Siberia

Siberia (??????? Sibir) is in Russia.

Regions

• Amurskaya

Cities

• Irkutsk
• Khabarovsk
• Skovorodino
• Ulan Ude
• Vladivostok

Understand

With an area of nearly 10 million sq.km., Siberia is vast. While the popular view of Siberia is of howling arctic wastes dotted with penal colonies, the truth is more complex. The west of Siberia is covered by a swampy plain, the central plateau is heavily forested, and the east has mountains soaring to above 3,000 meters. Only the extreme north is true tundra, where temperatures can hit -68°C in winter.

Get in

By train

The Trans-Siberian Railway, connecting Moscow to Vladivostok, is by far the most famous method of transportation in Siberia. Covering a distance of 9,289 kilometres, making it the longest railway in the world, the full trip takes over 6 days and crosses 8 time zones. Its branches the Trans-Manchurian and Trans-Mongolian connect to Beijing in China, the first directly, the second via Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia.

Less famed is the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), a northern line running parallel to the Trans-Siberian for 4,234 km. Completed only in 1991 and built mostly for military reasons, further away from the border of China, the BAM is much less touristed.

Get out

The authors of this document are Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel, Marke Clinger, Ryan Holliday and the following WikiTravel users: Guaka, Jpatokal. The original version of this article can be seen at http://wikitravel.org/en/Siberia.