An epic journey across Russia, visiting every one of its 28 World Heritage Sites

With less than a month until the World Cup kicks off in Russia, English football fans are sizing up some curious travel options. The national team’s three group fixtures take place in Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod and Volgograd - not cities you’ll find on many holiday wishlists. 

Look beyond, to the other host cities, and you’ll find more headscratchers: Samara, Kazan, Rostov-on-Don, Saransk. Few travellers, let alone football fans, have set foot in these curious places. Indeed, despite being at the forefront of global politics, the world’s biggest country - beyond Moscow and St Petersburg, still suits Winston Churchill’s famous description: “A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. 

Telegraph Travel’s profile of the more obscure World Cup venues last year was a little reliant on Russian tourist board literature. Simply put, it’s hard to find anyone who has been to Kazan. Or Nizhny Novgorod. We learned that the former has “cold winters and hot summers, Muslim minarets and Orthodox monasteries, forest steppes, taiga and the Great Silk Road”, while the latter “is an old Russian merchant town with timber planking and carved window frames that survived the onslaught of modern architecture.” 

But what are they really like? What kind of welcome can England fans expect, and what will distract them away from the football? And what of the other little-known places in this vast country, which is home to 28 World Heritage Sites, almost all of which you couldn’t name?

To unravel a little of the Russian enigma, I’m embarking on an epic trek across the length of the country, beginning in Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic exclave, and aiming to finish in the far east, on the untouched and uninhabited Wrangel Island. 

Russian travel route: Unesco world heritage sites

Along the way I’ll be trying to visit every one of Russia’s World Heritage Sites, from the dunes of the Curonian Spit to Lake Baikal, the largest in the world; from the dramatic Lena Pillars Natural Park, where temperatures range from -60C in winter to 40C in summer, to the volcanoes of Kamchatka. While the eyes of the world will be on Russia, I’ll be looking for a different side to the host country - and filing updates on what I find for Telegraph Travel. 

At a glance | Russia's 28 World Heritage Sites

In order to prepare for this Russian odyssey, I spoke to Charley Boorman, a man who knows a thing or two about ambitious journeys. He’s travelled to most corners of the globe on tuk-tuks, canoes, barges and balloons, but is best known for his documentary Long Way Round, where he and actor Ewan McGregor rode their motorbikes all the way from London to New York – a 19,000-mile trip that took them right through Russia, along Siberia’s notorious Road of Bones. What should I expect? “There will be lots of vodka,” he told me. And much more besides, from cities rich in history to vast expanses of nothingness. It’s a country waiting to be discovered. 

How to follow the journey

As well as writing reports for Telegraph Travel, I will be posting video updates to YouTube each day. You can also follow the adventure on Instagram, or using Google Maps, while contributors to a Kickstarter campaign can join a WhatsApp group to suggest what should happen next on my journey. 

Charley Boorman’s autobiography Long Way Back is available to buy from bookstores and Amazon now.