Russia Travel Destinations

Most popular Russia Travel Destinations

Moscow

Moscow is a city straddling three separate worlds. The seat of an extravagant empire, today’s Moscow is one of the world’s fastest-growing megacities, and yet it remains in some ways an enduring symbol of secretive Soviet Russia. For visitors to Russia’s sprawling, fast-paced capital, there are a million and one reasons to make a tour of Moscow a priority. The visual splendour of Moscow’s palaces and cathedrals are well known but seeing them for yourself bestows them with a sense of majesty no picture can recreate. Then there are the endlessly fascinating museums, galleries, luxurious shopping centres, world theatres, high-end restaurants and exciting nightlife in abundance. Moscow is a feast for each of the senses, equal parts gritty and glamorous, pious and traditional yet fun-loving and outrageous.  A Moscow tour is a voyage to sights unseen and tastes unsampled, in a city unlike any other you’ve experienced.

St Petersburg

St Petersburg is beating centre of Russia’s cultural heart. Fondly nicknamed “Peter” by the locals, the world’s northernmost major city is a must-see. In 1990 UNESCO declared the entire city centre a World Heritage site, featuring hundreds of prominent monuments, museums, cathedrals, sculptures, squares, parks and gardens. Peter the Great founded the city in 1708, hiring architects and artists from France, Italy and Britain to create Russia’s most European-inspired city, with grand Parisian avenues, Georgian townhouses and a network of canals that gave the city its reputation as the “Venice of the North” While St Petersburg is best known for opulent architecture and the romance and high culture of classical music, ballet and opera, it’s also a youthful, creative and energetic city with a revolutionary contemporary art and design scene. From festive summer white nights beneath a never-setting sun to enchanting snow-white winters, a St Petersburg tour offers something new for each season.

Kamchatka

The Kamchatka Peninsula is the ultimate destination for travellers seeking a once in a lifetime adventure. Getting there is half the journey, but once you arrive, the raw beauty of this spectacularly remote Land’s End will floor you. Reaching this far-flung territory in the Pacific Ring of Fire isn’t easy, but a tour of Kamchatka can take you to places you never thought possible. Imagine coming within metres of wild brown bears or heli-skiing down a snow-covered active volcano. Trace the maritime paths of the great Arctic explorers aboard a nuclear-powered ice-breaker, visiting rugged Pacific isles home to polar bears, walruses and whales. Sound like your idea of adventure? Here, seething geysers and lava formations carve out prehistoric landscapes and wildlife thrives in the forests and oceans. Visit Kamchatka and you’ll set foot in a place with no road or railway connection to the outside world. A wilderness where roadmaps end and the adventure begins.

Lake Baikal

Considered the “Pearl of Siberia”, Lake Baikal is older and deeper than any other freshwater lake. A UNESCO World Heritage site, Lake Baikal holds over a fifth of the world’s unfrozen surface freshwater. It’s also one of world’s clearest lakes – a mesmerizing ‘inland sea’ of deep blue, with glittering emerald bays, white sand beaches and islands of ancient rock formations. Imagine a lake frozen by ice so thick you can drive a 4WD on its surface. Or, envision yourself as a witness to an indigenous Buryat ceremony, one of the world’s oldest surviving shamanic rituals. Extraordinarily scenic and remarkably accessible, skirted by a section of the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway, travel to Baikal offers everything from leisurely summertime cruises to snowmobiling and ice fishing in winter. A Lake Baikal tour will no doubt satisfy your thirst for adventure, relaxation, and stunning scenery – the depths of its beauty will astound you.

