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.
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:
One of the most pressing problems facing the world today is global warming. Its effects can be witnessed all over the globe – from the Americas to… Zambia. Whether man-made pollution has much of an overall effect on specifically global warming is open to question, and question that postulate I did some months back (but before you scream ‘climate change denier!’, no one’s denying climate change. Click the link first:). But global warming is for real, whatever its causes, and it’s serious and should concern us all. Ok, but what’s any of this to do with Maldives or Magadan in the title? Well…
It turns out both locations may become more perceptibly vulnerable to global warming – and quicker – than most. Maldives: the sea level goes up due to melting ice caps… and it could be curtains. Magadan: if the permafrost there thaws – it might not be full curtains, but the changes to the flora and fauna could be significant. Ok, but what’s the connection between the two – Maldives and Magadan? Well…
There is nothing really that connects Maldives and Magadan. Two places on the planet couldn’t be more different. It was us who made the connection: flying from Maldives to Magadan! Not directly (no flights: shame; would have shaved off hours up in the air).
Now – why Maldives? Why not?!
And why Magadan? Well, we reckoned it might just be the last opportunity to ever really experience the true OMG-crazy-cold of northeastern Siberia!
Here’s an interesting topic: old country manors of nobles and merchants past. There happen to be a great many of them around Russia. For example, just in the Moscow Region, or Óblast, which surrounds the capital, there are several hundred of them. Studying and then publishing details of the histories of these places is a most curiously interesting pastime. And there are folks who devote much of their lives to such a pursuit: they check out the country piles themselves and run excursions for curious tourists. One such keen studier of mansions is Vadim Razumov, who, in 15 years studying them as a hobby, has visited a full several thousand (!) of them all around the country. For all about his findings, including some mind-blowing historical tales, check out his fascinating blog.
Last weekend, a group of friends and I were taken on a short ethnographical expedition led by him to one of the prerevolutionary Moscow Oblast mansions. It’s situated some 80km from Moscow in the direction of Minsk (i.e., westward), and it goes by the name of Usadba Lyubvino (Lyubvino country estate) ->
Alas, many of the prerevolutionary mansions of Russia long ago fell into states of disrepair, this one included, as you can see. Doesn’t make them or their stories any less interesting!…
Now for the good news: There’s a Very Big Altai Video in the pipeline! And it promises to be full of super-duper material, and also to be professionally produced and edited. In a word or four – it’s gonna be awesome!
In the meantime, today in this post – a few photographic ‘greatest hits’ my fellow expeditioners have sent me for your viewing pleasure: for those who’ve not been to Altai – as enticers, teasers, to get yourselves there; and for those who’ve been – as nostalgizers. Because – remember – it’s good to have been somewhere and enjoyed it, but better to have been somewhere and enjoyed it and then… to revisit it through photos as it might make you realize you should go back again :0)!
Pheeeew. What a trip! Simply remarkably marvelously fantastic. I think a wait of three or four years, and we’ll be heading back – if the magical Altai energy doesn’t pull us back before ). Perhaps we’ll do the trekking part a bit differently, but as for the Katun bit: that can stay exactly the same!
Here we are with another installment from our expedition across Altai’s… extraordinary countryside. Wait! Extraordinary – that’s accurate, but… it’s a bit banal, no? Thing is, in describing Altai’s natural beauty, I seem to be forever repeating the handful of adjectives I normally use! So, before I started this post, I thought I’d find at least one new epithet (not the disparaging kind) that describes accurately (maybe I’ll try add one more new one with each post?) the Altai Mountains. So I did. And I came up with… anomalous! Well, why not? The effect of Altai’s mountainous scenery has had a deeply anomalous effect on me – more so than any other mountainous-volcanic place in the world. And then there’s the fact that the mountains and rivers are anomalous; there’s also the anomalous natural energy here that permeates everything – the air, the water, the mountains, your soul (!) – unlike anywhere else on the planet! But I digress. Meanwhile on the River Katun…
Where we were along the Katun on this day, more than 60 smaller rivers and streams – tributaries – had flown into it. As a result – it had become powerful, wide, and high:
A quick look at the map tells me that here the width of the Katun is 150 meters. While in 20+km all that water will be forced to squeeze through a narrow rocky canyon of a width of just 30 meters. So it doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that the rapids in that canyon are going to be pretty darn fast and anomalous! And those same rapids have an anomalously unique name too: Teldekpen!
After our night on the beach, we woke to yet another gloriously warm and sunny day – hooray! If only the river were a bit warmer too; it felt like it was around 10-12 degrees centigrade, no more. Quick dips were doable but it was a bit too cold for swimming.
We had an interesting day ahead of us. Just to the left of that mountain down there the Kadrin Rapids begin, which was to be our first bit of action of the day…
Onward – downward – on the best bit of our Altai-2020 expedition: the rafting bit. Again – the Argut River, this time where it meets the Katun. The same Argut, btw, along the banks of which we were trekking a couple weeks ago, astonished by the river’s sheer power.
The sound of the fast flowing water is amplified by endless echoes!
