Day 5 of traveling east and north was not on the train but in a car. Fred and I had stopped for the night in Riko and Marianna's home in the town of Kuranakh (10% Evenki population. I.e 1.000 out of 10,000).
The next morning we set out for the capital city Yakutsk to the north. The road is "only" 450km long. If it were all like the first picture below that would be fine. But the road does pass through some very difficult, wet terrain. Just google search the words "Yakutsk Federal Highway" and you will see some extremely muddy pictures.
Starting out, the road looks just fine. We left about 10 in the morning.
A little truck stop on the highway.
Hmmm, this convenience store looks closed.
The cafe, where we stopped for lunch.
They make a mean "cheburek". (Meat filled of course.)
I even had some mobile coverage to tweet this pic.
At a toilet stop, Fred could not resist the urge to pick some blueberries. It was already very late in the season, and while these were edible, they weren't very fresh anymore.
Half way up the road, there is a petrol station. Most Russian petrol stations are just pumps and a cash register. No convenience store. :( No slurpees, no twizzlers, no jerky. What kind of road trip is this Siberia!
This picture hopefully shows that the road is being built up a lot higher to help with drainage, and to avoid those google images disasters.
This is a phantom train. Officially the train line north of Tommot (near Kuranakh where we left in the morning) does not exist yet. In reality it has been built all the way to Yakutsk, but still only on the other side of the river from the city. The river is 2 km wide and the final leg has not been determined yet. Heavy melting ice in the Spring could potentially destroy a bridge. So engineers are still debating about the best solution.
I guess this train is being used to even the tracks out. It likely has weights in it, a little like steam rolling fresh asphalt.
The highway is a continual work in progress. Locals joke that they don't have a road, just a "direction" to drive in. This part of the road is under construction. In the west, a new road would be built completely separately, while the old road would still be used. But that would just be too expensive and time consuming here. People make do. On the way up we nearly got stuck in this mud.
The bulldozer is crushing huge rocks to turn them into smaller rocks. Seemed like a good idea at the time to me. Road construction Siberian style.
The construction zone stretched for a while. On the way back we ended up driving through the night. The road was much worse, we were on the road for 14 hours, plus four hours in delays. There were no rocks in sight from our first trip. The rocks had sunk down in the mud. We were driving through mud soup with rock croutons. We held our breath a number of times. The entire journey we averaged 30 km/h, but there were many spots where we topped only 10 km/h.
It became a running joke for me on the rest of the trip with people I met in Yakutia that the vehicle they really needed to get through any roads was a "Sports Kamaz." Kamaz is a big Russian truck that is really quite adept at getting through very difficult terrain. As we were getting bogged in the mud, Kamaz trucks would simply drive by us effortlessly. A sports version enables you to do it with speed! Take a look at these sports Kamaz trucks from the Dakar rally.
We approached the barge across the Lena River. Asphalt awaited us on the other side. It was getting dark, (not great for photos), but I had to snap these Yakut miniature horses. It really felt like we had arrived in Yakutia proper now.
Reversing on to the barge (one way traffic), makes for an easier exit for everyone. The barge waits until it is full before departing. On the way there we were among the last and did not have to wait too long. On the way back we were first and had to wait 2 hours!
Everything always looks a little more mysterious at night.
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