The road to Susuman: raptures and unexpectednesses – all according to plan. | Nota Bene: Eugene Kaspersky’s Official Blog

Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature (and a spot of adventure:).

We awoke early in the Magadan Hotel in the city of Magadan, ate a modest breakfast, packed up, and piled into our new and shiny vehicles. We covered a mere hundred meters and we were already on the R504 Highway, aka the Kolyma Highway: yes – the road that would take us all the way (nearly 2000km!) to Yakutsk to the west. But on this first day, we were heading north, to the town of Susuman, which would have been 630km; however, we took a turn off the highway to visit the Kolyma Hydroelectric power plant, which added some 80+km to our distance, giving us a total of nearly 750km this day. Not so far, you say? You’re right – not really, but you have to factor in our needing to go much slower than one normally does on a highway. Why? Because the temperature on this day was below -50°C. At such a temperature the cars’ suspension (and everything else made of metal) tightens up and becomes brittle: the ride is much stiffer and bumpier than normal, and something snapping and dropping off is possible, say, when going over an unexpected bump (this doesn’t happen often, but it does happen). Fortunately, no such surprises for us on the first day (sounds ominous vis-à-vis the rest of the trip, right?:), as we were being way too sensible – which was tough, for an autobahn smooth highway like this is just made for speeding fast along ->

As mentioned, our cars were shiny and new. Really quite fancy, too. But did they cope in the punishing conditions? I’ll get to that later )…

Now for a brief run down of this sunny winter’s day’s driving…

First – the road itself: the Kolyma Highway is just a dream to drive upon early on: smooth, well-signposted, always fully cleared of snow, and – the best bit – hardly anyone on it! Wait, no – the best bit: the scenic views all around non-stop:

After a while though, the smooth asphalt road covering turns into a gravel covering. Not so bad really – since said gravel is just as firm as asphalt due to the cold, and therefore still rather smooth ->

And it’s no less cleared-of-snow, and no less well-signposted:

Very occasionally – we pass a… brutal-looking settlement.

(Apologies for the reflections here; they’re double reflections since the windows had an extra layer of glass fitted to keep the warmth in!) ->

The road to the Kolyma Hydroelectric power plant is just as beautiful as the Kolyma Highway ->

And the bridge just before the power planet is also a beaut! ->

Now for some detail…

What’s the first thing you should do when setting off in a car of a winter morning on a long drive along the Kolyma Highway? That’s right: fill up on gas ->

What you shouldn’t do is full up on gas the evening before. Why? Simple…

When you fill up in far-eastern Siberia in the winter, the temperature is normally around -40°C, sometimes lower than -50°C. But cars need to be parked inside heated garages or parking lots. If they’re left out in the cold for the night they simply won’t start up in the morning. So if you do your filling up in the evening, then park up – come morning you’ll have a pool of gas next to your vehicle since it expanded when warmed and leaked out of the tank inlet. Not something you want. Rather dangerous too. Accordingly, our vehicles always breakfasted heartily; then they had a good feed around lunchtime; but they always passed on dinner. Very healthy ).

The last decent – modern – filling station was still in Magadan. The next such decent one would be in Yakutsk. In-between there were only indecently brutal ones. Especially savage were those (most all of them!) whose gas-pump guns had no switch for keeping the gas flowing without pressing the trigger. Ouch! Literally! I wonder what the reason is for such callousness? Actually, it could be that if there were a working switch it could get stuck (frozen stiff) when engaged, then you wouldn’t be able to stop the flow of gas. Even bigger ouch!

Btw, check out the price of the gas – say, the 95-octane. Here – 59.50 rubles. No – let’s say 60: easy to remember. Memorize it, or take a note of it, and watch how the price… changes as we progress on our journey…

The road north is a good one, as mentioned. I mean, it has all the mod-cons: even traffic cameras in the built-up areas!

You see here – 2012km to Yakutsk. But in the end we covered a full 3050km given our off-piste adventures…

The road steadily rises up and up. The views become marginally more beautiful, but the real mind-blowing beauty comes later…

The last large village this day (before Susuman) was Palatka (Tent!) ->

From the highway, it seems a decent place – brightly colored too. Btw – these are the last colorful buildings until Yakutsk:

After Palatka (80km from Magadan), the road declines somewhat in quality, but at least it’s still asphalted ->

Last year we were on this road in early January – during the week-long national holidays – so there were practically no other vehicles besides ours. This year – on workdays – I’d hardly say it was busy, but there were other vehicles visible much of the time:

Steadily, our the road’s altitude rises; up ahead – mountain passes…

The trees around here are still “naked” – black skeletons. The winter wonderland fairytale begins a little farther…

The first pass. Right after it the temperatures start to plunge: -30°C; a while later – -40°C; then… nothing. Nothing? Yep: the onboard thermometers simply stop showing the temperature. They weren’t designed for this! )

Woah – freshly-laid asphalt. Ahhh – as smooth as a baby’s bottom. This wasn’t here last year. Nice.

But all good things come to pass. Next up – gravel road; only occasionally does asphalt feature…

The second pass:

Onward, northward, on and on toward Susuman…

We pass quite a few abandoned or dying out settlements. They used to mine gold round here – until there was no more left; then folks started leaving…

One example of a dying settlement is Atka, which in 1989 was home to nearly 3000 souls. In 2021 – nearly 300. There is still a café here though…

On and on and on and om )…

No matter how remote we get – how far from civilization, the road, as you can see, is always cleared of snow ->

Signposts – all present and correct:

Here’s the mountain pass named… “Grandpa’s bald patch”!

Here’s a curiously interesting installation. It’s marked as an “emergency communications point”, with a “mobile network coverage zone”. I didn’t test it to see if it worked though – it was 3:30am in Moscow )…