Karl Bushby, of 21st Century Odyssey, in Yakutsk, Yakutia, Russia
This is Karl Bushby (www.odysseyxxi.com), who has been doing the epic journey back home to London from Puntas Arenas (Chile), the most sourthern point of South America. He has been walking around the world for 14 years. Alone. Unsupported.
When he walked from Chile to Alaska, he wrote the famous book “Giant Steps.” When he crossed the Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia’s Chukotka, he made a documentary for BBC Channel.
Further, find more info, and two videos. Read more…
A ferry on the Lena River near Yakutsk on Nov. 15th, 2010. Photo by Alexander Li, Yakutsk Vecherny Newspaper, Vecherka.Ykt.ru
Is it possible to cross the Lena River near the Siberian city of Yakutsk in November? This is a really good question. The answer is Yes and No. Everything depends on weather, precisely, on the condition of the ice cover on the Lena River.
November is the period of transition and so-called freezing-over. It’s time for the Lena River to get frozen, acquire ice cover thick enough for the use of ice river roads.
Keep in mind, there are no bridges over the Siberian river of Lena at all. The river might be crossed by ferry (in navigation period) or ice roads (in winter).
Read more…
If you are interested in how winter is progressing in its begining in the Siberian city of Yakutsk, look at mobile photos below.
This is the same view from a kitchen window of my previous rented apartment. By the way, my family moved to another place, when outside temperature was much below -40C/F.
The first picture (above) was taken at midday on Nov. 28, 2010. The temp was -40C. The second photo (below) was done at 9 am on Nov. 30, 2010. Do you see the opposite building? :) Yeah, that’s how foggy it was, when we had -47C.
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“What to do in Oymyakon?” is the question I receive pretty often. Usually, I give a short list of possible activities, provide the link to the page with the description of our last winter’s Journey to the Pole of Cold and with a lot of photographs disclosing what we did in Oymyakon.
Frankly saying, when we were on the way – on the Road of Bones – to Oymyakon, we didn’t have any structured plan of our visit to the coldest Siberian place. Our mission was simple. We wanted to (1) have fun, (2) enjoy the cold weather and (3) take winter pictures as many as possible. That’s it.
The itinerary was flexible and customizable, as our trip was in the Do-It-Yourself format. We had got independence with our rented UAZ minibus and democracy. It worked like this. When an idea or an offer arrived, we just made that idea public, thought over it and made a final decision. Usually, such discussions happened in the evening. Sometimes just on the go.
We tried to put all outdoor activities in the short daytime frame, i.e. from 8|9 am till 3 pm, as we wanted to take good photographs.
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I hear this question very often. Frankly saying, it was that show, that forced me to upload winter photographs of the Road of Bones (officially known as the Kolyma Highway) built by GULAG work camp inmates in the time of Stalin.
Well, if anyone is interested in the winter Road of Bones condition. Here we go. Further, please, find 45 pictures taken the last winter by me. Read more…
Captain Magadan on the Road of Bones. Aug. 2010, Yakutia, Siberia.
This year’s summer and early autumn the Kolyma Highway (the Road of Bones), located, as you know, between Yakutsk and Magadan, was pretty busy… in terms of hosting adventure motor bikers from many nations.
So if you’ve got questions about the current summer-autumn Road of Bones condition, please, check the following list of adventure motorcycle travellers, whom I personally met or learned about, and you can get in touch with them and require more detailed info.
What did they report? General road information remains almost the same as I described in previous posts filed under tags, Road of Bones and Kolyma Highway.
Read more…
Proud to announce the opening of the photo exhibition “On the Road of Bones: Ghosts of the Siberian Gulag Along the Old Kolyma Highway” at Kris Waldherr Art and Words studio gallery in Brooklyn, New York, today.
About exhibition
Through photography and mixed media, “On the Road of Bones” reveals the secret history and hidden landscape of Kolyma, formerly the land of Soviet labor camps and the coldest inhabited region on earth. Stunning new works by young native Siberian photographers Bolot Bochkarev, Nastya Borisova, and Ajar Varlamov trace the remains of the vast highway built across the taiga, tundra, and permafrost of North Asia by Stalin’s prisoners. The exhibition juxtaposes the tragic events of the past with the powerful natural beauty of the frozen land and the daily lives of northern people.
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Vaselisa Popova, my new contact in Verkhoyansk, Yakutis, Siberia.
Good news to all travelers, who are interested in Sangar (the Kobyajsky region) and Verkhoyansk. I visited the 2010 Sakha Travel Exhibition held at Polar Hotel in Yakutsk on April 9-10, 2010. Finally, I acquainted with travel enthusiasts from those places. You can see them in the photographs.
The Kobyajsky region is famous for its fantastic fishing and rafting near Segyan Kyol as well as its Even nomads‘ settlement of Sebjan Kyol in the Verkhoyansky Range. Read more…
Yakutsk Permafrost Institute with its underground laboratory in the form of tunnel is a sort of a must-to-see sight in the capital of Siberia’s Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). It is the most visited by international guests.
The last year before The Copenhagen Climate Change Summit it became a real Mecca to international journalists, who wanted to know whether the global warming affected the life of the only city in the world, that was entirely built on permafrost.
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See how frozen carcass reindeer meat will be cut into small pieces. Photos and video were done by Artem Petukhov and Katya Ipatieva (they stand behind the Adventure in Yakutia blog http://adv.yktv.ru, in Russian) specially for eYakutia.com . Thanks, guys.
Yeah, we, Yakutians, love meat. We eat them a lot. To save money, we usually buy them of big sizes, and then we think how to cut them. Praise god, there are people who are ready to help at the cost of 20 bucks for each carcass. Read more…
