Kyakhta’s star attraction is its delightfully eccentric museum, perhaps rather comically dubbed the ‘Hermitage of the East’ by some overzealous locals. It’s certainly one of Siberia’s fullest museums with room after musty room of exhibits relating to the tea trade, local plants and animals, Buryat traditions, Asian art and Kyakhta’s bit part in WWII. Many of the older exhibits were hauled back to Troitskosavsk by 19th-century Russian gentlemen explorers who launched trans-Asian expeditions from the town. No English signage or information.
