Places That I’d Like To Visit #12

Yakutsk, Russia

Yakutsk (Яку́тск) is the capital of the Sakha Republic (the Yakutia region, formerly the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Located in Siberia, it has some renown as the coldest city on earth. It has a population of around 200,000 people, so it defiantly qualifies as a city. But is it cold?

You bet your sweet Aunt Nelly it is! In January, daily high temperatures average around -40.9 °C. For those not impressed by facts and figures, that’s COLD. Warnings are issued to people about wearing glasses outside, as they have a tendency to freeze to the face and tear the flesh off when one tries to remove them. Nice visual there.

The coldest temperatures ever recorded outside Antarctica occur in the basin of the Yana River not far to the northeast. Conversely, July temperatures can often exceed 32 °C, making the region among the greatest in the world for seasonal temperature differences.

The biggest city built on continuous permafrost, Yakutsk is about 4° below the Arctic Circle, this roughly equates to 450 kilometres. Founded as a Cossack fort in 1632, it boomed upon the discovery of large reserves of gold and other minerals in the late nineteenth century. These reserves were developed extensively during the rapid period of industrialisation under Stalin. The influx of labour into the Siberian Gulags also ‘encouraged’ the development of the city.

Unimaginably rich in diamonds, gold, oil and gas, The Sakha Republic is the world's second largest producer and exporter of diamonds, and also has around 30 tons of gold mined within its borders annually. Signs of wealth are clear. Unlike other cities and towns in Siberia, modern buildings are sprouting up around the city. The fact that the city has eleven hotels speaks to Yakutsk's status as a regional centre.

Yakutsk has fifteen museums devoted to the history, traditions and customs of peoples of the region. It is said that the most impressive is The Treasures of the Republic of Sakha. According to the BootsnAll Travel Network (a great little site), the museum is:

well-guarded and accessible only to small groups of 2-4 visitors at a time, [and] houses the republic's most valuable and largest diamonds (by law, exceptionally large newly-mined diamonds belong to the state). Gold bricks and nuggets are also on display, along with many other precious and semi-precious stones, such as the radioactive charimite, found only in the Sakha Republic and the neighbouring Irkutsk Oblast (charamite can be bought in many tourist shops, but this is not recommended, given the radioactivity). The heart of the exhibit, however, is award-winning and often fanciful jewellery.

I would also like to visit The Permafrost Institute, which allows tourists to visit its underground research chamber. There, beneath the Earth's frozen crust, the temperature is a steady -5.00 °C all-year-round. The shaft is apparently the legacy of one early pioneer's attempt to dig a well.

The travel section in The Independent has also recently featured a fascinating piece on Yakutsk, so it is clearly must be a city on the rise!

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

This will hurt me...

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