Taymyrethnoexp. Part III

March 21–29, 2011

Nothing motivates you to explore nearby areas quite like an airport closure.

In Norilsk, we began our wait for a cargo plane and good flying weather. A string of bad luck, idiocy, blizzards and resignation kept us in the city for an entire week.

I explored Norilsk and the surrounding cities. Auctioned off everything that could be sold (the remaining canned food, a camping stove, my down mega-parka and mega-snow pants, and other sundries). Went down into a mine. Cleaned out my inbox. Ate two venison steaks a day instead of the usual one.

Norilsk

Norilsk is remarkably similar to Saint Petersburg.

It also has ornate bulletin boards for flyers.

Bulletin board

Traffic signs are also affixed to building facades rather than upright poles (because it would be a pain for the snow ploughs which clean the sidewalks to go around every pole).

The same goes for traffic lights. I’m sure the city must have a club for second-floor apartment residents who have traffic lights shining in their windows.

Egypt, Thailand

Like in St. Petersburg, icicles are called “ices”.

Komsomolskaya. Beware of ices!

Although Norilsk did end up with its share of beauty (unlike, say, Novosibirsk, which is infinitely hideous in terms of urban environment and parks design), this beauty is quickly falling into disrepair.

There isn’t a single construction crane in the city; nothing is being built.

Everything is just falling apart.

Warning: crumbling façade.

There’s a cluster of old buildings downtown, assembled into a solid Potemkin village.

But there’s no one to show all this any love.

The city turned out to be very small.

You can walk the entire length of it in 20 minutes.

And the entire width in 10.

Few people dream of spending their entire lives here.

There are two main decorative techniques in Norilsk. Adding ornamental concrete thingamajigs under windows.

And painting façades in a way that’s meant to make them look more cheery.

Although, if you ask me, nothing is more depressing than cheery facades.

The stepped railings in Norilsk are unlike anywhere else.

Like in Murmansk, people hang daylight lamps in their windows to cheer up their houseplants during the polar night.

The mailboxes here are a kind of in-between model (there are few like this in Russia) with a big peaked top to prevent snow buildup.

Russian Post. Post Office # 663310. Orange Shopping Center. 24 Hours Daily

Street signs.

6 Leninskiy Prospect “Energotech.” Caution: parts of façade may collapse

A bulletin board and crawlspace vents.

Confounding instructions.

Press button again in 40 seconds

A trash dumpster by a high-rise apartment building entrance.

Shared dumpsters in the courtyards between smaller five-story apartment buildings.

Building numbers are painted five meters tall.

Safety barriers on the sidewalks.

All the buses are yellow and carry the Norilsk Nickel logo.

Strictly speaking, Norilsk and the surrounding area belong to Norilsk Nickel.

The city’s existence is justified only as long as the ore mining and processing plants continue to operate here.

And so far they’re still operating.

Drivers: Caution! Haul trucks operating

And will continue to operate for another thirty years or so.

The main bulk of industrial activity takes place in the part of town called the old city.

It’s always New Year’s here.

Happy New Year!

It’s always a great setting for a movie about the end of the world.

You can always find a spot to park your car for the winter.

I found a spot to park mine and went to see the Anhydrite Mine.

This is how the process works. Mined-out tunnels that are a kilometer or so below ground need to be filled with something to prevent collapses. Filling them with cement is expensive, but using anhydrite is cheap.

So there’s an entire separate mine where anhydrite rock is extracted, loaded into Caterpillar haul trucks underground, poured into crushers, transported aboveground, thrown into wagons and shipped over to the next town, where it’s used it to fill the worked-out mines.

The machinery that’s used is absolutely incredible. Forget prisoners toiling with picks—almost everything is automated and performed by robots.

For some reason, Norilsk gas stations never give you your full money’s worth of gas. For instance, I paid 600 rubles, but they only fill me up to 598.40.

598.40 Rubles. 18.70 Liters. 32.00 Rub/L

The weather can turn in an instant. The sky suddenly becomes overcast, a blizzard hits, and you find yourself in a whiteout.

And then, just as quickly, everything clears again.

I don’t even know what one word could be used to describe local life.

Working here is fun.

But living isn’t.

The airplane that was supposed to come pick up our SUVs sailed right past the landing strip and into the sunset. Visibility was poor, so after circling a few times it headed to the alternate airfield in Nizhnevartovsk. At that point it ran out of fuel. Right in the middle of the runway. And taxied the rest of the way without fuel. The crew was disciplined, the plane remained in Nizhnevartovsk.

Another plane arrived two days later. We went to the airport. The weather had been unfit for landings all day, but finally a window cleared. The plane landed. However, it turned out that the visibility had been 700 meters according to the instruments. Even though everyone had seen that it was a couple of kilometers. The crew was disciplined and grounded, the aircraft had to await the arrival of an inspector from Krasnoyarsk to investigate the incident. This is what an unlawful landing looks like:

Finally, our first plane was released from Nizhnevartovsk. Our weeklong wait for a flight wasn’t the biggest problem in the world. Whoever was transporting their fruit and vegetables in the same plane had worse luck—everything had rotted over the course of the week.

Time to go to the airport for the last time.

The car was weighed and its cargo scanned, then it was weighed again for some reason, sealed and sent over to the plane. There, the car was chained up inside the cargo hold, while all the people were kicked out until morning.

There’s only one hotel at Alykel Airport. It’s called Health Resort. The only option available was a bed for 1350 rubles in a shared room with four others beds. So I shared the room with some other guy until morning.

Flight check-in at 9am. Then security, boarding and takeoff, which was unusually quick for a civilian airplane. I decided to spend takeoff behind the wheel of Coucousique, eating sandwiches I’d bought at the airport café. Takeoff is easy: you take a bite of your sandwich, pull the wheel towards you, jab your finger at the ceiling—and become airborne.

Since Coucousique is equipped with a sleeping berth on one side, I took a nap on it until we landed in Yaroslavl.

Yaroslavl

The mainland.

And that’s that. Three hours of travel—and you’re home.