FROM THE VOLGA BASIN TO THE URAL MOUNTAINS
May 08 ⇾ May 23
In addition to our regular group departures to Russia, 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 Russia!
DAY 1 TO DAY 2 - Volgograd (Stalingrad)
Meet-and-greet at Volgograd International Airport and transfer to our hotel of choice in downtown Volgograd.
We’ll devote two entire days to Volgograd (Stalingrad), a heroic Soviet city that really needs no introduction: Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring once famously said: a thousand years hence, every German will speak with awe of Stalingrad and remember that it was there that Germany put the seal on her victory; well, history proved him wrong.
Besides enjoying an extensive tour through Volgograd’s de-rigueur Soviet-era sights, we’ll take also some time to experience less solemn but equally compelling facets of the city such as the colourful central bazaar and the melancholic city beach.
Just south of Volgograd, we’ll also visit Lysaya Gora, home to a majestic obelisk, and Krasnoarmeysk, where we will stare in awe at a giant Lenin Statue towering above the entrance of the Volga-Don Canal.
Overnights in Volgograd/Stalingrad.
DAY 3 - Saratov
We’ll leave Stalingrad in the morning and travel north along the mighty Volga, the longest river in Europe, towards Saratov, a large Russian industrial city of touching memorials, imposing monuments, modernist buildings, kaleidoscopic mosaic.
Before reaching Saratov, we’ll stop at the Volga Hydroelectric Station to admire the futuristic Monument to the Builders of Communism and then enjoy a fish lunch in Kamyshin, a tranquil riverside town of discreet tsarist architectures and sleepy provincial atmospheres.
On a less Soviet note, we will also make a quick detour across the grain fields surrounding the hamlet of Zolotoye, our preferred gateway to gaze at the otherworldly beautiful cliffs and rock formations stretching along both sides of the Great Volga River.
Overnight in Saratov.
DAY 4 - VOLGA GERMANS
We’ll leave Saratov and enter the territory of the bygone Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, where we’ll spend a few hours touring the many forgotten wonders of this rarely visited territory of the former USSR.
The Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Autonome Sozialistische Sowjetrepublik der Wolgadeutschen) was an autonomous ethnic republic established within Soviet Russia in 1924 as a separate administrative territorial unit for the German communities living along the course of the lower Volga: its capital was the aptly named town of Engels.
The list of highlights of our gallivanting around Volga Germany will include a city tour around Engels, a visit to the German villages of Lipovka, Zurich and Marx, and a mandatory pilgrimage to Yuri Gagarin’s Landing Site, the very place where the first cosmonaut touched ground upon returning to our troubled planet.
In the late afternoon we’ll eventually reach Balakovo, a Soviet river town harbouring a magnificent USSR-era giant mosaic and a much less attractive nuclear power plant.
Dinner and overnight in Balakovo.
DAY 5 - Ulyanovsk
From Balakovo we’ll travel north towards Syzran – an elegant Russian city home to one of the oldest and longest rail bridges in the country – and then head for Ulyanovsk, birthplace of the one and only Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin.
We’ll spend the rest of the day following a Soviet-themed walking trail through Ulyanovsk’s most significant historical and cultural sights, such as the grandiose Lenin Memorial Museum, a modernist building containing a vast display of documents, photographs, and artefacts narrating the adventurous life of Vladimir Ilyich.
Overnight in Ulyanovsk.
DAY 6 - Tolyatti
In the morning we will travel to Dimitrovgrad, a pleasant provincial city named after Georgi Dimitrov, the first leader of the communist People's Republic of Bulgaria.
Following the Soviet trend of baptising their cities after foreign communist leaders, we’ll then transfer to Tolyatti, a no-nonsense industrial city named after the historical leader of the Italian Communist Party Palmiro Togliatti and best known as the home of Russia's largest car manufacturer AvtoVAZ (Lada).
Here we’ll tour the AvtoVAZ museum and the annexed Sakharov Military Park (a true paradise for Red-Army-buffs and WWII-geeks).
In the evening we’ll eventually arrive in Samara, formerly known as Kuybyshev (after Bolshevik leader Valerian Kuybyshev), one of the largest and most populous cities in the Russian Federation and the leading economic, cultural and political pole of the Volga Region.
Overnight in Samara.
DAY 7 - Samara
Full day devoted to Samara and its rich cornucopia of Soviet and pre-Soviet pearls: Chapaev Memorial, Stalin’s Bunker, Victory Obelisk, Kuybyshev Statue, Kirov Monument, the unavoidable Lenin, numerous Soviet mosaics and an extensive array of constructivist, socialist-classicist and modernist architectonic masterpieces.
Once we’ve gotten you tired from the long walks through Samara’s Soviet legacy, we’ll board a USSR-era vessel for a short boat trip down the Volga and admire the sunset painting orange the otherwise rather grey city skyline.
Overnight in Samara.
DAY 8 - Orenburg
From Samara we’ll move east across the endless steppe bordering Northern Kazakhstan.
