The time has come for the proverbial main course folks – the very reason for this whole mad winter Magadan–Yakutsk (and then cross-Russia) road trip: yep – the world’s coldest settlement: Oymyakon.
Picking up where we left off in the previous post – we turn off the main road and head toward Tomtor and Oymyakon. 150km to the former; a further 40km to the latter. Something like this:
As you may be able to tell from that map (remove the highlighting on the route and you can hardly see the road!), it’s a very narrow minor road lane. But all the same – as per tradition around these parts – much of the snow had been cleared. The potholes were few and far between and the road surface was generally good, but best of all was that there were hardly any other cars on the road (just two or three on the way there).
Also as per tradition, OMG-white-winter scenery all around along the whole route. Absolutely gorgeous! ->
I’ve already shown you just how beautiful the Kolyma Highway can get in the deepest winter. I hope those pics have been suitably enjoyed and appreciated by you all, and maybe will encourage some of you to go experience Kolyma for yourselves: highly recommended!
Now, in those snaps – did you notice just how smooth and cleared-of-deep-snow the road was? Like – every single pic (and I can tell you that there was hardly an (un-photographed) stretch of the road that wasn’t just as smooth and free of snow). Well, while taking said pics, I sure noticed – and couldn’t quite believe my eyes. In Moscow there can be streets covered with more freshly-fallen snow, and it possesses legions of snow clearing trucks in every district! And this was my second amazement on this trip (after the first: the hypnotic white-winter-wonderland scenery, that is): the quality and keen maintenance of the roads.
So what was I expecting instead? Well, like most anyone who lives in Moscow, if I would hear words like Yakutia, Kolyma, Magadan and roads together, I’d expect the accompanying scenes to be thoroughly, utterly grim and hopeless. Something like: thousands of miles of poorly-surfaced, potholed, muddy roads, streaked with deep ruts and with plenty of cars getting stranded in thick mud awaiting assistance.
Onward, west-ward… I continue my tales from the permafrost side on our Magadan – Moscow Road Trip. In this portion of words & pics – the first segment: to Yakutsk via Oymyakon along the Kolyma Highway. So stock up on your levels of patience, for there’s a lot coming up; lots and lots – tons! I mean, you know I’m normally fairly trigger-happy with my camera (if that’s a thing), right? But on this leg of our journey? Well, since there was such a high concentration of overwhelming impressions and searing emotions, the resultant quantities of photos and videos taken – it got a bit out of hand: all sense of proportion having been lost. For it turned out that, unexpectedly, the road from Magadan to Yakutsk is something utterly, fantasically unusual.
Getting to Oymyakon isn’t quick these days. The nearest airport, in the nearby village of Tomtor, was abandoned long ago. The drive from Yakutsk takes two days; from Magadan – three. We were bracing ourselves for the three days of weary monotony necessary to get ourselves to the world’s coldest settlement. Little did we know – we needn’t have!…
The winter-wonderland-fairytale began earlier than when we reached Oymyakon – much earlier: after the first sunrise and once we’d crossed our first mountain pass. The world stopped being gray; it became white and silver; and golden – from the low sun.
The first amazement-fascination came simply from how beautiful everything was. Unexpected, unpredictable, unbelievable: the Kolyma Highway is simply magical!
It’s just so stunning – almost to the point of euphoria – driving along a highway through a completely white world. The road rises up a bit, hour after hour, then a little to the right or left, down again and straight on – and the white fairytale scenes never stop. How far we’ve gone or have still left to go is ignored. Another descent, and into an icy fog…
For several days it never got warmer than -50°C (-58°F). Later it did. But it was this first ultra-cold leg of our journey that was most ultra-entrancing.
When we landed in Magadan it was around -15°C (5°F). A little later it went down to -25°C (-13°F). They say it’s a bit ‘warmer’ (!) in Magadan since it’s by the sea. Ok, it is the perennially cold (even in August – I should know!) Sea of Okhotsk, but all the same it acts as protection for the city against the mercury ever going lower than -40°C (guess how much in °F?).
But once we’d covered a reasonable distance from Magadan, the security blanket that is the Sea of Okhotsk was slowly pulled away and we entered an altogether ‘other’ world. The temperatures outside (not inside the cars, phew) dropped steadily – the thermometers going down past -30 and then – faster – further and further down. We were lucky the first day: it never went below -40°C.
