No child, woman or man – in the abandoned mining town of Kadykchan.

En route from sunny Magadan to Yakutsk, about an hour-and-a-half after Susuman (as I mentioned in yesterday’s post) we passed the ghost town of Kadykchan.

Kadykchan was once a monotown, with its mono single industry being coalmining. Founded during WWII, its population grew to over 5000 at its peak (in the mid-80s). It was already in decline after the fall of the Soviet Union (in 1991), but an explosion in 1996 sealed its fate once and for all: the coalmine was shut down and the inhabitants started leaving – helped by government subsidies to relocate. Extraordinarily, 10 years after the mine had closed (in 2007) there were still 200 folks living there!

But three years later – in 2010 – the population had fallen to zero (imagine the story (and emotions) of the very last inhabitant – walking out through the front door to his/her apartment for good and not needing to lock or even close it!). Today the place still ‘exists’, in that there are buildings and roads left and you can still look the place up on the map, but it’s an afterlife really – completely abandoned and deserted; there’s also now no electricity, no running water, no heating, no schools, no shops, no cinema (as there once was).

Walking around a ghost town, as the name suggests, is a bit spooky. The place reminded me of similarly eerie walkabouts in the abandoned naval base at Brouton Bay in the Kurils, and Bechevinka in Kamchatka. Strolling through the desolation, you perceive the emptiness not only of your surroundings, but inside you too. A very strange feeling – a bit like childish fears, or something like that.

We couldn’t quite make it out, but it’s probably a bust of Lenin up on that pedestal. Vladimir Ilych featured on most central squares of the Russia (and the USSR) – still does in some, and now we know – in ghost towns too!…

I don’t know why, but I felt that something like an ‘eternal flame of life’ should be placed in among the lifeless buildings; either that, or these derelict towns should be kept out of sight, perhaps buried or cremated, as dead things tend to be. But the dystopian sci-fi digression in my head didn’t last long ). Onward we strolled…

Deserted, derelict, desolate, relinquished, forsaken, somber, sad. Oof!

A bit like in Pripyat next to Chernobyl – some artists have attempted to bring some life back to the dismally dead urban scenes; it seems to be a natural human urge – to want to see life, not its absence – at least in a town, I mused…

And here’s the abandoned mine:

Alas, we only had an hour for our drive-around/walk-around Kadykchan. Then it was back into the motors and we were off, onward – in a westerly direction…

Back tomorrow folks!…

The rest of the pics from our Magadan–Moscow road trip are here.