We’ll first stop for lunch in the rather unspectacular town of Buzuluk and then reach Orenburg, a large frontier city located on the boundary of Europe and Asia.
In Orenburg we’ll enjoy a placid afternoon stroll down the elegant Sovetskaya Street and explore the captivating landscape of the city: an ethnically diverse population, a rich concoction of different architectural paradigms, and a kaleidoscope of Soviet-era mosaics, monuments and war memorials.
Overnight in Orenburg.
DAY 9 - Bashkortostan
We’ll leave Orenburg after an early breakfast and enter Bashkortostan, aka Bashkiria, the largest autonomous ethnic republic in the region, home to the once nomadic Bashkirs, a Muslim Turkic people ethnically, culturally and linguistically related to the neighbouring Tatars.
Besides the routine stops for food and photography we’ll break the six-hour-long journey in the Bashkir industrial and military towns of Sterlitamak, Salavat and Kumertau, where we you be able to get an ultimate grand overdose on Soviet architecture, monumentalism and military glory.
If time permits, we’ll also allow ourselves a more touristy detour: just a few miles southeast of Sterlitamak lies, in fact, one of the most beautiful natural attractions of the entire region: the lonely mountain of Toratau, one of the four Bashkir shihans, which are basically solitary rocky massifs incongruously towering over a flatland landscape of flowery grasslands and windswept steppes.
Overnight in Sterlitamak.
DAY 10 - Magnitogorsk
Today we will head further east towards the Soviet mining town of Magnitogorsk, home to one of the most striking monuments in the entire former USSR: the Rear-Front Memorial, a 15m-high bronze-and-granite monument commemorating the valiant abdication of the Soviet people both at both the front and the rear of the conflict against Nazi Germany.
Overnight in Magnitogorsk.
DAY 11 - Chelyabinsk
From Magnitogorsk we’ll travel to Chelyabinsk, known as Tankograd (Tank City) during the war, the second largest city in the Ural Federal District, after Yekaterinburg.
Major stops en route to Chelyabinsk will be: Uchaly (a polished white Lenin and a few neat Soviet mosaics), Satka (a massive hammer-and-sickle monument) and Miass (high-rise apartment blocks and post-Soviet industrial decay).
In Chelyabinsk itself we’ll visit a peculiar Art Nouveau Lenin Memorial, the glorious monument to the Soviet Tankers, and the massive Tale of the Urals sculpture.
Overnight in Chelyabinsk.
DAY 12 TO DAY 13 - Yekaterinburg
In the early morning we’ll complete our Soviet sightseeing around Chelyabinsk, before moving on towards Yekaterinburg, a city that encompasses the good, the bad and the ugly of the past 150 years of Russian history.
En route to Yekaterinburg we’ll drive past to the closed city of Ozyorsk and the nearby Lake Karachay, the reluctant protagonists of the Kyshtym Nuclear Disaster, a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on 29 September 1957 at Mayak, a plutonium production site for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.
Yekaterinburg (known in Soviet times as Sverdlovsk after Bolshevik leader Yakov Sverdlov) is instead the very place where in the early hours of the morning of 17 July 1918 the deposed Tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks and also the city that witnessed both the shady political gallop of drunkard Boris Yeltsin and (not by chance) the appalling rise of the Russian Mafia.
The following day we’ll pay the unavoidable visit to the controversial Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center, a place of historical revisionism and truth distortion dedicated to the most deplorable personality to have ever ruled this long-suffering country of splendid people and questionable leaders.
Overnights in Yekaterinburg.
DAY 14 - Nizhny Tagil
In the morning we’ll continue our historical tour around Yekaterinburg and then head for the mining town of Nev'yansk, which also feature an elegant leaning tower that could easily compete with its much more celebrated counterpart in Pisa.
In the afternoon we’ll then enter Nizhny Tagil, a rather stereotypical Soviet town that seems to have come straight out from Hollywood stereotypical depiction of the former USSR.
Among the many Soviet wonders Nizhny Tagil has on offer for its rare international visitors, we shall mention the massive Uralvagonzavod Tank Factory, an unconventional monument of Lenin standing on a globe and the Museum of Military Glory of Metallurgists.
Overnight in Nizhny Tagil.
DAY 15 - Perm
The former closed city of Perm is up next! Perm, aptly called Molotov between 1940 and 1957, used to be a vital centre of artillery production during the Great Patriotic War (as the Soviets call WWII) and lies in a gorgeous forested area previously inhabited by the Finno-Ugric Komi people.
The road between Nizhny Tagil and Perm crosses a gloomily enchanting landscape of depressing mining towns, semi-abandoned pits, and spectral forests… basically a very Soviet version of West Virginia!
On the way to Perm we’ll also stop at Perm-36, a former forced labor camp located near the village of Kuchino, that is now operating as a museum to the history of political repression.
Overnight in Perm.
DAY 16 - Dasvidaniya
After enjoying a last Soviet meal together, we'll take care of your transfer to Perm International Airport.
For those wishing to take the train/bus to reach further destinations: we will arrange transport to the local train/bus station in Perm.
End of the tour.
2995 €
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.