Vanino is where the Baikal-Amur Mainline meets the sea. The railway, built across thousands of kilometres of permafrost, swamp and mountain, finishes here on the Tatar Strait, and the port town of around eighteen thousand people is arranged around the idea of loading things onto ships: coal, timber, containers, and at the quay a railway ferry that links Vanino to Kholmsk on Sakhalin. The ferry has been the island's lifeline since the 1970s and it gives the dock district a restless, working feel.
The name also carries a darker memory. In the 1930s to 1950s, Vanino was one of the transit points through which prisoners were shipped to the camps of Kolyma, and a song about the Vanino port, sung in prison and then everywhere, is still known to many Russians. You will not find much by way of memorial in the harbour, but if you know the history you feel it in the long, wind-scoured quays and the steel-grey water.
For a rider, the road from Komsomolsk-on-Amur is the real draw, a long push east across the Sikhote-Alin mountains. It has been improved over the years, but conditions differ along the way, with good asphalt in some sections and rough, broken or gravel patches in others, and heavy trucks that make the dust and mud worse. Check recent reports before setting out. Summer brings rain and fog, autumn gives clear air and good colour, and winter closes the high ground with snow. The coast itself can be blustery, with a damp, salty wind off the strait.
Vanino has the services you would expect of a port: petrol stations, shops, cafes and simple hotels, with the neighbouring settlements of Zavety Ilyicha and Mayskiy only a few kilometres away. Sovetskaya Gavan, the larger town, lies just across the bay if you need more choice. Take the chance to eat well, because the road you came on has few places for it. The sea smells of salt, creosote and fish, the hills are covered with larch and fir, and there is a real satisfaction in arriving where the road, and the continent, simply stop.