relics;
tiny hamlets of old Russian houses, slow-paced bucolic life and welcoming babushkas;
secluded coves (such as the astounding Okunevaya Bay), pristine beaches, gorgeously wild islands (Putyatin Island in the first place) and scenic promontories that seem to have come straight out of a Japanese graphic novel.
In the late afternoon we’ll then arrive in Nakhodka, a large port town founded as a whaling station in the late XIX century.
Overnight in Nakhodka.
DAY 7 TO DAY 9 - Call of the Tiger
We’ll leave Nakhodka in the morning and enter that wild wild back country that is the Lazovsky Nature Reserve, a little-visited and yet truly splendid national park that boasts a whole gamut of world-class natural wonders and harbours one of the largest population Siberian Tigers.
We’ll spend three full days in the reserve hiking along the many trails crisscrossing its dense temperate rainforests, admiring the stunning beauty of its sceneries, bathing and relaxing in its well-hidden natural inlets, and, of course, meeting with the proud and gentle Soviet-made local dwellers of this untouched patch of Mother Russia.
Highlights of our stay in Lazovsky Nature Reserve will include:
the so-called Dragon’s Pillars: vertigo-inducing rock formations rising near the isolated hamlet of Chistovodnoye;
the astonishing Petrov Island: a pristine islet way too beautiful to be real (seriously, you won’t believe your eyes);
the far-flung Tachingouza Bay: tourist-brochure beaches and crystal-clear water thriving with exotic fishes and odd marine invertebrates;
and, of course, the strictly protected Zov Tigra (Call of the Tiger) natural area: one of the last safe havens in Russia where to spot the mythical Siberian Tiger, the largest feline species on Earth.
Meals and overnights in the reserve.
DAY 10 - Soviet Pacific
We’ll depart from the reserve in the morning and head further east to the divinely secluded Olga Bay and further on to the even more remote Vladimir Bay, where we will eventually spend the night.
Today’s schedule will be relatively slow-paced as the distance we need to cover isn’t that vast: this spells plenty of photo breaks and enough room for little surprises along the way.
Major stops en route will include the settlements of Olga (on the namesake bay), Timofeyevka, Rakushka, and Balyuzek: rusty Soviet memories and traditional Russian houses lost in a lush wonderland of postcard-like landscapes.
In the afternoon we’ll finally reach the sleepy seaside village of Veselyy Yar: basically a bunch of quaintly crumbling wooden dachas built along the sandy shores of the Vladimir Bay.
Overnight in Veselyy Yar.
DAY 11 - Sikhote Alin
Early morning start and transfer north to Turtle Cape, renowned among local excursionists for its peculiar rock formations and fine vistas over the Pacific Ocean.
After a picnic brunch at the cape, we’ll move back west and head for the urban-type settlement of Kavalerovo along the A181, the main arterial road connecting the depressing harbour town of Rudnaya Pristan with Vladivostok.
The road partly follows the Sikhote Alin mountain range, which extends for about 900 kilometres from Vladivostok’s northern outskirts to the northeastern shores of the Soviet Pacific Coast.
Back in the last years of the Russian Tsardom, the Sikhote Alin mountains happened to be the theatre of Dersu Uzala and Vladimir Arsenyev’s rocambolesque adventures and long-lasting friendship: Dersu Uzala was a local trapper and hunter belonging to the obscure (and sadly dwindling) Nanai people, an indigenous Tungusic ethnic group. He was hired as a guide by the Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev, who later immortalised him in his 1923 namesake book Dersu Uzala (then made into an Oscar-winning motion picture by Japanese genius director Akira Kurosawa). If you are not familiar with this beautiful story yet, you oughta definitely read the book and watch that masterpiece of a movie.
Travelling along A181 we will cross many deserted little towns and decaying villages (eerie reminders of rural Russia’s demographic decline) such as Shumnoye or Dostoevka, before finally reaching (just in time for the afternoon tea) the exquisitely Soviet city of Arsenyev (aptly named after the above-mentioned explorer).
Here we’ll indulge in a Soviet-focussed architectural walk around town, pay a pilgrimage to Dersu Uzala Memorial and visit the local History Museum for a final lesson about this wildly remote frontier of the bygone Russian Empire.
Overnight in Arsenyev.
DAY 12 - FAREWELL TO THE FAR EAST
3990 €
INCLUSIONS
Double/twin-room accommodation (breakfast included), private transport in Russia (car/minivan), all entrance fees, English-speaking guiding service, 24/7 on-site and remote assistance.
EXCLUSIONS
Single supplement, international flights, main meals (lunches and dinners), extra drinks, visa fees (if required), tips, travel insurance.
