Far Eastern Russia (Russian: Да́льний Восто́к Росси́и, DAHL'-nih vah-STOHK rah-SEE) is the easternmost part of Russia, comprising its Pacific Ocean islands, coastline and a swath of eastern Siberia, comprising a third of the country's land area, with 6.3 million in habitants. The northern part of the region is in the Arctic.
Although traditionally considered part of Siberia, the Russian Far East is categorized separately from Siberia in Russian regional schemes, and today, the Siberian Federal District excludes the Russian Far East.
Distances between cities and towns in the Russian Far East are huge and infrastructure is lacking. When traveling overland, make sure your vehicle is suitable for driving on untarred roads with large potholes. Even on major roads connecting larger cities, some sections remain gravel roads. The driving style is generally even worse than in the rest of Russia. A combination of using the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Baikal-Amur Mainline, and for destinations off the rail system, domestic flights, will get you around the majority, but not the entirety, of the region. In particular, Northeastern Russia is almost entirely without interregional transportation infrastructure and is off the Russian rail network—the one exception is the long, lonely, seasonal, and partially maintained country roads connecting Yakutsk to Magadan. Heading north from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky by road will only take you as far as Esso, road tracks passable by half-track vehicles in March extend as far as Palana; from Palana onwards, overland travel becomes wilderness adventure.
This lack of roads and rail network makes travel by sea along the coast a much more accessible option, with expedition cruising companies (such as Heritage Expeditions www.heritage-expeditions.com) operating their own ice-strengthened polar research vessels on several Russian Far East cruisesfrom Kuril Islands in the south to Commander Islands and Kamchatka, and from Chukotka north into the Russian Arctic including Wrangel Island and Herald Island, famous for the density of Polar Bears.
