Nizhny Novgorod stands where the Oka flows into the Volga, a meeting of two enormous rivers that gives the city its character. The high bank on which the kremlin stands is a natural fortress, and the red-brick walls, built in the early sixteenth century, climb around the hill with thirteen towers still standing. From the ramparts you look out over the confluence and the cape called the Strelka, where the two streams run side by side for a while, one darker, one paler, before merging.
The city's history is long and varied. It was founded in 1221 as a frontier fortress against the Mordvins and Bulgars, and in 1612, during the Time of Troubles, a local butcher named Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky raised a volunteer army here that drove the Polish garrison out of Moscow. For centuries it hosted the great Nizhny Novgorod Fair, one of the biggest trading events in the empire. The writer Maxim Gorky was born here, and from 1932 to 1990 the whole city was called Gorky in his honor. During the Soviet period it was closed to foreigners because of its military factories, and it was where the physicist Andrei Sakharov lived in internal exile.
The streets reward walking. Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, the main pedestrian street, runs from the center to the Kremlin, and the Chkalov Stairs, a long flight of steps that descends toward the Volga, give a sweeping view. The city has about one and a quarter million people and a lively mix of old merchant houses, Soviet blocks and modern buildings. Traffic in the center can be heavy, and bridges over the Oka and the Volga become bottlenecks at rush hour.
For riders, the real treat lies outside. Heading up the Volga to Gorodets, with its painted wooden houses, and to Chkalovsk, birthplace of the pilot Valery Chkalov, you ride along a high bank with views over the water, on roads that range from smooth to rough. Summers are warm, autumn is golden and winter is long and cold. Fuel, food and repairs are available everywhere, and Bor, across the river, has more of the same.
Stop at the Strelka at dusk and watch the lights come on along both banks. It is one of the great river views of Russia.