On the first day we covered some 700 kilometers to the town of Susuman. And along those 700 kilometers that separate Susuman and Magadan there are only five little settlements: Palatka, Atka, Orotukan, Debin and Yagodnoe. In three words: far, desolate, cold. Early on there’s a fourth word to add: asphalt. Later it needs dropping – instead of asphalt there’s mere gravel (handily covered in smooth ice!). Then…
Then – the first of the hills, including one named Deduskhina Lysina (Granddad’s Bald Head!). This is where normally the temperature falls sharply to -40°C or below. But, like I say, we were lucky – a ‘comfortable’ minus thirty was rolled out for us ). Around here is also where everything turns white. Incredible, extreme, serene scenes.
As we set off in the morning on the second day it was -40, but come afternoon we hit our first -50! Oh my glaciation! Everything – trees, signposts, safety barriers, telephone lines – all of it completely covered in white hoarfrost:
On, and on, and on. Hypnotic. With hardly any need to slow down to take a turn, you get into a groove: the car basically drives itself while you stare at the road ahead – trance-like!
Occasionally we stop at the most beautiful spots, on the tops of hills or at vantage points where the views were impossibly out-of-this-world. Out come the cameras, and out come the gasps of astonishment at the surrounding vastness, whiteness, awesomeness…
Alas, daylight is short-lived each day. The sun would come up around 09:30 (but it would be hidden behind the hilltops), and it would set around 15:30. That gives just six hours of daylight: woefully little time for photography stops. Still, the scarcity of light hours meant that when we did stop each minute was treasured: it was straight down to the business of serious snapping; no aimless, frivolous activity (too cold anyway!).
After dense frosted forest scenes, a portion of vast open spaces and gently undulating hills and valleys: the second auto-meditation session:
And the road is completely empty – no one on it except us. Until!…
Naturally, out came the camera for this once-in-a-blue-moon event! And can you see the driver rubbing his chin there in amazement at seeing our convoy heading the other way?!
And that was how we rolled.
Now, you got another seven hours to spare? Yes? Then check out the dash-cam vid of the Susuman – Ust-Nera leg. The times given are MSK minus five hours, btw.
Not got seven hours? Then for you – the highlights! ->
1:00:00 – Sun up, and OMG-beauty! Much meditation possible mandatory here.
1:31:00 – The abandoned city of Kadykchan.
2:36:00 – Simply woah!
To be continued!…
The rest of the photos from our Magadan–Moscow road trip are here.
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Yes, yes, it has been a while. But of course there can only be one reason for that: I’ve been busier than ever, despite the pandemic! Ok, unnecessary humble excuse over with – let’s get on with this post )…
All righty. You’ve probably seen an Instagram or two of me out in the crazy-cold climes of the Russian Far East earlier this year – or maybe not. Whatever, the time has finally come to get past the canapés, and onto the hors d’oeuvres: the intro-post on my recent race across Russia – my winter wonder-Far-Eastern cross-Russia road trip, which started out along the R504 Kolyma Highway from Magadan (further east than Japan!) and ended in Moscow weeks later. The journey turned out to be action-packed, a whole lotta fun, and of course rather extreme given the intense cold. But I don’t think any of us was quite expecting a magical world of endless, mostly straight roads cutting across vast white expanses of severe steppe or forested undulating hills stretching as far as the eye can see. It goes without saying that all fellow travelers were suitably spellbound and hypnotized by the experience.
Being so far north, and the time of year being the middle of winter, the sun hardly ever rose at all from its slumber; but this imbued the icy landscapes with a paradoxically warm golden glow for much of the day like nowhere I’ve seen before:
NB: with this post about the place I visited before the lockdown I want to bring you some positivism, beauty and the reassurance that we will all get a chance to see great different places again. Meanwhile I encourage you not to violate the stay-at-home regime. Instead I hope you’re using this time for catching up on what you never seemed to find the time to do… ‘before’ :).
Madagascar. You probably don’t know all that much about the place, right? (Well, apart from what you’ve learned here in my recent series of posts on the country, that is.) But what’s life like for Madagascans? How do they live? Do they have it good, or bad? How much do they earn? All that. Well, to give you an idea – herewith, a short photo-excursion around a few Madagascan urbanisms. First up – in the city of Andasibe.
