Siberia

I like to go to out-of-the way places that most other people don't go to. In 2017, Leanne and I went to northeastern Siberia. We flew to Magadan, tavelled by minibus to Yakutsk, took a boat down the Lena River to the Arctic Ocean and back, then flew to Moscow.

Magadan

We flew via Seoul, Vladivostok and Khabarovsk to Magadan on the Sea of Okhotsk. Our apartment block in Magadan looked pretty shabby on the outside, but was very pleasant inside, a characteristic, I suspect, of many soviet-era apartment blocks.

Before leaving Australia, I had tried to book transport from Magadan to Yakutsk, but it seemed that there was nothing online to allow one to do so. I wasn't even sure that the journey was possible. We had a boat trip booked from Yakutsk, so needed to be there in time for that.

We went out looking for transport the day after we arrived. We found a place that had a marshrutka (sort of minibus) leaving that afternoon. We had hoped to spend a couple of days in Magadan, but, not being sure whether that might be our last chance to get to Yakutsk on time, we decided to take the opportunity. We went back to the apartment, packed up and went to meet the minibus.

The Road of Bones

The road from Magadan to Yakutsk is a very desolate 2000 km gravel road with very little traffic. It's called the the Kolyma Highway, but it's better known as 'The Road of Bones'. It was built in Stalin's time to open up the area for gold mining. It was built by gulag prisoners. The life expectancy of those sent to work on the road was about 3 months. When they died, their bodies were just added to the road base and, being a permafrost area, their bones would still be there in the road.

The marshrutka was only going to Ust Nera, about half way along the road, but we were assured there would be another one at Ust Nera to take us the rest of the way. We set off mid-afternoon, drove overnight (though it didn't get dark), and arrived mid-morning the next day. We had one driver and 11 passengers in a 12-seater vehicle. The driver drove the whole way. It seems rules about driving passenger vehicles are different there.

The scenery was quite interesting. We passed a few ghost towns from the gold mining days, some with quite large apartment blocks. The mosquitos were something else, though. We would stop in the middle of nowhere and, as soon as we opened the door, the air outside was thick with them. This apparently tends to be a feature of the tundra. I've heard that caribou in arctic Canada can become anaemic from mosquito bites and will stand for hours in ice-cold water just to stop them from biting. We wondered what the mosquitos lived on there in Siberia. Until we reached some pastoral land near Yakutsk with a few horses, the only animal we saw was one black bear crossing the road in front of us.

We had a few hours in Ust Nera before the second marshrutka left, so we explored the town a bit. It was sort of like a ghost town with people in it. The few apartment blocks were crumbling away. We went into the one shop to find that half the wooden floor was missing and planks had been stretched across the holes to allow people to get around.

From Ust Nera, we continued in a different marshrutka, with a different driver, but with fairly much the same passengers.

Apart from us, just about everyone in the minibus smoked and we had to have frequent smoko stops. At least they didn't smoke in the bus. But it meant that we missed the last ferry across the Aldan River at 10:30 p.m. and had to wait for the first one next morning at 6:30 a.m. Our choice was to sit inside the minibus with all the windows closed and 10 Russians snoring very loudly or to go outside and face the mosquitos. We alternated between the two, trying to decide which was worse.

The road goes past the world's coldest town, Oymyakon, where the temperature hovers between -40 and -50 in winter and has been known to drop below -70. It is possible to travel the road in winter, but few people do it and, if you break down, you tend to die.

Yakutsk

The last bit of the journey to Yakutsk was a ferry ride across the Lena River. We arrived on a warm summer afternoon in a thunderstorm. We had an apartment booked, but were dropped in a different part of town.

I learnt Russian for two years at school, but that was a long time ago, and, while I had tried to brush it up a bit before the trip, it was of very little use. Feeling somewhat wet and despondent, we found a coffee shop and went in. To our delight, one of the waiters, a very friendly young man, spoke good English (something fairly rare in Yakutsk) and was happy to sit and chat with us.

Most accomodation in Russia is in private apartments. They can take quite a while to find. We eventually found our apartment building and were faced with a staircase that would take us up to our floor. But the thunderstorm had cut the power in the city and after the first floor, the stair case was pitch dark. So we waited for the power to come back, which it eventually did. Like in Magadan, the apartment was quite pleasant inside.

