Pudozh is a wooden-roofed river town on the Onega, about a hundred kilometres east of the great lake of the same name, in the far north of Karelia where the land is flat, forested and soaked with water. It is a place of about ten thousand people and a long history, first mentioned in the fifteenth century, when it was a trading post on routes between the White Sea and Novgorod. The river is broad and slow, and the whole area is a mosaic of swamps, birch woods and lakes.
The wider region is known for something much older. On the eastern shore of Lake Onega, the granite shelves at Besov Nos and nearby capes hold several hundred petroglyphs, rock carvings of swans, deer, boats, humans and strange demon-like faces, made some six thousand years ago by the hunter-gatherers who lived along the water. The best known of these carvings, a large figure of a demon with a long nose, gives the cape its name, which means Cape of Demons. They are best seen in low sun, when raking light shows up the shallow grooves. The site is protected and reached by a boardwalk, with a small museum.
Further out in the lake is Kizhi Island, with its famous wooden churches. The Transfiguration church has twenty-two domes and was built without nails, according to the local story, and it is one of the best-known landmarks in Russian wooden architecture. It is on the UNESCO World Heritage List and is reached by hydrofoil from Petrozavodsk in summer.
The road to Pudozh runs through unbroken taiga, and the riding here is about space rather than excitement. The surface can be rough, with patches, potholes and frost heaves, and the road crosses long stretches without any services, so a spare litre and a tool kit are not an indulgence. Elk step onto the road without warning, particularly at dusk, and in summer mosquitoes arrive in clouds.
Pudozh has fuel, a few shops and simple cafés, with the smoked and fried fish of Onega on offer in season. The long summer evenings, from June, are pale and still, with golden light on the river. In winter the roads can be icy, and temperatures drop to minus twenty or worse.