Syktyvkar is the capital of the Komi Republic, and it feels like a capital of a very large, very empty country. The city sits on the Sysola River, a tributary of the Vychegda, in the taiga of northern Russia, and its streets are lined with birch trees, Soviet blocks and bright modern shop fronts. About two hundred and thirty thousand people live here, making it by far the largest place for hundreds of kilometres in any direction. Before 1930, it was called Ust-Sysolsk, a small trading town that had grown from a village in the eighteenth century, and the new name comes from Komi and means the city on the Sysola.
The Komi are a Finno-Ugric people, related to the Finns and Estonians, with their own language, which is still spoken in the countryside. Their conversion to Christianity was led by Saint Stephen of Perm in the late fourteenth century, who also invented a special alphabet for Komi, the Old Permic script, one of the first written scripts for a Finno-Ugric language. A statue and a cathedral in Syktyvkar remember him, and the national museum in the city has a good collection of Komi costumes, crafts and folklore, including carved wood, embroidery and reindeer-skin boots.
The riding in this part of Russia is long, quiet and flat. The roads out of Syktyvkar run through endless forest of spruce, pine and birch, with occasional views over rivers and bogs, and traffic is light, with timber trucks. The surface is mixed, with good sections, patched sections and frost damage. In summer, mosquitoes are fierce, the nights are bright, and thunderstorms can be dramatic. Autumn is short and golden, and winter is long, dark and very cold. If you can, aim for June to September.
The city has all you need: petrol stations all around, shops, cafés serving soup, dumplings and fish, and hotels of all kinds. It is the best place to stock up before heading further north or east, because services thin out quickly. Check your tyres, carry water, and keep your fuel topped up.
Take a walk along the river in the evening, when the light is soft. It is a calm place at the edge of the great northern forest.