Whats a good backpacker destination in Russia? Seems to be the theme of things. Even Guilin! I did some research and didn't know it was a so called backpacker friendly place.
My son has been backpacking in China, SE Asia and India since June, and visited many TAR13 locations (we have a picture of him with red paint). He'll be traveling through Kazakhstan (and 3 other 'stans), plus Russia in 2009. The cities listed on his Russia visa application were Volgograd, Kazan, Nizhny, Novgorod, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
We're saving TAR13 so he can watch it when he's finally back home. He was going to watch for TAR14 participants, but since he was bicycling around the coast of India during the applicable time period, their paths did not cross.