Olga Monastyreva is a contemperary Yakutia-born artist, who lives currently with her beloved in Belguim. In the town of De Haan, they’ve got the fine art gallery “Artepol” (www.artepol.be). Btw, the gallery is depicted in her penultimate painting.

See how fascinating her paintings are. Inspired by Russia’s Siberian republic of Yakutia, her far-away cold wintery homeland. Olga spent her childhood in the town of Khandyga located on the Aldan River in the eastern part of the Republic of Sakha-Yakutia.

Once Olga described her canvases as Dreams. They look that way, indeed!

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Anabar is a short name for Anabarsky District, one of the northernmost region in the Arctic zone of Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Siberia, Russia.

See the set of Anna Opsipova‘s photographs taken on films during her visit to the reindeer herders’ camp in Anabar. Just a few pictures, but they are very expressive.

Images were done, when outdoor temperature was much, much below -40C.

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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.

Today is the Russian Xmas! The right time to say “Merry Christmas, friends!”

See more Xmas tree on our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/eYakutia.

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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Yesterday I just stood a little bit near the New Year tree installed recently on Lenin Square in Yakutsk City, Yakutia, Siberia / Russia, and took my chance to take a picture and make a video.

The photo is above. The video is inside the post. Read the rest of this entry…

Winter starts from Yakutia! This is how a new travel project is called. What’s that? A good question.

Officials, who are responsible for tourism development in Russia’s Republic of Sakha-Yakutia, have been thinking over tricks of attracting tourists to Yakutia. They spent much time on that work. Indeed, it was a hard mission.

Yakutia is located pretty far away and, moreover, it’s huge and impossible to travel across in a short span of time and see all exotic things at once. What to do?

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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.

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In the early November, Yakutsk-based Vladimir Potapov (fb profile) arranged the winter snowmobile expedition to the Arctic zone of the Republic of Sakha-Yakutia (Siberia/Russia).

The route was Ust Kujga (map) – Kazach’e (map) – Laptev Sea.

The mission was to deliver the remains of the Yuka Mammoth from the area of the Yukagir community, Laptev Sea, to Yakutsk. It is the same place, where the famous Yukagir mammoth head was discovered seven years ago.

The Yuka mammoth corpse was found in the well-preserved condition by Vasily Gorokhov’s community four years ago. It has four legs, proboscis, and wool.

The expedition was filmed by BBC TV Channel and scheduled to be on the air on February 25th, 2012. It will be a 60-min story.

See more Arctic expedition photographs taken by Egor Fedorov.

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This morning I went out for a regular dog walk. With Ogonyok, 1-yo Yakutian laika (learn more about this dog breed), we headed to the anabranch of the Lena River located just in front of the block I live in.

In summer, it is visited mostly by city people striving for swimming. In winter, it becomes a sort of Mecca for ice fishermen. This day was not exception. On the ice, we spotted a dozen of men sitting with rods and bending over holes.

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