Ulan-Ude

Evenks and, later, Buryat Mongols were the first people of the valley where the Uda meets the Selenga. Russian Cossacks built the fort of Udinskoye here in 1666, and its position made it a busy trading town on the routes linking Russia with China and Mongolia; from 1690 it was the administrative centre of the Transbaikal region. Known as Udinsk from around 1735, it received town status in 1775 and was renamed Verkhneudinsk, "Upper Udinsk", in 1783. Merchants built stone and timber mansions along the river, and after a great fire in 1878 the town was almost entirely rebuilt.

The Trans-Siberian Railway arrived in 1900 and set off rapid growth: from 3,500 people in 1880, the population reached 126,000 by 1939. From April to October 1920 Verkhneudinsk was the capital of the Far Eastern Republic, a nominally independent state that lasted until 1922. On 27 July 1934 the city was renamed Ulan-Ude, "red Uda" in Buryat. In the 1930s much of the original Buryat culture and its religious buildings were destroyed, and the city remained closed to foreigners until 1991.

After the Soviet collapse, formal housing could not keep pace with the growing population, and unplanned settlements of private houses known as nakhalovki spread over farmland on the outskirts, many of them still short of basic infrastructure. The population has kept growing, from about 404,000 in 2010 to about 438,000 in 2021.

Ulan-Ude is the centre of Tibetan Buddhism in Russia. Buddhism reached the Buryats from Mongolia in the 17th century and was recognised as an official religion of the Russian Empire in 1741. After decades of Soviet repression, the Ivolginsky Datsan opened outside the city in 1945 as the only Buddhist centre in the Soviet Union, and today it is the seat of the Buddhist Traditional Sangha of Russia, with temple rites, traditional medicine and a monastic school. A temple there honours the 12th Pandito Khambo Lama, Dashi-Dorzho Itigelov, who asked to be buried and checked on 30 years later; when exhumed, his body was found showing no sign of decay.

The Buryat and Russian worlds sit side by side. About a third of the city's people are Buryats, and the Mongolian cultural influence is very noticeable, while the old centre's merchants' mansions, with their wood and stone carving, are fine examples of Russian classicism. The opera and ballet theatre runs its own music and dance schools, and the Ulger puppet theatre, founded in 1967, performs several plays in the Buryat language.

The giant Lenin head on the main square, built for the centenary of 1970 and the largest in the world, has become the city's best-known symbol. Ulan-Ude is also the finishing point of the Mongol Rally.

About 438,000 people lived in Ulan-Ude at the 2021 census, and roughly 600,000 in the wider urban area, making it the third-largest city in the Russian Far East and the capital of the Republic of Buryatia. Russians make up about 61 per cent of the population and Buryats about 35 per cent. The city is divided into three districts — Sovetsky, Zheleznodorozhny and Oktyabrsky.

As well as the seat of the republic's government, the city is a transport hub: it sits at the junction of the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Mongolian lines and on the main federal highway east, and the Ulan-Ude Aviation Plant is based here. The informal nakhalovki districts on the outskirts remain a lasting problem, lacking much of the necessary infrastructure.

The year swings between extremes. Winters are long, dry and bitterly cold, with lasting snow cover, while summers, from mid-May to early September, are warm and bring most of the year's rain. People get around by tram, bus and marshrutka.

Buryat cooking is simple and hearty, with very little spice, and shares many dishes with Mongolian cuisine while also borrowing from Russian and Soviet cooking. Most dishes are based on lamb or beef. Buuza, also called pozy (buuz in Mongolia), are steamed dumplings usually filled with lamb or beef and onions. Khuushuur are fried meat pies, usually of mutton, cooked in sunflower oil, and sharbin are a round version of the same.

Soups include bukhleor, a lamb soup with hand-cut noodles and potatoes, and shulen, a mutton or beef soup with egg noodles. Shan'gi are flatbreads with melted local cheese, and salamat is a dessert of rye and sour cream. Near Lake Baikal fish dishes are common, among them sagudai, fresh lake fish prepared raw, and the Selenga is home to omul and other prized fish.

Dairy foods include airhan, a dried cottage cheese; khuruud, a hard cheese; and urme, the thick skin skimmed from boiled fat milk. Buryat and Russian restaurants cluster along Lenina Street and around the Lenin head, and a local brand of vodka is a popular souvenir.