There is a good story behind this observatory, and it involves a retired astronomer's generosity. Vasily Engelhardt, a Russian nobleman who spent decades observing the sky from his private observatory in Dresden, gave his instruments to Kazan University in the late 1890s, and the university built a new observatory for them on a hill outside the city. It is a quiet, wooded site, far from the lights of Kazan, with domes and small buildings set among trees. For a motorcyclist it is an unusual sort of sight, a place devoted to looking up.
The setting is the Volga country of Tatarstan, a land of rolling fields, birch woods and slow, wide water. A few kilometres away the Volga has been dammed into a long reservoir, and the hill country on the right bank rises steeply above it. Sviyazhsk, the island town founded by Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century as a staging post for the conquest of Kazan, lies nearby, and its Assumption Cathedral and Monastery appear on the same ride. Tatarstan itself is an interesting mix of Tatar and Russian culture, and you will see mosques and Orthodox churches in the same villages.
Roads in the area are straightforward. The federal highway between Kazan and Moscow runs close by, wide and fast, with heavy lorry traffic, and the smaller roads that lead to the observatory are quiet and usually in decent condition. Corners are gentle, gradients modest, and there are long straights where you must watch for speed cameras and slow tractors. Summer is warm and sometimes humid, and the best times are late May and September, when the woods are fresh or turning. Winter is long and cold, and the roads can be icy from November.
Vasil'yevo, about six kilometres away, has fuel, shops and cafés, so fill up there before you head out. If you want a meal, try chak-chak, the sticky honey sweet that Tatar families serve with tea, or echpochmak, a triangular pastry of meat and potato. Visiting the observatory itself may require checking opening hours with the university in advance, since it is a working scientific site, but the grounds and surrounding woods are pleasant on their own.