Oymyakon
People live here at minus 50 degrees
Looks like in Winter Wonderland: Oymyakon
© Spiridon Sleptsov / Shutterstock.com
Cold, colder, Oymyakon. If you miss winter temperatures in Germany, you should make a detour to distant Yakutia.
Snow, ice and winter temperatures? Not often in Germany. The situation in Yakutia is very different. In the cold chamber of Russia there is a village that is considered the coldest place in the world: The 450 inhabitants of Oymyakon live in double-digit temperatures for eight months.
Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in the midst of ice and snow, lies the village of Oymyakon. In 1933, the official cold record of minus 67.8 degrees Celsius was measured here. On average, the temperatures in the winter months are minus 50 degrees Celsius. Shopping becomes a challenge, the way to school becomes an adventure, but children only get snow-free at minus 52 degrees.
The permafrost soil requires creativity
You have got used to life in the (almost) eternal ice. Anyone who walks outside here is thickly wrapped up and doesn't make the mistake of walking out with glasses – they could freeze onto your nose. Even for us everyday things require rethinking in Oimjakon: The frozen ground hardly allows to lay drainage pipes, as the photographer Amos Chapple reports "The Weather Channel". That is why most of the toilets are outside and out.
Although temperatures can climb above 20 degrees in summer, fruit and vegetable cultivation is still not possible due to the permafrost. That's why fish and horse meat are part of the menu here as staple foods. If you got a taste for it and would like to take a detour to the remote region, you will be on the road for a while. From Yakutsk, the capital of the region, a road leads to Oymyakon. It takes two days for the almost 1,000 kilometers long route.