Divnogorsk is a company town that turned into a proper one. It grew from the late 1950s around the Krasnoyarsk Dam, a huge concrete hydropower station on the Yenisei that for years ranked among the largest in the world, and today around thirty thousand people live in tidy streets squeezed between the river and the steep, forested slopes of the Sayan foothills. The name means something like a place of wonders, and while that is generous for a Soviet-era dam town, the setting earns it: the Yenisei here is wide, cold and fast, coming out of the reservoir like a gate has been opened.
The road from Krasnoyarsk upstream along the river is a pleasure for any rider who enjoys a bit of rhythm. The highway climbs and falls through spruce and birch, curling beside the water, with a good surface in most places and enough bends to keep you busy without wearing you out. Traffic can be heavy near the city, thinning as you head south, and in winter this stretch can be icy in the shaded corners, so late spring through early autumn is the sensible window. Early mornings, with mist over the river, are the best time of day.
With around thirty thousand residents, Divnogorsk has all the services you might need: fuel, cafes, supermarkets and a handful of hotels. It also has a viewpoint over the dam, and an old ship lift built to carry vessels past the wall, though it is no longer in regular use. A short ride away, the village of Ovsyanka is the birthplace of the writer Viktor Astafiev, one of the best-loved voices of late Soviet literature, and a small museum there tells his story, with the Yenisei and the taiga as the backdrop to his books.
The river deserves a moment. The Yenisei is one of the great rivers of Siberia, flowing north for thousands of kilometres to the Arctic, and here it is still young and clear, fed by the mountains. The dam has changed its flow and temperature, so that in some winters the water below the wall stays open and steams in the frost. Bring a layer, because the air near the water is colder than you expect, and enjoy the sense of riding beside something much bigger than a road.