Welcome to Vostok Travel specializing in custom designed tours to Russia , Siberia and the Russian Far East. We are experienced in corporate and business travel as well as leisure tours with special interests and custom design tour packages for groups and individuals. Established Russian overseas partners provide expertise and reliable service to make your journey smooth and unforgettable in those hard to get places.
Our staff is bilingual and has over 10 years of knowledge providing travel services to Russia and former USSR and its outlying and remote destinations in that region. You will find quick access to the most complete and updated database to the best available hotel accommodations, international and Russian domestic air schedules, Trans Siberian reservations, Volga, Kama, Don and Dnepr River cruises, car transfers, guide-translator services and Russian visa support. Our goal is to reach the highest standard of customer service and cost effective tour products that meet your needs and budget.
Russia is considered by the World Tourism Organization a country with great potential for tourism development.
Figures cited by tourism experts showed that 70 percent to 80 percent of the 3.5 million foreign tourists that came to the country rarely ventured farther than Moscow, St. Petersburg and perhaps the Golden Ring.
Russia is probably best known for its well-traipsed route of St. Petersburg and Moscow -- the introduction points for the average tourist and about as far as many are likely to venture.
Considered the heart of Russia, Moscow is described by travel operators as a place where ancient Russia meets the Soviet Union and capitalism -- illustrated by the golden onion domes of the Kremlin's Orthodox churches which look out past Lenin's mausoleum and over the massive GUM shopping complex.
St. Petersburg, on the other hand, is considered to be a more European capital. The creation of Peter the Great, it is best known for its 18th- and 19th-century palaces, the Peter and Paul fortress, a former prison, the Hermitage Museum, and the White Nights.
The Golden Ring is a group of towns and cities including Suzdal, Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Rostov Velikiy, Pereslav Zalesky (former Zagorsk) -- that once played an important politcal, spiritual and cultural role in ancient Rus. They offer a host of restored and abandoned churches, monasteries and fortresses, rich museums and preserved wooden villages
A holiday pursuit popular among Russians but rarely tried by foreigners is to take the pulse of the country by plying its main artery, the Volga.
The 3,700-kilometer-long river winds its way past republics and cities with varied environments, religions and economies, but all of which hold the Volga as something central to their cultural heritage.
Cruises can take the would-be sailors from Moscow to the Golden Ring town of Yaroslavl, past former trading center Nizhny Novgorod, through virgin forests to the Moslem Tartarstan Republic and down to the Astrakhan delta. Set on the Black Sea coast against the backdrop of the snow-capped Caucasus mountains, the beach resort town Sochi was for a long time the place to spend a vacation with its subtropical climate, warm seas, arboretum and gardens. Most tourists visit Sochi to relax on the beaches, swim in the sea and partake of its favorable climate but its mineral spas and sanatoriums make it an ideal health resort. Its healing waters attract people seeking to cure rheumatism and recover from illnesses. Anapa, also on Russia's Black Sea coast, has the reputation of being the best curative spa town for children.
For those seeking a natural high, Russia's best attractions may be the Caucasus mountains. Areas of the Caucasus mountains which rise dramatically above the Black Sea coast and run down to the Caspian Sea, are also noted by groups such as the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for their plant diversity, subalpine pastures grazed by wild animals and lack of human disturbance. Here, one can go skiing, scale Europe's highest peak -- the 5,642-meter Mount Elbrus -- and relax at the spas of Mineralniye Vody. Home to a range of cultures, peoples and languages, the Caucasus also stretch into the more troubled regions of Dagestan and Chechnya, so travel is unsafe in some areas. Siberia tends to conjure up images of frozen wastelands and political prisoners exiled to labor camps, but the region has many natural, historical and cultural wonders waiting to be explored.
One of the most famous ways to explore Siberia's vast expanse and probably the dream of many a foreigner, is the mythical Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Trans-Siberian Railroad is now the longest continuous rail line on earth. Lake Baikal, Ulan Ude in Buryatia and Vladivostok, Russian Far East, are all along the journey. The mammoth trip over seven days and across eight time zones can transport a traveler from Moscow to Irkutsk and then Vladivostok. Other popular options are the Trans-Manchurian and Trans-Mongolian lines, which take travelers to Ulan Bator and Beijing.
Besides Moscow and St. Petersburg there are international airports: Arkhangelsk, Ekaterinburg, Kaliningrad, Kazan, Krasnodar, Mineralnye Vody, Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-na-Donu, Samara, Sochi, Voronezh with domestic flights or train connection to: Anapa, Apatity, Astrakhan, Belgorod, Bryansk, Bugulma, Cheboksary, Chelyabinsk, Cherepovetz, Elista, Gelendzhik, Ivanovo, Izhevsk, Kaluga, Kirov, Kislovodsk, Kizhi, Kostroma, Kursk, Lipetsk, Magnitogorsk, Makhachkala, Naberezhnye Chelny, Nalchik, Narian-Mar, Nazran, Novgorod, Novorossiysk, Oryol, Pechora, Penza, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Perm, Petrozavodsk, Pskov, Pyatigorsk, Ryazan, Rybinsk, Saransk, Saratov, Sergiev Posad, Severodvinsk, Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), Smolensk, Sochi, Solovki, Stavropol, Syktyvkar, Taganrog, Tambov, Tuapse, Tula, Tver, Ufa, Uglich, Ulyanovsk, Velikie Luki, Vladikavkaz, Vladimir, Volgograd, Vologda, Vorkuta, Voronezh, Vyborg, Yaroslavl, Yoshkar-Ola
