Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature.

Rounding off our MYB winter road trip, it was time to change mode of transportation. We parked up the tired Land Rovers, and headed to Baikal Port. As in – for ships and boats; with a Lake Baikal completely and utterly frozen over. Confused? Well, actually, Baikal Port also features a rail terminal. And it was there that we were to board a train for an excursion along the full length of the Circum-Baikal Railway to the town of Slyudyanka. But this isn’t just any old railroad. This happens to have been one of the most difficult engineering feats when it was constructed, and also happens to be one of the most scenic in the world. See for yourself! ->

Read on…

Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature (and a spot of -50° adventure).

[Health warning! There follow a zillion active-tourism pics from a frozen Lake Baikal; the effect may be too much for your senses; you may faint. You have been warned!]

Onward – westward – on our MYB expedition, and suddenly… we’d reached Lake Baikal! Not that we really noticed at first, for we arrived in Severobaykalsk (here) at the northern end of the lake in the dead of night. It was only the following morning when I opened the curtains in my room at the Aurora Hotel when I got my first glimpse of the mind-blowing view of this mind-boggling lake…

Coming up, the final, and perhaps most fun segment of our expedition: driving upon the frozen lake from its very top end almost all the way down to the other end in the south for a full ~600km! Six hundred kilometers on the ice of the world’s deepest lake (including four shore-to-shore crossings along the way). Oh my giddy!…

Read on…

Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature (and a spot of -50° adventure).

After Yakutsk, our next port of call for a proper overnight stay was the town of Mirny, still in Yakutia, some 1200km away. Again, not much to report on, so I’ll fast-forward to the following morning – starting out in Mirny – heading south and onto the winter road from Tas-Yuryakh to Verkhnemarkovo (that map shows how much further we’d have to drive were it not for the winter road). Here we are – at the Mirny town limits:

Not got much time to read this post? Then here it is, in video form, condensed into one minute (I’m being dishonest here: after watching it, I’m sure you’ll want to read the whole post:) (also available on YouTube):

Read on…

Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature (and a spot of -50° adventure).

Hi folks!

After our overnight stay in Khandyga, it was back on the road and heading for Yakutsk. Thing is – that stretch of road to Yakutsk was so thoroughly boring that there’s absolutely nothing of interest to report to you, dear readers. Accordingly, I’ve fast-forwarded to Yakutsk; for there can never be anything boring about the extraordinary Siberian city of Yakutsk…

Here‘s a primer for what the city’s all about – from last year. We basically repeated much of the itinerary detailed in that post, so I won’t duplicate here. As to this year’s novelty…

We visited… the dockyard of Zhatay, just outside Yakutsk. A dockyard? Eh?! How could that possibly be of interest to a group of very well-traveled – seen-practically-everything – tourists? Actually…

Meanwhile, here’s the Lensky Fleet…

…Actually, there is something unique about these river docks. Soon, 100 – 130 boats/ships will be navigating the Lena river here. But some need repairing…

Read on…

Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature (and a spot of -50° adventure).

Leaving Tomtor (the day after our fun at Oymyakon), ahead lay nearly 500km until our next overnight stop – in the town of Khándyga. First up, 150km on a narrow road to the highway (snow-and-hoarfrost-coated forest all the way); next – ~200km on a picturesque section of the highway (mountainous-gorgeousness all the way); and finally – ~100km of not-so picturesque highway (somewhat boring flat plains).

The first stretch – which we covered in darkness two nights previously coming the other way – looked a lot more positive by day. Like this:

Read on…

Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature (and a spot of -50° adventure).

So here we were, at the Pole of Cold of the northern hemisphere – in the small village of Oymyakon. There’s not a great deal to check out in a village with just several hundred inhabitants, in the middle of nowhere, which also happens to be one of the coldest places on the planet. But check it out we simply had to because… Oymyakon, silly!

Comfort levels for molly-coddled city-dwelling tourists are fairly low – but you’re hardly going to stay for long here. It comes with a few strange uniquenesses too – for example, boiling hot water comes out of the taps here, not the regular hot water as is the norm the world over. Also – you need to wear more layers of clothes than you ever thought was physically possible here. Still – we all managed with the extreme unusualnesses fairly well; in fact – so much so some of the posse (while resembling Michelin Men on a walkabout) signed up for the next trip here!

Read on…

Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature (and a spot of -50° adventure).

It’s a three-day drive to get from Magadan to Oymyakon. That’s if you’re in no major hurry. The route goes like this: day 1: Magadan > Susuman; day 2: Susuman > Ust-Nera; day 3: Ust-Nera > Oymyakon. This means that, as I write this, we’ll be spending the upcoming night in Oymyakon. As we set out from Ust-Nera, we had 440km to cover, with the highlight of the day being the most beautiful spot on the whole of the Kolyma Highway – the Olchansky Pass – completely covered in snow and hoarfrost:

Endless whiteness in all directions. Even the roadsides – magical… both in the sunshine and in the shade:

Read on…

Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature (and a spot of adventure).

Our second turn off the Kolyma Highway on our Magadan–Yakutsk–Baikal road-trip was onto the Indigirka winter road, to take us to Bolshoy Ushelye (Big Gorge), aka Indigirkskaya Truba (Indigirka Tube) frozen river rapids (set amid a particularly pretty, wide valley; see below). And both the winter road and the rapids were breathtakingly beautiful…

Here we are in the “tube” ->

And this is our day on the map:

Now, what needs doing every morning first thing? Remember?…

Read on…

Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature (and a spot of adventure).

On day-two of our Magadan–Yakutsk–Baikal road trip, we had to get to the next large village on the Kolyma Highway – Ust Nera – where we were to spend the night. I write ‘had to’, since there’s literally nowhere else where we could stay along the route: there are a few tiny settlements, but they each have a full zero hotels apiece. Still, the distance to cover wasn’t so far (the odometers showed 415km that evening), and the views from the road all day were simply fantastic…

Read on…

Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature (and a spot of adventure).

Should you ever find yourself on a Kolyma Highway road-trip one winter – which I highly recommend you do, of course – be sure to take the turn off it that takes you to the Kolyma Hydroelectric Power Plant. It’s a real interesting engineering object, and you can have a guided excursion around it – which is just what we did…

Here’s the tunnel to the turbine room ->

Here are the barrier and water outlets:

Snow and hoarfrost around here covers everything:

Read on…