Normal heroes sleep at night.

After Verkhoyansk and then the Batagaika crater, we continued on our way on our Yakutsk-Tiksi-Yakutsk expedition southward…

Next up was probably the trickiest – and certainly the most tedious – segment of the expedition. You’ll probably be able to guess the reasons by now: yep – bumpy road, and later on – bad weather…

At first, from Batagay, the going was good on a nicely cleared road:

But the road quality started to go downhill fairly soon…

…And the going stayed bad – bumpy as heck – for a good 180km! (…

Next – ~130km on smooth ice, then another ~300 on a new and relatively smooth gravel road, but Yandex Maps doesn’t know about the new road and still shows the old one:

But this is the route we ended up taking – veering westward somewhere around half-way:

Above is how things went overall. Now for some detail…

Rewind to our leaving Batagay early in the morning: a smoky affair ->

First – 40km of road; then 600 (!) of winter road. The turning for Verkhoyansk:

From this sign it’s 558km to Topolinoye on the old route, but we took the new one, which was longer; still – the new road, logically, is a better one. Along the way – a monument to the first expeditioners on the Yana winter road – 16 folks in ZIS-5 trucks (it took them 60 days!). Back then its length was 1300km. Today from Batagay to the Kolyma Highway it’s just ~800km. I guess they straightened it down the years…

Onward. The next feature of interest – Yakutian horses! ->

Here’s a turning for a Tomtor. I put the a there on purpose since, for some reason, there are several villages in Yakutia all called Tomtor! We counted a full six in all!

Next was the village of Tokuma; after it – no civilization whatsoever for around 550 kilometers of winter road…

Occasionally – heavily-loaded ancient trucks ->

Splendid views – but they didn’t change all that often; accordingly, plenty of patience was required to sit for hours and still appreciate the beauty…

Lunch was taken in a winter-roadside café:

Journey statistics for Batagay to this café:

After lunch – off the bumpy on-land winter road and onto the smooth iced-over-river winter road – hurray! ->

We could turn left ->

Or right ->

Left is shorter, but bumpier. Right is a hundred kilometers further – but mostly smooth. We chose the latter:

The ice-road meanders to the left and right non-stop, while you race along it as happy as Larry ->

Night fell – but I’ve no photos to show for it (still, blackness is blackness, so you’re not missing anything)…

Our navigators informed us we’d only get to our next destination early the next morning. Sure, we could have ploughed on, but did we really want to? No. We thus looked for a suitable place to park up so we could sleep in the vehicles. Every 30-70 kilometers there are parking spots for just this purpose, but then it started snowing and then it got windy and brought visibility down low. And all this started when we were up the top of a mountain pass: best not park up there (“we’d be blown away”). So on we drove down into the next valley. Eventually we found a suitable spot where drivers of long-distance trucks were spending the night in their cabs too.

The day’s stats – including a record number of hours on the road in a day (16+ hours; and all for just ~530km!) ->

Sure, (attempts at) sleeping for a night in a car: never fun. A night in a car crammed with this, that, and the other – even less so. But needs must…

Come morning we washed (with moistened tissues (the water for which needed warming up)), breakfasted (boiling water needed for that), tea-and-coffeed (ditto), and minutes later were on our way again…

The day started out snowy and blizzardy; remarkably still beautiful at times – Turner-esque, even ->

On and on and on – meditatively…

Today the scenes changed hue and character at a much higher tempo than the sloooooow day previous ->

Halo! ->

Not far till Topolinoye (here) ->

Fork: to the right – the old winter road; to the left – the new road, which they say will be open all year round and go all the way to Batagay ->

Btw – along all the ~300km on the new road we saw just one other type/brand of vehicle – but probably hundreds thereof. Which? The Chinese Sitrak dumper truck! I guess they were ferrying silver from the Prognoz mine (the temporary ПРОГНОЗ (PROGNOZ) sign for which is in the following photo) ->

Alas – we fell short of our intended destination for this day by some 110km. But we were fine with that; after all – normal heroes sleep at night ).

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