Ulyanovsk was called Simbirsk until 1924, when it was renamed in honor of its most famous son. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, was born here in 1870, and for decades the city was a place of Soviet pilgrimage, with a vast memorial complex and a museum in the family home. Many visitors are now more interested in a different literary figure. Ivan Goncharov, author of the novel Oblomov, was born in Simbirsk in 1812, and the lazy hero of his book is as much a part of Russian identity as any revolutionary. Nikolai Karamzin, the great historian, was also from this region.
The city lies on the high right bank of the Volga, at a point where the river has been widened into the huge Kuybyshev Reservoir. From the embankments and the viewpoints above the water, the scale of the river is striking, with a far shore barely visible on a hazy day. The old center, with its wooden merchant houses and a few elegant stone buildings, climbs a hill, and the long bridge across the water is a landmark. The city has about six hundred and forty thousand people and builds aircraft and cars, and its airport is a major freight hub.
For riders, the countryside to the north and east is the Volga Upland, a belt of high, rolling land cut by ravines, with oak woods, fields and small villages. The Sengiley hills, with their chalk slopes and steppe vegetation, offer fine views over the river, and the roads there are quiet, with bends and some good surfaces. Others are patchy and broken, and gravel appears on the smaller tracks. Summers are hot and dusty, with thunderstorms in the afternoon, and the best season is late spring and early autumn. Winter is long and snowy.
Services are straightforward. Fuel stations, shops and cafes are on every main street, and the city has repair shops. Isheyevka, a smaller town to the south, has the basics too.
Take a walk along the embankment in the evening. The reservoir turns copper in the setting sun, and the long bridge lights up.