This three-week route is for travelers who want to feel the size of Russia, moving from the imperial capitals down the Volga and across the Urals to the shores of Lake Baikal. It’s moderately paced: two to four nights per stop, with one overnight train and one flight handling the long distances, so you spend more time exploring than in transit. Expect Sapsan and Lastochka trains, a long-distance sleeper, one domestic flight into Siberia, city metros and the minibuses and ferry to Olkhon Island.
Days 1-4: St. Petersburg
Starting in
St. Petersburg means beginning where the empire started. Walk across to the
Peter and Paul Fortress on Zayachy Island, where the gold spire of the cathedral marks the tombs of nearly every Romanov since Peter the Great. Be on the walls around noon, when a cannon fires from the Naryshkin Bastion, and swim or sunbathe on the beach below the ramparts in summer.
Save a morning for the
Fabergé Museum in the Shuvalov Palace on the Fontanka, which holds nine imperial Easter …
read more 👉This three-week route is for travelers who want to feel the size of Russia, moving from the imperial capitals down the Volga and across the Urals to the shores of Lake Baikal. It’s moderately paced: two to four nights per stop, with one overnight train and one flight handling the long distances, so you spend more time exploring than in transit. Expect Sapsan and Lastochka trains, a long-distance sleeper, one domestic flight into Siberia, city metros and the minibuses and ferry to Olkhon Island.
Days 1-4: St. Petersburg
Starting in St. Petersburg means beginning where the empire started. Walk across to the Peter and Paul Fortress on Zayachy Island, where the gold spire of the cathedral marks the tombs of nearly every Romanov since Peter the Great. Be on the walls around noon, when a cannon fires from the Naryshkin Bastion, and swim or sunbathe on the beach below the ramparts in summer.
Save a morning for the Fabergé Museum in the Shuvalov Palace on the Fontanka, which holds nine imperial Easter eggs; it’s compact enough to see in two hours. Give the State Hermitage Museum the rest of a day, and save the evenings for canal boat rides that show the city from water level.Days 5-7: Moscow
The Sapsan covers the 650 kilometers to Moscow in about 4 hours. Put the Moscow Kremlin first: inside the walls, Cathedral Square gathers three cathedrals where tsars were crowned, married and buried, plus the 40-tonne Tsar Bell, which cracked before it ever rang. In the evening, go see a ballet or opera at the Bolshoi Theatre; seats on the new stage are easier to book than the historic stage.
Spend your third day in Gorky Park and along the Moskva River embankment, where Muscovites cycle, play table tennis and lounge in deckchairs, then cross to the Muzeon sculpture park, full of toppled Soviet statues.Days 8-9: Nizhny Novgorod
A Lastochka of around 4 hours brings you to Nizhny Novgorod, set where the Oka meets the Volga. Walk the red-brick kremlin walls for the best view of the confluence, then climb down (or up) the Chkalov Staircase, with roughly 560 steps to the riverbank. The cable car across the Volga to Bor, a 13-minute ride high above the water, costs less than a coffee and is the city’s best value thrill. Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, the pedestrian main street, handles your evenings.Days 10-12: Kazan
Continue east to Kazan by train. The Tatar capital proves Russia isn’t only onion domes: the Kazan Kremlin pairs the minarets of the Kul Sharif Mosque with an Orthodox cathedral inside the same white walls. Three nights give you time for the Old Tatar Quarter, a Volga riverfront at sunset and serious eating, from echpochmak pastries to chak-chak at the National Cuisine Museum cafés near Bauman Street.Days 13-14: Yekaterinburg
The overnight train to Yekaterinburg (around 14 hours) carries you across the Urals, and waking up in Asia on a Russian sleeper is a rite of passage. The Church on the Blood marks the site where the last tsar and his family were shot in 1918. The Yeltsin Center offers a clear-eyed look at the 1990s. A short trip out of town takes you to the Europe-Asia border marker, where everyone stands with one foot on each continent.Days 15-17: Irkutsk and Listvyanka
Fly about 4 hours to Irkutsk, losing three time zones, and take a slow first day among the carved wooden houses of the 130th Kvartal and the older streets near the Angara River. Then ride a minibus for about an hour to Listvyanka, the closest village on Lake Baikal. Taste smoked omul at the market by the pier, visit the Baikal Museum with its freshwater seals, and take the chairlift to the Chersky Stone viewpoint. If you’re fit, the Great Baikal Trail runs about 20 kilometers along the shore of Pribaikalsky National Park to Bolshie Koty.Days 18-21: Lake Baikal and Olkhon Island
The last stretch takes you deeper into Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake at over 1,600 meters, with a minibus and ferry of about 5 to 6 hours to Khuzhir on Olkhon Island. Stay three nights. Shaman Rock, sacred to the Buryat people, rises just outside the village, and a day tour by UAZ van bumps across the steppe to Cape Khoboy, the island’s northern tip, for cliffs above water clear enough to see the stones several meters down. On Day 21, the morning minibus gets you back to Irkutsk for an evening flight.
For a bonus detour, Sviyazhsk, an island town at the confluence of the Volga and Sviyaga about an hour from Kazan, has a 16th-century monastery and frescoes, with very few visitors.v2.webp){kind=logo}
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