Feel Yakutia in winter a little bit. Put the photo of Oymyakon’s Indigirka River on your desktop.

Download wallpaper: 1366×768, 1280×800, 1024×768, 1280×1024.

The photographs were taken on the road between Oymyakon and Khandyga in the mountain part of the Kolyma Highway known also as Stalin’s Road of Bones.

When we were driving, the outdoor temperature was as low as -55C. In the beginning of the way, i.e. in the village of Tomtor in the Oymyakon area, we registerd -57.3C. Extremely cold. Not surprised that the Kolyma road is considered by many as the coldest one in the world.

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What can happen, when ice road truckers take a risk and cross the river on the thin ice in spring? Their trucks fall through the ice and drivers kill much time to extract their vehicles.

Take a look. This video was shot on the Indigirka River in the area of Oymyakon. This is in Yakutia, Siberia / Russia. Time was the late spring, April.

A kinda exciting adventure, but it wasn’t funny for drivers.

A friend of mine, Vyacheslav Ipatiev, who is the founder and CEO of YakutiaTravel LLC, has developed a new unique route for extreme cold hunters.

He gives a chance to embark an adventure journey on reindeer sleds across the Valley of Oymyakon, one of the coldest parts of Yakutia, Siberia / Russia.

10-day sledding in the Siberian extreme cold weather. From the village of Uchugey to the village of Oymyakon. The temp is as low as -55 C or even less. And, yeah, night spending in nomads’ sleeping bags in nomads’ tents. In short, it’s the coolest expedition experience!

Cold hunting trip description is available here.

See more cold adventure pictures… Read the rest of this entry…

Yakutian cow in a farm in Oymyakon District, Yakutia, Russia.

The total population of Yakutian cow (purebred indigenous species) is as low as 2500 heads.

More than 2,000 inhabit in Eveno-Bytantaysky National District (the Arctic Zone of Yakutia, Siberia / Russia).

Cattle is lead to ponds even at -50C and there were no one got udder frostbitten.

A purebred Yakutian cow might provide up to 2236 litre of milk a year. Its milk’s average fat content is about 5.6 %. Some cow might have even 11%. To compare, here is the fact. The average fatness of Kholmogorsky cows’ milk is 3.7 % only.

A Yakutian cow’s big distinguishing feature is that it can acquire adipose weight pretty fast in the course of the short pasture season.

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If you wonder, what young people do in Ust Nera, the administrative center of Yakutia’s Oymyakon region, especially on a sunny winter day, here is the answer. They take snowboards and snowboarding gears, get to the closest mountain, climb, climb, climb, and enjoy riding on the snow from uphill.

Take a look at pictures taken by Egor Fedorov and his friends this past April. Read the rest of this entry…

Oymyakon holds the heat record.

Oymyakon, the world’s coldest inhabited place in Russia’s East Yakutia, with its current 20-degrees-Celsius frost held the heat record of the Siberian winter. Since December 10th, 2010, abnormal warm weather has been established in the Oymyakon area.

Active South Pacific cyclones brought heat waves over the ridges of the East Siberian Plateau and created snowy and warm weather anomaly.

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A horse breeder in the valley of Oymyakon.

Yakutsk Centre for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring forced news agencies to speak about itself. Forecasters distributed a preliminary forecast of next month in Yakutia.

According to the report, in the South of Yakutia, the thermometer may drop to minus 40-45 degrees Celsius, the East expects 34-37-degree frosts, and the coldest places in the northern hemisphere of our planet, Oymyakon (Ojmjakon) and Verkhoyansk, will confirm their brutal reputation. Here the air might be chilled down to -57 and -62 degrees Celsius.

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Our Yakutia photo exhibit in Brooklyn, New York City. Photo by Gale Krylova.

Thomas Ross Miller, the curator of our joint “On the Road of Bones” photo exhibit in Brooklyn, NYC, informs that a couple of major New York newspapers have listed this Friday night’s open house reception at the Kris Waldherr Art and Words Studio Gallery in their events pages. Woo hoo! Many visitors and reporters are expected to come to that event on October 15th, 2010.

More NY exhibit details are available in the previous post. You might also wish to check out the exhibition schedule at http://ontheroadofbones.com/.

Meanwhile, hereby I present our curator Thomas Ross Miller’s statement in regards to the exhibition. What you are going to read further, convinced NYC-based culture editors to do what they did. Read the rest of this entry…

Roman Yarygin spent two months, April and May, in the Verkhoyank Range with Oymyakon reindeer herders. In the above video he is sitting on the mountain top, while his Siberian husky is sleeping. An amazing view! See some of his photographs. Read the rest of this entry…