Komsomolsk-on-Amur is a city with a founding myth. In 1932, volunteers from the Komsomol, the Communist youth league, were sent to a spot on the Amur River, deep in the taiga, to build a new industrial city, and they arrived to find almost nothing. The city that grew has about 276,000 people today, laid out on a neat grid of broad avenues, and it remains one of the great industrial centres of the Russian Far East, with a steel works, shipyards and an aircraft factory. Solnechny lies a short way to the northeast.
For a rider it is a proper stop. Fuel, food and mechanics are all easy to find, and the city has hotels and cafes of every type. The ride in from Khabarovsk crosses long stretches of forest and marsh, with a surface that can be good in places and punishing in others, and trucks make up much of the traffic. Distances here are big and settlements small, so fill the tank whenever you can. The best season is late summer to early autumn, when the roads are dry and the forest turns gold, while winter is bitterly cold and spring brings mud.
The history of the city is more complicated than the cheerful story suggests. Much of the early construction was carried out by prison labour, and the city stands on the Baikal-Amur Mainline, the great railway built across Siberia in the later Soviet decades. The aircraft factory, which produces Sukhoi jets, is a big employer, and you will see the shapes of aircraft on display in parts of the city. The long Amur embankment is a pleasant place for an evening walk, with the huge, slow river flowing past, a kilometre or more wide in places.
The surrounding landscape is the typical taiga of the Far East, with larch, fir, birch and wetlands, and the Amur itself dominates everything. In summer, mosquitoes and midges are fierce, and repellent is essential. In autumn, the light is lovely and the air smells of damp leaves and woodsmoke. Salmon and sturgeon run in the river, and the local cuisine includes fish soups and salted roe.
From here the road continues toward Sovetskaya Gavan on the Tatar Strait, through even emptier country, so carry spare fuel and food. Good tyres and patience are the main tools.