Essoyla is a village of a few thousand people on the shore of Syamozero, one of the larger lakes in southern Karelia, a stretch of open water ringed with pine forest and dotted with small islands. It sits along the Blue Highway, an international tourist route that runs all the way from the Norwegian coast through Sweden and Finland into Russian Karelia, linking countries by the lakes and rivers that cut across the north. Essoyla is a quiet stop on that long road, a place where people still fish, gather berries and mushrooms in the forest, and heat their houses with wood.
The area is home to the Livvi Karelians, one of the Finnic peoples of the region, whose language is close to Finnish and still heard in some villages. Their culture shows in the wooden houses, the occasional chapel and the food: kalitki, small open pies of rye dough filled with potato or millet porridge, are the classic Karelian snack and worth looking for in local cafes or shops. The lakes and forests around Essoyla are full of bilberries and lingonberries in late summer, and the air smells of pine and wet moss after rain.
The riding through this part of Karelia is calm and flowing rather than dramatic. The road follows the terrain, rising and falling over low glacial ridges, curving around lakes and crossing rivers on narrow bridges, with long stretches of forest in between. The surface can be good or terrible depending on recent repairs, with potholes and broken edges common. Traffic is light, but logging trucks are frequent and drive hard. Moose and occasionally bears cross the road, particularly at dawn and dusk.
Essoyla has a shop or two, and you may find a simple cafe, but services are limited. Pryazha, about thirty kilometres away on the main road to Petrozavodsk, is the nearest larger village with fuel and more shops, and Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia, has everything. Fill up before heading into this stretch, carry water and some food, and take time at the lake shore. On a still summer evening, with the water like glass and the light lingering past midnight, Syamozero is pure northern calm.