NB: with this post about the place I visited before the lockdown I want to bring you some positivism, beauty and the reassurance that we will all get a chance to see great different places again. Meanwhile I encourage you not to violate the stay-at-home regime. Instead I hope you’re using this time for catching up on what you never seemed to find the time to do… ‘before’ :).
After being spoiled driving nearly 3000 kilometers along Namibia’s super-solid highways (super-smooth, super-signposted, super-high-speeds-possible, super road-markings, and so on and so forth), the contrasting road situation in Madagascar was all the more striking. Some ‘highways’ leave a lot to be desired, to put it diplomatically. This, for example, is Route Nationale 6, which connects the north of the country to the south:
Some stretches are decently asphalted, but not many. Often it’s a potholed mess ->
Once again I can’t help but sing the praises of the ‘German’ roads in Namibia! They’re superb! Although the only local premium-quality highway is still not that long – only 50+ kilometers. But the quality of the other paved two-lane roads here is mostly ideal. And the views along the road are something to behold! The biggest problem for drivers here is how to avoid being distracted by the scenery :)
Back to the day we checked out exotic birds and geological wizardry…
We left Vogelfederberg in the afternoon, but we still had a full 270km ahead of us before we were to get to our next hotel. I wouldn’t have minded, for the sun was out, the skies were bright blue and cloudless, and the desert scenery continued to astound; however, the roads was becoming markedly worse…
Not that the road was full of potholes or anything; it wasn’t that bad. The problem lay in the way the sand on the road became rather heavily compacted somehow and it had formed itself into little ridges that ran across the road, which just got taller and taller. They seemed to be 15cm tall by our next stop – a ‘beautiful view with trees’ ->
Actually, the above pic was taken somewhere else; however, out of all of the pics of the ridged roads – this one showed them for what they were best. Also, I didn’t have any pics of the crazy-high-ridges-on-the-road as I was too busy holding the steering wheel with both hands trying to control the pick-up!
Funnily enough, I found that the optimal speed for navigating the ridged road was around 80-90km/h! Any slower, and the car would shake so much you kept banging your head against the roof. Any faster was just scary. The sweet spot at 80-90 was where the suspension managed best. But the car wasn’t being ‘driven’ along the road; it was flying low over it! It would glide from side to side also a little too uncontrollably for comfort; it was like driving over the ice of a frozen-over Lake Baikal! Who’d have thought it?!
All righty. Finally, let me get this African series fully underway. On today’s menu, my initial impressions of Namibia, particularly – its roads and the scenery viewed therefrom, plus its sandy beaches, and whatever else I’ll be reminded of as I sort through my many photos…
Now, for various historical reasons, it turns out that Africa is my least-traveled-to continent. Out of the 50+ countries I’ve visted, only 10 have been African (not including the Seychelles or Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, which technically are also African). What’s more, only four of those were business trips (with a spot of tourism on some); the rest were visited exclusively for a vacation.
My impressions of the African continent tend to coincide with those of the majority – especially as concerns the Sub-Sahara: poor, and in some places – unsafe. Astonishing nature and wildlife, but with poorly-developed governments. But when in May of last year (2019) I visited Rwanda, my impressions started to change. // Have a read of that link – it truly is an extraordinary, curious place. Rwanda is sometimes called the ‘African Switzerland’. It’s a most atypical country for this continent.
I’d heard a few things about Namibia before: about it’s natural beauty, and its, too, being something a bit special for Africa – a cut above its neighbors somehow. Well, having now been there myself, I can confirm this to be true. Namibia isn’t Africa as we tend to know it. At first, it felt like we were in Australia! The bluest sky, endless expanses, excellent roads, pretty houses and neatly mowed lawns. For example, as you drive through the Namibian coastal city of Swakopmund, it feels like you’re in a provincial Australian town/city like Katoomba or Warrnambool.
To conclude my Yucatán tales, I’ll tell you a bit more about my time on the road and the day-to-day experiences. The roads are actually not bad here, especially the highways heading south from Cancún along the coast and those heading west across the entire peninsula. The north Yucatán route is pretty good, with an excellent toll road (and not that expensive) with almost no exit ramps. There’s also practically no traffic and no filling stations :) The road heading south along the east coast is not bad either, but we hit a few traffic jams along the way. On the upside, it’s free, the road surface is smooth and there are lots of signs, so there’s little chance of getting lost:
