Dervla Murphy is the author of Silverland: A Winter Journey Beyond the Urals and Through Siberia By Accident: A Small Slice of Autobiography. Her latest book, The Island That Dared: Journeys in Cuba is out now.
Some 500 years ago, the Grand Tour gradually evolved out of two medieval traditions. For centuries, young knights had been sent abroad to compete in tournaments, show off their courtly dancing skills and gain the attention of influential men. In western Europe – and beyond – class united people more than their homelands. To counteract all that worldliness, a few pilgrimages were often included, to such hallowed places as Canterbury, Rome and Santiago de Compostela.
Things changed during the 15th century, when many of these privileged youths were required to emulate the travelling scholars, who, since medieval times, had completed their education by wandering from university to university; Paris and Bologna the most esteemed.
The Grand Tour eventually became an institution of some complexity; it was never a luxury holiday as the term might suggest to us. On the long journeys between Europe's noble estates and great cities, no home comforts were expected and anxious mothers provided strange concoctions to deter the infestations commonly found in rural inns. Equally anxious fathers provided copies of Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son in which the earl warned against 'depravities acquired'. He deplored 'the general conduct, the indecent behaviour, and the illiberal views of my young countrymen abroad'. (That was written in the 1740s – so what's new?)
Grand Tours could take four, six, eight months – even longer, if the young man had an indulgent father and wished to extend his studies and/or his frolics. The latter were usually limited by a learned tutor, also responsible for organising lodgings, and visits to revered savants, and for supervising his charge's regular, detailed journal entries. (Here we glimpse the seeds of England's travel-writing tradition.)
As most 21st-century Grand Tourists can abandon their grindstones for no more than a month, I recommend a round trip from Irkutsk to Irkutsk, through Siberia and the Russian Far East, stopping in Ust'-Kut, Yakutsk, Neryungri, Tynda, Komsomolsk-na-Amure, Vanino, Khabarovsk and Ulan-Ude. This journey – by train, paddle steamer, bus, then train again – offers an escape from the monotonous, standardised lifestyle that nowadays blurs the line between 'home' and 'away'. It also costs very little. Having flown to Irkutsk, from Moscow or Beijing, you take a slow train to Taishet junction and change onto an even slower train (the BAM) for Ust'-Kut, a port on the Lena river. From there, a paddle steamer takes you 1,270 miles downstream to Yakutsk. After half a century of wandering around the world, this week-long cruise is among my most cherished travel memories – in 2002, a first-class ticket cost a mere £70.
In these regions, spring and autumn are brief but, with clever timing and a bit of luck, one month should enable you to enjoy both the flaring beauty of the Lena's forested banks and the coruscating radiance of new snow on the vast plains and austere mountains along the rest of your route. Aim for the last September sailing before the Lena freezes over: you can't book ahead but you may reach Ust'-Kut just in time to leap aboard. Alternatively, you may find yourself with a few days to explore this little city (a 'city' only by the standards of Eastern Siberia) where the scarcity of foreigners ensures you a particularly warm welcome. Here, your journey will diverge from the original Grand Tour model; instead of encountering great works of art you will learn something about the harsh realities of post-Soviet Siberia.
Planning your various train journeys is easy. The BAM – a junior offshoot of the Trans-Siberian Railway – is as reliable as its famous senior and touchingly proud of its punctuality whatever the weather. In contrast, the Yakutsk-Neryungri bus is piquantly unpredictable. This service departs on time and traverses memorably dramatic landscapes rarely seen by tourists. However, you may not arrive on time. Vehicles age prematurely in this terrain and repair delays are to be expected.
Neryungri offers a novel tourist attraction – in prospect depressing, in reality morbidly fascinating. Here is one of the world's largest open-cut coalmines, truly Siberian in the sheer enormity of everything to do with it. The BAM Guide has to be on its own when describing a visit to a coalmine as a 'must', but on arrival you'll see the point.
Komsomolsk-na-Amure is your first stop in the Russian Far East. Founded in 1932 as a base for military industries, it remained tightly closed to all outsiders (Russian as well as foreign) for 59 years and, to this day, it retains a distinctive atmosphere. Then on to the end of the BAM line, at Vanino on the Pacific coast, where the port will be busy in preparation for its long hibernation when the ocean freezes over.
On the return journey, you will join the Trans-Siberian at Khabarovsk and, a few days later, you may have time for a detour by bus from Ulan-Ude to the little town of Ust'-Barguzin on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal. Back on the rails, the final stage to Irkutsk takes you for hours along the lake's shore, within yards of that magical expanse of water, then steeply up and over a tangle of mountains that presented the Trans-Siberian engineers with their most daunting challenge.
For lack of the Grand Tourists' entourage, one must travel light on this journey; wimpish-wheeled luggage would soon fall apart if dragged over the terrain. One large, comfortable rucksack is adequate. Bulky objects would not be compatible with your accommodation's electric points. Eveningwear, too, is superfluous. Which reminds me – gastronomic delights don't feature here. In the BAM's dining cars, the steamer's canteen and hotel restaurant, meals are neither substantial nor tasty.
Happily, Russia's renowned hospitality becomes more obvious the further east you travel and, when invited to join a family for an evening meal, its quality and quantity will surprise you. There won't, of course, be much variety. For climatic reasons, local products are of a limited range and these sensible people don't waste fuel and money on importing a selection of alien foods.
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