Eastern Siberia. Federal highway "Kolyma"
This is the very place about which they say: "You'd better come to us!" Kolyma. More precisely, the Kolyma tract: an ice road (over 2,000 km) connecting Magadan and Yakutsk. Two not the most pleasant places on Earth. It is here that cold records are beaten - the temperature periodically drops to -70 degrees Celsius. And geologists, anthropologists and parapsychologists are struggling in search of explanations for the tricks that local lakes, mountains, trees, animals, and the track itself sometimes present.
During the years of repression, a million Soviet prisoners passed along the Kolyma highway. Half stayed there. Local old-timers remember how the icy bodies were strewn along the road. Enemies of the people, criminals and bribe-takers served as a natural compactor of the soil cover of the tract.
The dead, if buried (in the warm season), then right there - on the sidelines. Do not be surprised when you are offered to “please the bony” (ie to start looking for human remains in the ground). Here it is something like sports and fortune-telling at the same time: I found a hip bone - for money, an edge - for quiet family happiness, a skull - for promotion.
In several places (in the area of Yakutsk and Khandyga) the highway is supported only by ferry (in summer) or ice (in winter) crossings and does not work in the off-season. Three to four cars a day - by local standards, such traffic is considered to be intense. In these conditions, any breakdown can be fatal both for the car and for its owner. In summer, burnt iron skeletons protrude from the snow: drivers set fire to their cars to keep warm in the 50-60-degree frost. Sometimes this does not help - and not far from the carcass, the owner is found.
However, local residents believe that the extreme climatic conditions and the atmosphere of the giant cemetery are not the worst of what is in Kolyma. Real adventures begin on the lakes. Over the past decade, more than a hundred people have disappeared at Krasny, Labynkyr and Vorota. The Yakuts say that a huge animal is hiding in bottomless places. In addition, Labynkyr has three islands disappearing under water with an incomprehensible pattern. Locals believe that the islands are actually parts of a monster that sinks to the bottom after every successful hunt.
How to get there By car from Magadan to the northwest.