Although very heavy falls of snow take place in the alpine tracts - especially about Lake Baikal - on the other side, in the steppe regions of the Altai and Transbaikalia and in the neighbourhood of Krasnoyarsk, the amount of snow is so small that travellers use wheeled vehicles, and cattle are able to find food in the steppe.
Tyumen (29,651) in West Siberia, head of Siberian navigation; Barnaul (29,850), capital of the Altai region; Krasnoyarsk (33337) and Tobolsk (21,401), both mere administrative centres; Biysk (17,206), centre of the Altai trade; Khabarovsk (15,082), administrative centre of the Amur region; Chita (11,480), the capital of Transbaikalia; Nikolsk (22,000); Irbit (20,064); Kolyvan (11,703), the centre of the trade of southern Tomsk; Yeniseisk (11,539), the centre of the gold-mining region of the same name; Kurgan (10, 579), a growing town in Tobolsk; and Minusinsk (10,255), in the southern part of .the Yeniseisk province, trading with north-west Mongolia.
From Tyumen the road proceeds to Omsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, sending off from Kolyvan a branch south to Barnaul in the Altai and to Turkestan.
Thence the line was continued across the prairies to Kurgan and Omsk, and from there it followed the great Siberian highway to Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, and on round Lake Baikal to Chita and Stryetensk on the Shilka.
It is navigable as far up as Minusinsk, a distance of 1840 m., and is free from ice on the average for 155 days at Turukhansk and for 196 days at Krasnoyarsk.