Audio tour Ulan-Ude. Kamchatka expeditions

If you try to find a town of Verkhneudinsk on the map today, we will not manage to do it. It is not surprising as it does not exist anymore. The town of Verkhneudinsky  was only until 1934. Now it is Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia. A city is located four thousand kilometers from Moscow.  The name of Ulan-Ude, translated from Buryat, means "Red River".

The history of this Asian town began on the banks of the small river Uda in 1666 when Russian Cossacks founded the Udinskoe winter hut there to collect yasak from local Tungus clans. Yasak at that time was  the natural tax from the peoples of Siberia and the North.

            Gradually, the winter hug grew into Ostrog , which later became a town of Verkhneudinsk , which had a  rich history. At different times, Verkhneudinsk was visited by Archpriest Avvakum, exiled Decembrists and their wives, the future Emperor Nicholas II and the writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. By the way, the famous Russian writer was so inspired by those places that he wrote  in his notes: “The Selenga is a sheer beauty, and in Transbaikalia I found everything I wanted: the Caucasus, the Psla valley, the Zvenigorodsky district and the Don. During the day you ride across the Caucasus, at night along the Don steppe and in the morning  you  wake up in the Poltava province."

Due to its convenient geographical location, Ulan-Ude for a long time was the main center of trade with Mongolia and China as well as with the cities of Eastern Siberia.

During the Great Northern Expeditions, the land detachment of Peter Skobeltsyn and Vasily Shatilov was created. Their expedition was called the Verkhneudinsko-Okhotskaya (1735-1737). The detachment had to find an easier and shorter route from Verkhneudinsk to Okhotsk, compared to the existing route through Yakutsk. Moreover, according to the instructions of Commander Vitus Bering, the detachment's path was not supposed to pass along the Amur River because of the danger of possible complications with the Qing Empire (China).

Several religions coexist in Buryatia nowadays: Buddhism, shamanism, traditional Orthodoxy and Old Believers. The national hero of the Buryat epic is considered the hero Geser - the son of Heaven. We will also see a monument to this hero - it is installed on a high pedestal in Ulan-Ude. A beautiful view of the city opens from the foot of the monument.

If you go a little higher - to the Buddhist monastery "Rinpoche Bagsha", you will enjoy a fantastic view of  modern Ulan-Ude. This Buddhist cult complex was built in 2000 on the highest point of the city - Lysaya Gora.