Travel. Living Abroad. Siberia. North Asia.
Tales From Yakutia: First Impressions (Vol. 2)
A series of tales from my time living in the coldest city on Earth.
Despite the blue sky, and the fact that it was midday in the first week of September, there was a tangible chill in the air.
The three of us stood in front of the airport, watched over by the head of an enormous eagle. Elena and Nadya took some group photos to announce my arrival on the school’s social media channels. When they were done, we were ready to begin our journey to my accommodation. Of course, we were not stuck for conversation topics. Like an excited child waiting to see the sea, I peered through from the back of Elena’s jeep, taking every detail in that I could.
In fact, when I look back on the time I have spent abroad, many of the moments that stand out the most are often those initial first impressions of a place. And the images of Yakutsk on that bright but bitter day are clearer than anywhere else I have been to. The straight road— a mixture of gravel and mud — drew a line through mainly barren land. Low-rise apartment blocks were scattered on one side, a gas station on the other. Before long, we started to pass more interesting buildings: a soft rose-painted church, a stately facility that looked like a school and then a shopping estate, dominated by a homeware store called ‘Original’. Each vehicle we passed seemed to be either a 4x4, a van or a truck — hardly surprising given the sometimes rugged terrain. This was until we passed a minibus that looked as though it had once belonged to the military. But the printed number in the rear window gave it away. It was a local bus connecting one of Yakutsk’s many suburbs to the city centre, which we were visibly getting closer to.
As we neared Yakutsk, the roads began to flatten. More modern-looking buildings started to appear. After navigating a busy roundabout, we passed under a footbridge that connected a sports centre to a shopping complex. I tried to make out the signage, but by the time I had converted the Russian alphabet into phonetic sounds, the moment had gone.
Then, as we cruised along Dzerzhinskogo Street’s forgiving tarmac, I started to notice commonalities in the residential buildings. Putting the colourful facades to one side, it was the structure of the buildings that intrigued me the most. Built with brick and covered in smooth, human-sized slats, every single one that we passed could only be entered via a series of steps. One apartment block — white, with colourful zig-zagged lines and much longer than it was high — had several different entrances, all preceded by seven or eight steps leading to steel doors. I wondered why this seemed to represent a pattern. Obviously, building a city to survive extreme cold requires extreme measures, but I couldn’t figure out how raising the level of buildings was supposed to help.
Then, as if she’d read my mind, Elena explained that this was due to something that I would come to understand all too well. It was called ‘permafrost’.
“We have permafrost here in Yakutsk. All our buildings are built on a kind of legs … what would you call them?”
“Stilts?”
“Ah — steelts!”
“I was just wondering about this?”
“Well, Robert — the underground frost is melting, sometimes several feet in the summer. The stilts make a space between the building and the ground, to stop the frost from getting too hot! If it melts, the ground, it …”
“Moves?”
Elena nodded. After that, I needed no convincing as to the precariousness life in Yakutsk can entail. The thawing of permafrost is one of a multitude of challenges with both short and long-term consequences. I would learn more about permafrost very soon, as I was to visit the ‘Permafrost Kingdom’ — something I will describe in the next volume.
Before that, though, I needed to check in to my new home. We were in the thick of the city, just a couple of minutes away from my flat, when Elena brought up the inevitable. It had only been a matter of time.
“Are you ready for winter in Yakutsk?!” Elena asked.
“I think so,” I answered, muttering something about all of the shopping I had done.
Nadya’s eyes glinted in the rear-view mirror. She giggled and said:
“Winter is coming!”
Shuffling in my seat, I put on a brave face.
Next up: ‘Cultural Initiation’ (Vol. 3)
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