I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here. Dark City, 1998
One of my favourite things to do when I visit a city is free roaming: start with a rough route plan in mind and explore the city by foot, deviating from the initial route whenever I feel like, until I can barely walk. It's probably the most intimate way to get to know a place.
So there I was, in my hotel room after having returned from the museum day trip. Although dark outside, it was not very late in the evening, and the square right in front of the hotel was still lively.
You could still see holidays decorations in many parts of the city. In Russia, the New Year's Eve is celebrated in both the modern and traditional way, meaning both 1st and 14th of January. The evening depicted in the photos was on January 17th, still with remnants of the holiday atmosphere.
Also note the stationary cars with their lights and engines turned on. It is common practice in Yakutsk to leave the car engine running for the entire day, otherwise you may not be able to restart it due to the cold, merciless on humans and machines alike.
Intrigued yet not fully content with the sights near the hotel, I decided to put on my full gear and explore farther reaches of the city, at night.
Roaming the stone-still streets of Yakutsk reminded me of another surreal place I visited 6 years ago: Chernobyl. The major difference was that, this time, you could catch glimpses of human presence which reminded you that this is not actually a ghost town. More on the trip to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the nearby ghost town of Pripyat, maybe for another time though.
Almost every tree and man-made structure is covered in the ever-present frost that reigns at these temperatures. With the parka hood on - the only sensible way of protecting your head against turning into a block of ice - the field of view and awareness are sensibly reduced. You feel like a diver in a pre-modern diving suit, but instead of roaming the dark depths of the ocean you roam through the freezing fog through which the yellow city lights diffuse. And the most prevalent sound you hear is the screech. The screech of your boots on the powdery snow, the screech of the tires on the same dry snow when a car passes nearby.
If you're on the move and you cover your exposed face often, you'll be alright. The trick is not to stay motionless for long. There's no really "getting used to" when it comes to the Siberian cold. There's no true acclimatization or adaptation of the human body so that it can comfortably face these conditions. The true key to survival here are the effective clothing and the well-heated interiors. There's no other way, you just can't get around the laws of physics in such extreme environments.
Discovering Yakutsk by foot brings to light a common trait of many Siberian towns: the industrial driving factor that caused the city's population boom more than half a century ago. USSR is not a taboo subject here; it's a well-acknowledged episode in the history of the country, and you can still see signs from that past. The Victory monument and square pays homage to the soviet soldiers that fought and died for the Motherland, an achievement that stays as frozen and immutable in time as the pillars and walls of the monument shrouded by the cold fog of the evening.
Yakutsk's Fish Market
The next day, the main objective on my radar would be a famous fish market in Yakutsk.
Street markets are attractions in almost every major touristic city. Barcelona, Hong Kong, Hanoi, Tokyo and so many others... These spots are highly appreciated by the keen visitor, since they portray daily activities of the town's natives, with little or no touristic sugar-coating. They are a very good place to get a taste of the local life. Who would've thought that Yakutsk can have a well-deserved spot on this list of street markets attractive to foreigners? Because it does, with its absorbing Крестьянский рынок fish market. I had read about this place and had seen photos of it, yet I was still surprised by what I've encountered there.
The first thing that catches your attention, as well as admiration, are the heavily-dressed merchants who are able to withstand the cold for several hours. They proudly display their merchandise, which is the spectacular highlight of the market: frozen fish of all sizes, bunched together like French baguettes, fill the shelves of the stalls. All sorts of local meat bring a surplus of variety, horse, reindeer, beef, poultry - frozen almost beyond recognition. And last but not least, birds and hares complete the offer, in a fascinating display which makes one think of a grotesque taxidermy show, almost distrustful that the goods were once living, moving critters.
Night stroll in the suburbs
It was still too early to call it a night after leaving the open-air market, so I decided to get another taste of the local life. This time, a warmer endeavor, at least for a short while. So far I had only traveled from place to place in Yakutsk by taxi or by foot; it was time to try the public transportation. I hopped into one of their chubby minibuses in the city center, and I let it take me almost to the end of the line, in the city outskirts.
The urban landscape had changed considerably. Apart from the eternal frost and snow, there was not much in common with the inner city neighbourhoods. The soviet-style apartment blocks gave way to low-rise houses, some of them built in an aesthetically pleasing traditional wooden architecture. Lampposts were less often encountered, and their orange light was dominated by the shadows of the nearby houses, making the streets look desolate, as if belonging to an abandoned town. If not for the occasional tire screech sound of a car or bus monotonously passing by, the feeling of roaming through a ghost town would have been very immersive.
On my way back to the hotel, I chose walking, having become partially familiar with the route. As I approached the city center, the fog would slowly let taller contours fade in through the darkness: bigger and taller buildings would slowly reveal themselves through the fog, like dark and silent leviathans drifting across a strange island in the farthest reaches of Siberia, where mist, snow, frost, concrete, asphalt and metal pipes would meet and blend together...
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