Tag Archives: tiksi-2024

Our friend, the Far North – even in winter (and up there, in northern Yakutia, even March is winter). The extended winter of the North is a kingdom of eternal snow and ice, extreme cold, and endless white expanses. All the same – and you won’t believe this – you can find H₂O in liquid form out in the crazy cold!

But… how on earth is that possible? How can you have liquid water when the temperature’s below -40 or even -50°C? Well, you can – we saw it for ourselves, and we even had a bathe in it (not on this Yakutia trip, but on our previous two – in Oymyakon in both 2021 and 2022).

First – a teaser. What’s this in the following photo? I’ll tell you near the end of this post. But for now, let me tell you more about naleds, aka aufeis, aka overflow, aka icings…

There are a number of reasons why water (as opposed to ice) can be found up here…

Read on…

You’ve had your intro posts already; now, if there are no questions from the audience, I’ll proceed to my next tale from the Far Northern side, which could have been titled “Yakutian ice roads heading north from Kolyma Highway“. But first, I think – an explainer…

What is an ice road? And what’s a winter road?…

But before I get to that, a few pics (what else?) ->

That pic is of a stretch of winter road between the villages of Sasyr and Khonuu (here). As you’ll see by that there Google Map, there’s no regular (asphalted) road between the two, but in winter (and into spring) there’s the winter road you see in the pic. From around April to October each year the only thing here is impassable tundra, marshland, lakes and rivers. But by November, everything here is covered in deep snow and thoroughly deep-frozen, and along come large snow-clearing trucks and… voila – the winter road is ready for use; until, that is, the next heavy snowfall – when the snow-clearers come back for another pass.

That’s the basic description of a winter road. An ice road is pretty much the same – only it’s not on land but on the thick ice of a frozen river; for example – on the Indigirka (see next pic). And these are much-preferred by long-distance truckers to winter roads since they’re normally so much smoother: they even call them “asphalt”, since they permit speeds just as on actual roads.

Read on…

Hi folks!

Last week I completed quite possibly my most mind-blowingly awesome trip up to the Far North – from Yakutsk in a northeasterly direction and then further north to Russia’s northern coast. You’ve had a few intro-posts on the expedition already; now for a (slightly) deeper dive…

My regular readers will know well how driving through beautiful countryside practically anywhere in the world – especially with me behind the wheel and especially covering long distances – is one of my favorite pastimes. Back in the early 2000s I went on some Mediterranean drives (for example in Crete and Sicily); I’ve driven in both North and South America; I’ve done a stretch of Great Ocean Road in Australia; and I was on the road for more than a week in Namibia (one of the most unforgettable trips of my life).

Then, in early 2021 a group of curious psychos kindred spirits and I drove along the full length of the Kolyma Highway in Russia’s far-east from Magadan to Yakutsk (and we were enjoying it so much we then decided to drive all the way to… Moscow!). Now, you might expect that we’d have had our fill of long-haul deep-frozen winter road-trips after that, but, actually, you couldn’t be more wrong: we were all so bowled over by what we saw and generally went through on that expedition that we decided to repeat the extreme endeavor just a year later – albeit with a slightly different route and this time not going all the way to Moscow.

And that’s how we came to be under the spell of the North: it simply wouldn’t let us go – and still won’t. For what did we do this year in early spring (don’t be fooled – in these parts early spring is more wintry than most other places on the planet – and some:)? We were back for more – only for a yet more intense version: we headed further and deeper into the deepest Siberia, and to the farthest-north reaches of the Far North (go figure) – deep within the Arctic Circle, no less. Oh yes. The route decided on? Yakutsk > the Laptev Sea port-town of Tiksi > Yakutsk – all ~8000 kilometers of it, including ~4000km along/on its winter roads/frozen rivers!…

So, Tiksi – what gives? Winter roads – what are they (and what happens to them in, say, summer?). All in good time folks…

For now, let’s start with the main question – why?!…

That’s easy: our expedition north promised to be just like our two Kolyma adventures, only better; as in – more extreme, as in – all the more beautifully unique, as in – all the more exclusive, since no one (yes, no one) in their right mind would ever undertake such madness a challenge for fun. Some take this route north as it’s their job: truckers; but they sure aren’t doing it for fun. We were doing it as it’s… like a crazy-expensive vintage whisky: most folks on the planet will never get to taste it, but everyone should – if they could (afford it) as it’s so special. The bonus here is that the expedition neither costs millions (and can’t be finished off in one sitting with friends:) and it lasts a full three weeks: talk about savoring the moment ).

All righty – enough gushing words already; where are the pics? They’re coming right up – carefully selected out of more than two thousand taken. The photos will be either mine or those of my fellow road-trippers (thanks guys)…

Here’s one, chosen literally at random… and fairly screaming masterpiece ->

Arctic beauty:

Read on…