Trailblazer Guide Books

Guides that will send you packing.
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BREAKING YOUR JOURNEY

All major cities on the Trans-Siberian can be visited. If you’re booking through
an agency, plan carefully: once you have started on your trip, it’s too late to
change your itinerary. But if you travel independently you can just buy tickets
as you go along, and stop off whenever and wherever you like.

If your trip starts in Moscow (see p159) you’ll need several days to see the
main sights. A side-trip to St Petersburg (p129) is highly recommended. At the
other end, it’s certainly worth spending several days in Beijing (p355).

In between there’s the ‘Golden Ring’ city of Nizhny Novgorod (p222)
and historically rich Yekaterinburg (p232). Novosibirsk (p253) is the
sprawling capital of Western Siberia, Tomsk (p261) is an interesting univer-
sity town and Krasnoyarsk (p265) is among the region’s most pleasantly
situated cities. Irkutsk (p272), capital of Eastern Siberia, is 64km from beau-
tiful Lake Baikal (p283), the world’s deepest freshwater lake; a stay beside
the lake is highly recommended. Ulan-Ude (p294) is worth a stop for the
Buddhist monastery nearby, and Khabarovsk (p307) is surprisingly pleasant.
Vladivostok (p316), the bustling home port of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, is the
eastern railway terminus.

Also recommended for those headed to Beijing is a visit to Ulaanbaatar
(p327), the capital of Mongolia. Irkutsk and Ulaanbaatar are the most popular
stopovers for Trans-Siberian travellers.