Tiksi town – time to look around.

The name “Tiksi” I’ve known since childhood – probably first hearing it in a geography lesson at school. It, along with other port-villages along the northern coast of Russia (Dikson, Sabetta, Pevek…), would always fire my imagination whenever I heard it. But I doubt I’d have been able to locate it on the map. Well now I can for sure – because I’ve been! ->

As per, as soon as we could – driveabout-walkabout, taking in the observatory, and getting up onto a nearby hill for the best view of the town – which, btw, sits on the 71^st parallel north!

Now, being Russian, I’m used to cold, snow and ice. It can get down to minus 30°C in Moscow in the winter – sometimes colder. But if you compare that with Tiksi, the difference would be like that between Moscow and Mediterranean temperatures!

Accordingly, I think it’s unfair to be amazed at the… modesty of the town and its buildings. I think it’s fair to be amazed that the place exists at all!…

Tiksi is made up of two districts – the main one, and “Tiksi-3” (where Tiksi-2 has gotten to we didn’t find out). We only checked out the main district, so I’ve no photos of “3” to show you…

Founded in 1933, the town steadily rose in population up until the 1990s. In 1989 there were more than 11,000 inhabitants, but during the nineties (the fall of the Soviet Union, heightened economic difficulties…) that figure more than halved. As a result, today there are plenty of abandoned buildings in the town – some of which stand right next to freshly-repaired and renovated ones ->

The derelict buildings are all quite ugly and depressing…

Fire station:

A shame this interesting brick building with character joined the bland apartment blocks made out of concrete panels in their dereliction ->

And here are those bland apartment blocks made out of concrete panels (built on permafrost-proof stilts, of course): to the left – lived-in; to the right – abandoned ->

We head out toward the local observatory…

And here it is. Underwhelming – yes. Still interesting. Built in the 1950, it looks like nothing’s changed since then ->

The observatory is used for constant monitoring of the earth’s magnetic field, registering cosmic radiation, tracking the northern lights (but only in black & white; however, it turns out – that really is all they need (the bright colors are for tourists!)). Here’s the kit it’s all done on. In a word – antiquated! ->

Looks like the equipment here is as old as Brezhnev or even Einstein (in the framed pictures on the walls) would have been today ) ->

Scientists traditionally complain about the lack of funding. All a bit depressing up close…

Next up – Stolovaya Mountain. We head over there past piles of snow taller than our substantial vehicle ->

Up top – splendid views:

Tiksi’s over there:

Zoomed in – we can see the winter road to the right across the Laptev Sea:

Hypnotic views all around. You start to understand why some folks come here on contract for a few years and end up staying forever!

Retransmitting installations that still operate sit atop the mountain (it’s more a hill), but clearly plenty of the other kit has been abandoned ->

To the left – ship graveyard. On the horizon behind it: another mirage! ->

Still atop the hill – we enter some abandoned facilities…

Judging by the kind of equipment inside – it was probably a small electricity generating plant. However, I’m no electrician, so I may be wrong. Whatever it was, today it looks apocalyptic…

It felt like workers were here not so long ago, and one day just dropped everything as if in a hurry, upped and left for good…

But enough of depressing scenes. Let’s head back to Tiksi…

Next up – probably the most interesting touristic spot in the town: Tiksi’s private (!) museum. Now, I’m not one for visiting the regional museum of every place I visit in the world; if I were, there’d never be time for actually getting out and about and seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling places for what they are in the here and now. But in Tiksi we made an exception; and I’m glad we did…

At the entrance ->

After looking at the abundance of artifacts, I could tell we’d be here for longer than the planned half-hour. And gladly, we were – with museum creator and keeper, Alexander Gukov, as our guide…

Mammoth skeleton! ->

Maps always fascinate me ->

One museum – two rooms. One room: the animal kingdom; the other – all about rocks and minerals:

Bonus: an Even lunar calendar ->

Curiously, nostalgically – the same standard Soviet wall-mirror from the 60s-70s. We had the exact same kind in our apartment when I was at school! ->

When we got back to Tiksi, who did we meet but the Russia-360 Expedition posse! These are the brave guys who decided to drive along the whole of the coast of Russia (i.e., where there is one – generally to the north and west). They started out in Murmansk (near Finland) and hugged the road-less northern coastline as far as Kamchatka! Here they are:

And here’s their vehicle:

Look unfamiliar? It’s a Russian-made Burlak off-road vehicle. Let’s have a look inside…

One probably unique feature the vehicle has is engine-accessibility… from inside! No need to freeze your… limbs off when something needs repairing. Genius!

We’d originally intended staying two nights in Tiksi but, given a bad weather forecast, it was decided we’d better not: if we’d get snowed-in up here it could be a week until we could get going again. Accordingly, that meant us leaving at night – this night. So off we popped…

Btw, apparently Tiksi is the northern-most port in the world. It’s been said Pevek holds that title, but no – look!

And that was that: Tiksi – done (a long way to come for such a short stay – yes, yes, I know)! Time to be heading back south – eventually all the way back to Yakutsk. Little did we know it wouldn’t all go to plan – by far! More on that coming up!…

The rest of the photos from our Yakutsk-Tiksi-Yakutsk expedition are here.