Solo On Russia's Most Dangerous Road

This video might be the most special I've ever made - as this marks me fulfilling one of my lifelong dreams of traveling along the legendary Kolyma Highway, one of the most dangerous roads in the world, and definitely the most dangerous one in Russia.

Join me on this adventure from Oymyakon, the coldest village in the world, to the mining town of Ust-Nera, on an 8-hour bus ride across one of the remote areas not only of Russia, but of the entire planet as well...

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In this video, I set out to the coldest village in the world - Oymyakon! 🛹

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This was easily one of the best trips of my life.

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The Kolyma Highway is considered the most dangerous road in Russia for a variety of reasons. The area is essentially lawless, undeveloped, barely populated, and unbelievably remote. Just getting to either terminus at Magadan or Yakutsk is an adventure in itself - travelling along the road makes this look like buying a bus fare in comparison. Every year dozens of people die in the region from drowning, freezing, car accidents, starvation, tick-borne encephalitis, alcohol poisoning, fires, crime, wild animals, or just disappear.

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Construction of the Kolyma Highway was ordered by Stalin in 1932. Construction was to be carried out by the slaves and political prisoners of the many gulags scattered around the region of the Kolyma. Construction continued with the use of gulag labour until 1953.

The road is treated as a memorial, as the bones of the estimated 250,000–1,000,000 victims who died while constructing it were laid beneath or around the road. As the road is built on permafrost, interment into the fabric of the road was deemed more practical than digging new holes to bury the bodies of the dead. This is why the Kolyma Highway has now the very creepy honour of being colloquially referred to as "The Road of Bones". Because it was literally built on the bones of the people who died while building it!

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Just to give you the idea of how cold and inhospitable the area around the Kolyma is, the town of Oymyakon is believed to be the coldest inhabited place on earth. The average low temperature in Oymyakon in January is −50 °C.

In 2020, a teenage motorist froze to death by following Google Maps directions to use the shorter but abandoned section of the road via Tomtor, on which his car broke down, and his surviving travel mate lost most of his limbs due to frostbite. This is the news piece that one of the guys that I met on the minitaxi was telling me about at some point in the video.

After 96 straight hours on a Russian train to get to Yakutsk and another 22 hours on an old Soviet bus to get to Oymyakon, I needed to keep going. After all, I was still 1500 kilometres away from the final destination for my crazy trip: I still needed to get to Magadan.

In case you missed it, here's how I spent my previous day in Oymyakon:    • A Day in the World's Coldest Village ...  

And also, the incredible tale of how I managed to travel from Yakutsk to Oymyakon in an incredibly-uncomfortable bus full of locals:    • 22 Hours on a Soviet Bus to the Colde...  

The route from Oymyakon to Ust-Nera passed through incredible landscapes, where the beauty of Kolyma showed itself in all its fantastic colours. This was a great juxtaposition with the dangers and risks that traveling on a road of this kind involves. Nevertheless, the emotion that the Kolyma gave me will always remain with me, as they are unforgettable.

As far as the provisional destination for this video - Ust-Nera - there is not much to say. Ust-Nera is a gold mining town of about 17000 people located at the confluence of the Nera and Indigirka rivers. Though subjected to freezing winters and boiling summers, the town does not lack spirit or location. In particular, it is surrounded by tall craggy mountains, some glaciers, endless taiga.

Further onwards from Ust-Nera there was only one plausible direction that I could have taken - and that was going eastwards, towards the direction of the mining town of Susuman first, and Magadan second.

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