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Far Eastern Russia

Table of Contents

Regions / Cities / Other destinations / Culture and History / Talk / Travel to Far Eastern Russia, visa requirements / Get around / Far Eastern Russia attractions and sightseeing / Itineraries / City tours / Good restaurants and cheap meals / Far Eastern Russia nightlife, bars, clubs and pubs. / Stay safe / Get out

Far Eastern Russia (Дальний Восток России Dalniy Vostok Rossii) is the easternmost part of Russia, comprising its Pacific Ocean islands, coastline and a swathe of eastern Siberia.

Regions

Cities

Khabarovsk — the region's administrative center
Birobidzhan — the capital of Soviet Zion
Blagoveshchensk — one of the oldest cities in the Russian Far East
Komsomolsk-on-Amur — a big steel city on the Baikal-Amur Mainline
Magadan — in the heart of the Kolyma Gulag network
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky — gateway to nature lovers' paradise
Vladivostok — the largest city and the Russian terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway
Yakutsk — quite possibly Earth's coldest city
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk — the Russian Far East's island capital

Other destinations

The National Parks of Kamchatka offer some of the most stunning landscapes in the world, full of volcanoes, geysers, and lakes of acid

Culture and History

The Russian Far East is extraordinarily far from Russia's major population centers in Europe and is usually visited separately, unless by the Trans-Siberian Railway. The largest city in the region, Vladivostok, is a full seven time zones away from Moscow, with 9,300 km of railroad between them. The Far East is very different from popular conceptions of Russia—it is very mountainous and has an often spectacular Pacific coastline.

If time and money are not constraints, the highlights of this massive region include the city of Vladivostok, the beautiful Kuril Islands, the otherworldly National Parks of Kamchatka, cruising along the coast of Chukotka, and big game hunting in the wildlife paradise of Yakutia.

Talk

There are a good number of Finnic and Chukutko-Kamchatkan languages spoken throughout the more northerly regions of the Far East. Korean is also widely spoken in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk by the Sakhalin Koreans. But, as in all of Russia, Russian is the principal language and is spoken by nearly everyone, regardless of their first language. Chinese and Japanese are common foreign languages in the nearby border regions of Russia, but European languages are far less widespread than in European Russian and travelers should not expect to rely on them.

Travel to Far Eastern Russia & Visa Requirements

The principal transit hubs, with good sized international airports, are Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, and to a lesser extent Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. In general, you will either arrive by plane or the Trans-Siberian Railway. But it is also possible to arrive by boat from Alaska and Japan to destinations on the Russian Pacific coast. Although highly unrecommended, it is also possible to swim from the United States of America to Chukotka across the Bering Strait.

Tours & Getting around Far Eastern Russia

Distances between cities and towns in the Russian Far East are huge and infrastructure is lacking. A combination of using the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Baikal-Amur Mainline, and for destinations off the rail system, domestic flights, will get you around the majority, but not the entirety, of the region. In particular, Northeastern Russia is almost entirely without interregional transportation infrastructure and is off the Russian rail network—the one exception is the long, lonely, (and extremely dangerous) country roads connecting Yakutsk to Magadan. Heading north from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky by road will only take you as far as Palana; from Palana onwards, overland travel becomes wilderness adventure.