MOSCOW, February 5 (R-Sport) - A snowmobile, an excavator and a mining truck are among the unusual forms of transport awaiting the Sochi 2014 Olympic torch relay when it reaches Russia's industrial coal mining center of Kemerovo, officials said Tuesday.

© RIA Novosti.

The Sochi 2014 Torch Relay

The Siberian city of half a million people, nearly 3,500 kilometers east of Moscow, is the 40th stop on the route of the longest-ever torch relay, which starts October 7.

"Journeys on a snowmobile, a mining truck and an excavator await the Olympic flame," the regional administration said in a statement.

Kemerovo is the center of the Kuznetsk Coal Basin, known locally as Kuzbass for short, one of the largest coal mining areas in the world.

"Kuzbass locals have the honor of showing the whole world the historical diversity of the region: the regional center, the Kedrovsky Coal Mine, and of course the jewel of Kuzbass, the Mountain Shoriya," the statement added, referring to a particularly picturesque region of the Siberian taiga.

Other forms of transport helping the flame along its record 65,000-kilometer journey include planes, trains, and even the Russian troika, a traditional sleigh pulled by three horses.

After the flame arrives from Greece, it begins its 123-day odyssey in Moscow, spiraling out from the capital before heading east and looping around the Kamchatka Peninsula, down to Vladivostok and back across southern Siberia via Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater lake.

On its way through 83 towns and cities, one for every region of the country, the torch makes its way back into European Russia, eventually winding down to the Black Sea resort of Sochi for the Opening Ceremony on February 7, 2014.