We had two or three days in Yakutsk before the boat left and another four days or so there after the boat got back. Yakutsk is a city of 270 000 people and one that is growing rapidly with a lot of new and quite flash apartment blocks along with the old soviet-style ones.

The power station in Yakutsk is gas fired. Power staions in most countries have cooling towers to cool the water after it's used. In Yakutsk, the water isn't cooled, but instead is pumped around the city and into people's homes in insulated pipes for their central heating.

Though it's the coldest city in the world (mostly below -40 in winter), the temperature was over 30 degrees every day we were there. Apparently that was a bit warmer than normal, but the 'coldest city' title comes from the winter temperatures. The temperature range from winter to summer is very marked. We saw a few signs of the winter conditions. The most obvious was that to enter public buildings like shopping centres etc. you pass through two or more often three automatic doors which would not all open at once.

One of the days we were there, visibility was reduced to about 500 m by smoke from bush fires in the area. Most fires start naturally and many are are innaccessible, so they are just left to burn themselves out.

Like everything in that area, the city is built on permafrost and bulges in the ground from methane exhalations are everywhere. We went into a disused gold mine which is now a museum. The temperature inside is a comfortable -10 summer and winter and the frosty passages have ice sculptures scattered along them.

Another attraction of the city was the mammoth museum. Many deep-frozen mammoths have been found in northeastern Siberia. There were ornaments, sculptures, chess sets etc. made from mammoth ivory. You could even buy it, though the prices did reflect the limited supply. The pictures below are an ivory piece and a mammoth tooth, with Leanne's hand for scale.

Yakustk is a very laid-back city where we felt totally safe. We spent quite a lot of time in a coffee shop near our apartment. Locals would sit in there and work on laptops and the like. One young woman sat at the table next to us and left her handbag and laptop on the table for several minutes while she went to the toilet. No one saw that as odd.

We had dinner at a very nice restaurant on my birthday and I had horse. Horse is about the only animal kept in the area. It was actually very nice.

The Lena River

We took the Mechanic Koulabin down the Lena River from Yakustk to Tiksi on the Arctic Ocean.

The ship runs up and down the 2000 km length of the river between between the two towns for about four months in summer, taking people and supplies to and from the settlements along the river. Our trip in July was the first run for the year. For about six months in winter when the ice is thick enough, trucks do the same journey. For the month while the ice is forming and the month while it's melting, no one travels.

It was a good trip - interesting company and interesting scenery.

Most Yakutis (Yakutia is Russia's largest oblast taking in the whole journey from Yakutsk to the sea) are very reserved until you have some reason to interact with them and get to know them. Apparently, this is a hang-over from the Stalin era. Truck loads of prisoners would come through Yakutia on the way to the gulags. Some would die on the way. But the drivers and guards were charged with delivering a given number of prisoners. To make up for the dead ones, they would go into public places like shops or buses and pick a few innocent people to make up their numbers. Making eye contact increased one's chance of being chosen, so everyone learnt not to make eye contact with strangers.

Even though no one goes to gulags nowadays, the culture has persisted - at least with many people older than about 25. I would hold a door open for someone on the boat; they would walk through looking at the ground and not acknowlede me in any way.

Most of my interaction with other passengers, therefore, was with the younger ones - or older ones if they were drunk. Google Translate was very useful in supplementing by rather pathetic Russian.

During the trip, the temperature went down progressively from about 30 when we left Yakutsk, to about 3 when we arrived at Tiksi. The scenery though was very interesting and the sun was up 24 hours a day for most of the trip.

At each stop along the way, people were loaded and off-loaded along with supplies like food, cigarettes and quadbikes.

Many of the locals wear nets over their heads to keep the mosquitos off their faces. They divide the year into two seasons there, the longer snow season and the shorter mosquito season. And they prefer the snow season.

There is a Russian military base at Tiksi which can be seen in the distance from where the boat pulls up. You aren't allowed to take photos there. A soldiers on the dock noticed me doing so, came to our cabin, took my camera and went through it deleting the photos I had taken there. He was very polite about it though.

The boat got back to Yakutsk about a day and a half ahead of schedule. We had three or four more days in Yakutsk before our flight to Moscow.