The mostly-kaput original Kolyma highway.

I left you in the previous post with our leaving Oymyakon heading in the direction of the original Kolyma highway. All righty – let’s go!…

The Old Kolymsky Tract is the highway road the R504 replaced. You might think it’d be abandoned by now, but you’d be wrong – kinda. A long stretch of it is fully serviced and regularly cleared of snow and has the odd small village alongside it. In places – near Tomtor – it even has street lighting ->

At least – that’s the story for the stretch of the tract as far as the Indigirka. After the river (eastward), the road’s not serviced, cleared, or used by regular roadgoing vehicles; it seems only snowmobiles use it ->

From the drone: the Tarin-Yuryuete (a tributary of the Indigirka) down the middle – with naled-cover toward the bottom of the pic; to the right: the Tract ->

One of the villages on the Tract is Kuydusun – here; population: around a hundred souls ->

Not much further after Kuydusun – a bridge in a sorry state; however – it is crossable…

We checked it out first on foot; suitably satisfied as to its sturdiness – we then crossed it in our vehicles:

Once on the other side, this is a dialog that occurred between two drivers:

“Before crossing the bridge, I needed %the bathroom%, but then didn’t.”

“Interesting; for me it was just the opposite!”

Meanwhile, onward!…

Quick reminder: this original Kolyma highway was built way back when – practically by hand by Gulag inmates. Can you imagine?…

Suddenly, to our right – a gigantic naled! ->

It’s situated somewhere here ->

A sign? Out here?…

…Indicating there’s optical fiber laid underneath it – out here!

Another bridge – this one impassable:

…But since the river’s frozen over anyway – why go over the bridge when you can go round it!? ->

We covered 75km of the Tract, but it’s a full 180km long in total. Oddly, Google Maps still indicates it as a working road ->

After a while, the Tract turns into a narrow track. We decide to refuel and head back ->

While refueling, a few of the group went to check out a nearby abandoned village ->

Vehicles all filled up, we about-turned and set off back along the super-straight Tract ->

Around here our convoy leader, Alexander Elikov (who’s spent half his life up inside the Arctic Circle), told us over the radios about the locals round here. First – they get twice as many statutory vacation days as the norm. Second – they’re real active when it comes to traveling: as soon as their vacation time arrives they drop everything and head – you guessed it – south (as south as possible!).