Can you imagine a place where the cold is really extreme? No, it is not the Arctic or the Antarctic. Is about Oymyakón or Oimiakón, russian people located in the distant and frozen Siberia. It's cold here, it's not a joke, but people live.
It is known as "The coldest town in the world" Well, they were ever registered -71 ° C. Can you imagine that level of cold soaking in your bones? Well, our article today will be about this distant and little known Russian town. Maybe you want to travel a little ...
Oymyakón
As I said before, it is a town, a farming community, in truth, what is in Russia. Specifically, east of Siberia, a huge region that is within the Asian part of the Russian republic. It goes from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific and borders the Arctic Ocean, China, North Korea, Mongolia and Kazakhstan.
It is estimated that Siberia is 76% of the surface of Russia, but really very few people live, at the rate of three people per square kilometer, so the population density is really low. Siberia is divided into three, for practical purposes: the parts are thus separated by the course of the Yenisei River and the Lena.
So we have a Western siberia, lowland plain with lakes and swamps, Central Siberia with deeper lakes and canyons, Lake Baikal, for example, and Eastern Siberia with many mountains and the famous Kamchatcka Peninsula, as well as some awake volcanoes.
Then, Oymyakón is in Eastern Siberia, next to the Indigirka river, on the ground permafrost. What is this? Well, it is simply permanently frozen ground and covered with snow or ice. In the Yakut language, a language that derives from the Turkic languages and has Mongolian and Tungus influences, it means "water that does not freeze." Do you wonder how it can have that name being on permafrost soil? Easy, there are hot springs very close and I already believe that a few drops of hot water in such cold stand out like gold.
Here in Oymyakón winter is long, nine months, and needless to say that it is very crude. The town is enclosed between two mountains so once the cold sets in, it takes a long time to leave. The weather, specifically speaking, is extreme subpolar. Winter is dry and there really aren't many differences from the summer season. Easily, there are temperatures of -59ºC and summer, well, it is also cold.
Oymyakón is part of the Republic of Sajá, with a population of just under half a million inhabitants. In the middle of winter you don't see a soul in the streets. And it is that, on the one hand, children do not go to school if the temperature is -52ºCOn the other hand, gasoline freezes below 45ºC, so if you turn off the engine, bye car. With these temperatures no one is outside if you really don't have to. People live indoors and coming across someone is a miracle.
It may be picturesque for us that it is so cold but it seems that the inhabitants do not like it at all. It is no longer a question of whether you like it or not, but rather Such a freezing temperature is dangerous. Running out of electricity, without gas, without gasoline, without communications ... and on another level, it is already known that the cold invites to increase alcohol consumption. Thus, drunkenness or drunkenness are common.
We said that the town is dedicated to rural activity, basically to the reindeer and cow herding. Obviously that cannot drive the local economy, so it is a town that lives off state money. The Russian Federation puts money, a lot, so that's how they close the accounts.
Oymyakón is so cold that the houses have almost no pipes. They would not be of much use since the liquid freezes, so there are communal toilets and domestic toilets do not have pipes. It even takes only 30 minutes for fish to freeze once caught and it is common to see cars permanently with their engines running. Did you see that vodka doesn't freeze in the fridge? Well here, yes.
The shortest days of the year here last 21 hours. At the end of each winter the Cold Polo Festival, hosted by the Ice Lord, Chyskhaan, a pagan deity that looks like a cross between the Queen of Frozen and the wizard Gandalf. Every March there is then reindeer racing, dog sledding, ice fishing and other entertainment. Then, it is possible to get closer to the town.
Is Oymyakon affected by climate change? For it would seem so because last January it was even colder and thus it reached that record that is always named, taken in 1924. But only two weeks later there was a warm wave and the thermometer reached 17ºC. A dramatic change and nothing more and less than in two weeks ... Thus, at least briefly the inhabitants of this town could at least defrost their eyelashes ...
Oymyakón is two hours by car from Yakutsk, where is the nearest airport. This city is 450 kilometers from the Arctic Circle and it is, with its almost 270 thousand inhabitants, the most populated city in northwestern Russia.
I don't think it is a very tourist destination but there are people who like to know atypical, distant, strange places, to feel like the only foreigner. If it is your case, Oymyakon is for you. Maybe you saw something on television or some photo. TV has arrived here and photographers have arrived to portray how you live or how you suffer, haha.
I think that despite the cold the place is beautiful. With that beauty that extreme landscapes give, almost aggressive to the human being.