Golden Ring

A tour of the Golden Ring will give you a chance to travel back in time and imagine a Russia that once was. A string of ancient towns northeast of Moscow, the Golden Ring is medieval Russia frozen in time, filled with onion-domed churches, fantastical kremlins and gingerbread cottages. Forming one of Russia’s oldest trade routes, the small cities of the Golden Ring have become favourite destinations for travellers seeking the idyllic provincial Russia of old. Many of these cities played a role in early Russian history and are associated with the formation of the Orthodox Church, the reign of Tsars and the Mongol Invasions. Relatively ignored during the Soviet era of industrialisation, the towns escaped much of the urban progress that engulfed Moscow and its surrounds. Consequently, their old-world charm and traditional lifestyles have remained remarkably intact to this day. The perfect retreat from the urban machine of Moscow, The Golden Ring cities are nestled amid riverbanks and meadows in the beautiful Russian countryside, surrounded by forests, lakes, orchards and rambling country roads.

Karelia

In the far north of the country, Karelia is a region unlike anywhere else in Russia, deeply influenced by its geographical and cultural ties to neighbouring Finland. Although it is home to the World Heritage-listed Kizhi Island architectural museum, the republic is still largely a frontier travel destination. A tour of Karelia is a trip to paradise for the true explorer. Karelia is dominated by vast tracts of wilderness. Jagged mountain ranges, steppes and alpine forest are home to reindeer, golden eagles, wolverines, bears, wolves and lynxes and are sought-out by off-the-grid adventurers for hiking, kayaking, fishing and camping. Yet Karelia is also a living museum of human history. Inhabited by Scandinavian peoples for 6,000 years, it was contested by Finnish, Swedish and Russian forces for centuries. Travel to Karelia and you’ll find its Finn-Ugric people retain strong connections to their Nordic past through their folk customs, cuisine and shamanic beliefs.

Kola Peninsula (land of the northern lights)

Beneath the midnight summer sun or the dazzling lights of the Aurora Borealis, the Kola Peninsula is a mesmerizingly wild and beautiful corner of the Russian Arctic.  Almost entirely above the Arctic Circle, the landscape of Kola is dominated by taiga and tundra, with mountains, crystal clear rivers and deserted coastline in between. In summer, thousands of grazing reindeer dot the vast expanse of Kola’s grasslands. The Saami, who also inhabit northern Scandinavia, are the traditional custodians of this land, a semi-nomadic people who traverse the tundra on husky-drawn sleds and herd reindeer for their livelihood. In stark contrast to much of the peninsula, the capital of Murmansk is a thriving port town and the largest city north of the Arctic Circle. In winter, Murmansk receives an influx of otherwise rare foreign visitors, as one of the world’s best places for a Northern Lights tour to observe the Aurora Borealis.

Yamal

Meet some of the last surviving nomadic reindeer herders on an extraordinary tour of the Yamal Peninsula. In the indigenous Nenets language, Yamal means “edge of the world”, a fitting name for a territory which lies almost entirely above the Arctic Circle. The autonomous district of Yamal stretches from Polar Ural Mountains to the Kara Sea, with its administrative capital Salekhard straddling the Polar Circle. The environs of Yamal were considered so inhospitable that Stalin built some of his most notorious gulags here. And yet, a vibrant indigenous culture has thrived here for the last 1,000 years. Each year, the Nenets migrate with herds of up to 10,000 strong from their winter pastures in the southern taiga to their summer grazing lands near the Arctic Ocean. The opportunity for an immersive cultural tour of Yamal, living with the Nenets in their ancestral camps is a unique and unforgettable privilege.

Altai

Situated in the Altai Mountains of central Asia, bordering the Kazakh steppe and the Mongolian desert plains, the Altai Republic, Siberia is Russia's least populated republic. This forgotten kingdom is home to the nomadic Altayan people, who practice nature-worshipping shamanic beliefs. Hemmed in by endless mountain chains are thousands of glacier-fed lakes, while the pristine rivers that rush through steep valleys and narrow gorges have given Altai an international reputation for whitewater rafting. Eco-tourism in Altai is slowly coming to light, as its postcard-perfect scenery, complete with Swiss Alps-like spring meadows and snowy mountain peaks attract adventurous outsiders for expeditions to archaeological sites, road-tripping across the majestic Chuya Highway, cross-country skiing, horse-riding and hiking tours.