YAKUTSK (dpa) – The first step into the Siberian cold is euphoric. The icy-fresh air shimmers with the glare of the Arctic sun, the frost prickles your face and snow crunches underfoot.
Then comes the first breath. Your nostrils freeze shut, your eyes stream and your eyelashes stick together. In the northern town of Yakutsk the mercury hovers at 45 minus degrees. It’s a fine morning.Exhaling, the nose thaws and unblocks and the moisture catches in a protectively draped scarf and freezes in a moment. The soft nylon of a camera bag hardens in a few minutes like a shoe carton.More than 6,000 kilometres and six time zones east of Moscow, people spend half the year living in an icebox.In a grocery shop in Alexeyeva Street the saleswoman at the fruitcounter freely admits she is a frost fan.“We break holes in the ice on the pond by our dacha cottage and take a dip,” Irina, 45, tells gawping visitors. “There’s nothing better for your health,” she adds with a smile and flash of gold teeth.The continental climate of Yakutia – also known as the republic of Sakha – ensures bitter winters and hot summers. It’s a long way to the moderating warm-cool influences of the Pacific, and to the north, this region the size of Western Europe meets the Arctic Ocean.Oimyakon to the east of Yakutsk is recognized as the coldest place on earth, showing temperatures of minus 70 degrees.But dreadful as it sounds, the dryness of the air makes the cold bearable, while vast resources of minerals help provide a tolerable standard of living. Every fifth diamond in the world comes from the frozen depths of Yakutia.With practically no industry Yakutsk is one of the least polluted centres of Russia. Yet the moist exhaust fumes and chimney emissions meet the cold and create a steady haze over the town and its 200,000 inhabitants.At the statue of Lenin on the central square, a bus disgorges a stream of passengers enveloped in a thick cloud of damp breath. Hands thrust deep in their pockets, they flee to the warmth of nearby shops.In winter, boots made of reindeer fur save their feet from frostbite. Even just an insert made of the bushy fur in the shoe of a western European works wonders, and warmed toes gratefully uncurl.Along Yakutsk’s streets the local trademark five-storeyed apartment blocks stand raised one metre on reinforced concrete piles. They can’t be built directly on the ground which thaws in the short, hot summer to a depth of 1.5 metres, enough to cause a house to sink into the soil.The piles are driven 30 metres into the permafrost and are the most expensive aspect of construction in Yakutia. With an average annual temperature of minus 10 degrees the ground stays frozen all year round to a depth of 200 metres.In front of a comfortable hotel on Ammosova Street parttime taxi driver Vladimir Fyodorovitch waits for visitors in his Niva jeep. The 70-year-old pensioner has installed double glazing inside which enables him to see while driving.“We’ll get bright sunshine as soon as we clear the edge of town,” he promises as we head toward our destination – the gigantic, deep-frozen River Lena.The mighty waterway swells to a width of ten kilometres as it flows past Yakutsk from the tundra and the taiga forests upstream. But for six months of the year the frozen water serves as a road.The jeep passes the last wooden huts of Yakutsk and then turns from the riverbank onto the ice. Ahead, sunrays dance across an endless wilderness of snow. We are in a world of dazzling white.“The ice is a metre thick and can take the heaviest trucks,” Vladimir assures his nervous passengers.At 4,400 kilometres, the Lena is one of the ten longest rivers in the world. The guidebook says it has only one bridge along its entire length, built for the Trans-Siberian Railway.When the first ice appears and blocks navigation in September, the river must be made secure for the winter as fast as possible: water is pumped onto the ice since it freezes too slowly beneath the surface. As soon it is 40 centimetres thick, seven-ton trucks are allowed on.On the way back, the haze of Yakutsk descends once again over the red Niva. People shrouded in heavy fur coats and hats scurry across the road, far from the concerns of western animal rights activists.At first glance most Yakutsk look like a mix of Eskimo and Mongol. Natasha’s black hair tells of Yakutian ancestry, but her face has distinctly Slavic Russian lines.The youthful, chubby look of many locals is due to the higher fat content of Yakuts’ facial skin, she explains. This affords more protection from the cold and slows formation of wrinkles.People here seem even-tempered and, by Russian standards, decidedly contented. In Soviet times the town attracted young engineers and specialists with double incomes offered as compensation for the hardships.The golden days are long gone, but few people you meet in shops or on the bus complain about life – on the contrary, the harsh conditions seem to bring out the best.“The place only really starts to defrost a little at about minus 45 – any warmer and we regard that as the start of the thaw,” jokes Nikolai Burtsev, a local justice ministry official.In the public steam baths on Khabarovsk Street, sweating young soldiers chat about women and cars, but not about moving away. They are happy to let the outside world come to them.For people considering a winter trip to this remote part of the world: take warm clothing and plenty of patience and stamina. After arriving in Russia, the journey from Moscow is an adventure in itself.“Free choice of seats,” calls the stewardess, and passengers with mountains of handluggage storm up the steps to the Tupolev-154 jetliner and along the narrow aisles.Then the vastness of Russia opens up beneath you during the seven-hour flight past the flame-illuminated gas fields of Western Siberia and through the Arctic circle. It is just after 5 a.m. local time when you touch down, still midnight in Moscow.“Good morning, welcome to Yakutsk. The temperature outside is minus 34 degrees,” comes the crackling cabin announcement. Unlike on other Siberian flights there is no warning not to touch the handrail on the steps with bare hands – skin will bond instantly to freezing metal.Disembarking passengers walk 200 metres across the snowy airfield to an unmarked wooden hut to reclaim their luggage. Experienced travellers immediately hail taxis and wait under cover, while newcomers spend their first hour in Siberia stamping their feet in the cold and knocking in vain on the hut door.Finally the bags are released. In Moscow, there would have been a riot, but here not a single bad word is heard. At six a.m. in Yakutia it’s just too cold for a rebellion.
