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Oymyakon in north-east Siberia is the coldest permanently inhabited place in the world. The village is located at the “Pole of Cold” on the left bank of the Indigirka River in Sakha, a republic in Russia’s far east, and is connected to other rural localities such as Khara-Tumul and Bereg-Yurdya, Tomtor, Yuchyugey and Aeroport, which gets its name from the local airport. The area sits on the Oymyakon plateau and has about 2,000 inhabitants.
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A man rides a snowmobile through Oymyakon.
The plateau is within a large bowl-shaped depression called the Oymyakon depression, which has a dry, partly cloudy and frosty climate. In February 1933, a meteorological station in Tomtor recorded near‐surface air temperature of-67.7C, less than a couple of degrees warmer than the record low of -69.6C set in 1991 in Greenland.
In early October, here, as in the whole of Sakha, also known as Yakutia, an anticyclone begins to form with increased atmospheric pressure. The polar night begins, during which there is a sharp cooling of the Earth’s surface, under which there is permafrost. Oymyakon is considered a climate regulator in Europe and is also closely monitored by meteorological stations.
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A cow enters a shed after a walk to the stream. Despite the ability of Yakut cows to stay outside for a long time in freezing weather, they need to live in the warmth when the outside temperature falls below -30C.
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Evdakia, a 63-year-old farmer feeds, a Yakut cow inside a barn, where the temperature is between -10C and -15C in winter because the walls lack enough insulation. Oymyakon does not have a “specific geoclimatic status”, meaning its farmers do not receive financial help to develop their farms. Evdakia has 47 cows, among which she is trying to restore the Yakut breed that was replaced in the Soviet era by the Simmental breed. She earns the equivalent of €150 (£125) a month.
The living conditions are extremely harsh for the population of this remote region. Living on frozen land, the inhabitants are mainly engaged in breeding cows, horses and reindeer, hunting, fishing, gathering and logging.
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Galia, 75, is a keen sportswoman and takes part in the 35km race between Oymyakon and Tomtor every year. She burns wood to heat her house as it its not connected to the heating network produced by the Oymyakon coal-fired power station. The floor inside the house is often cold. To protect herself, Galia wears boots made of kamous, the skin from the lower part of a reindeer’s legs. Of the 305 households in Oymyakon, Bereg-Yurdya and Khara-Tumul, more than 120 are heated with firewood, each burning through more than 100 cubic metres of larch. Residents of the Oymyakonsky district say deforestation has made the climate windier and warmer.
Previously, the Indigenous Evens led a nomadic life as reindeer herders here, but the Soviet authorities viewed them extremely negatively because they were considered difficult to control. For this reason, the Evens were forced to transform the area into a permanent settlement and build cattle farms in the 1930s.
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The Museum of Literature and Local Studies is devoted to the countless poets and writers deported to a forced-labour camp in Kolyma under the Stalinist regime. The Soviet era was a dark period in the history of Oymyakon. The construction of kolkhozes (collective farms), then the gulags and their later abolishment are just as much remembered as the nomadic way of life and traditional reindeer herding.
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Valery Vinokurov, 65, has spent the last two decades observing temperatures in Oymyakon, documenting a warming climate. In summer, he has recorded highs of 35C instead of the seasonal norms of between 20C and 25C, while in winter the minimum temperature has risen from –63.5C to –54C.
Later, under the gulag system, dozens of forced-labour camps were created at the mouth of the Indigirka River and further into the region. One of the purposes was to build the Kolyma highway. Many prisoners and exiles, after their release, were unable to leave the area and remained in the localities. In the village of Oymyakon, at the secondary school, there is a local history museum dedicated to writers, poets, artists, cultural figures and scientists who served prison sentences in these regions or were sent into exile.
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A man walks on the Kolyma highway, nicknamed “the road of bones”. It was built in the 1930s by political prisoners held in the gulags, and links the port town of Magadan to the town of Nizhny Bestiakh. The construction, which lasted until Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, claimed between 250,000 and 1 million lives. They are buried next to or directly under the 1,219-mile (1,961km) road, part of which is still not finished as it it considered an extremely difficult project despite modern equipment.
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On the way to Oymyakon, trucks carrying coal stop about 60 miles out after one of them breaks down. Outside, the vehicles are never turned off during the winter, otherwise they would freeze. Even if the engines are left running for several hours, the wheels turn solid and the trucks will not be able to set off again until summer.
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The nearest petrol station to Oymyakon is about 25 miles away, near Tomtor. Below -50C, the fuel consumption of an engine is estimated to double because of the severe strain that such low temperatures put on the combustion process as well as the oil and the battery. Any breakdown on the road, for unequipped travellers, can end in tragedy. At night, the vehicles are sheltered in heated garages and despite this, they take a long time to start.
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Students at Oymyakon secondary school take a chemistry lesson. One of them, a fan of Soviet history, wears a Russian hat and has brought into school the hammer and sickle red flag of the USSR.
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Fourteen-year-old students have a maths lesson at the only school in Oymyakon. The school is named after Nikolay Krivoshapkin, a local merchant who donated money for its construction. Krivoshapkin helped the inhabitants of Yakutia many times and saved the expedition of Jan Czerski, a Polish explorer who lost a dozen horses and had ran out of food supplies while passing by Oymyakon on his way from Yakutsk to Verkhnekolymsk. The classes as the school are very small because there are only 107 students in total.
There is also a monument to the victims of Stalinist repressions called the Bell of Memory. Today, the Kolyma highway allows the transport of petrol and coal. Due to the cold, planes do not land in Oymyakon for several months of the year. The primary school in Oymyakon was founded in 1931. In 1951 it became the first secondary school in the region.
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Residents of the Oymyakon region do not have sanitary facilities inside their homes. Toilets are located outside in wooden huts.
Despite the partial central heating in majority of the houses, there is no indoor sanitation. The community of Oymyakon hopes the Sakha government will assign them a specific geoclimatic status in order to receive financial assistance for the construction of the infrastructure necessary for daily life and livestock breeding.
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A herd of reindeer passes through Oymyakon valley in -55C weather on the way to the base of the Indigenous Evens community at Osikam, which means a star and it situated at mile 432 of the Kolyma highway. The Osikam Evens community has 350 reindeer.
