All Aboard The Trans-Polar Railway
It’s Friday, March 16, 2018. Our train is due to leave Moscow’s Yaroslavsky station at 8:20 p.m., where we’ll arrive way earlier than the departure time. There is not only one central train station in Moscow but nine railway terminals. Upon entering the waiting hall, we reassure ourselves that we are at the right one.
As soon as we find the right track, we make our way to our third-class, 54-berth open-plan compartment, where we’d booked two lower berths as recommended by the friendly hostel receptionist in St. Petersburg. Keen for the chance to mingle with locals, we’d opted for this over the antisocial first-class two-berth and second-class four-berth compartments.
As we had observed the locals on a 9-hour short train ride from St. Petersburg to Moscow, this time we’re fully equipped to blend in with the Russians: pajamas worn under our clothes, slippers in hand, plenty of tea and instant noodles packed, books and movies downloaded. On account of us being perfectly ready to disconnect for a while in order to get a sense of 2400 km and two time zones, the train quickly becomes our home.
Over two nights and days (45 hours), our special accommodation would transport us from the buzz of a metropolis to the end of the world in the Arctic Siberia.
The route of the Polar Arrow from Moscow heads north into Arkhangelsk Oblast after crossing Europe’s longest river, the Volga. On its long trek northwest to the Arctic, the landscape changes but retains a soothing familiarity, a snowy pastoral motif.
Somewhere past Kotlas, almost a day out of Moscow, the journey finds its rhythm. The seclusion dominates both the landscape and the atmosphere. Contrary to the hustle and bustle at the train stations in the industrial cities near Moscow, where our matronly conductress would regularly check tickets and distribute clean bedding for new passengers, no one boards the train in these remote towns. Only a handful of comrades remain aboard as we further penetrate towards the Arctic. Tom befriends a couple of other nicotine-hungry smokers in our carriage. Whenever the train stops for long enough, they leap out of the train at tiny railway stations and brave the biting winter’s chill to have a cigarette on the icy platforms. Save for these brief moments of halts, a routine sets in. Passengers in their ‘train uniforms’ flip-flop back and forth to the water boiler for hot water to make tea or rehydrate instant noodles. As if on a loop, we collectively eat, gaze out of the grimy window, take a nap, and repeat. Eat, chat, daydream, sleep, and repeat.
Outside, a faint glow of sunshine illuminates the milky-white snowy motion picture of taiga with occasional houses until darkness fall. Time slips and loses meaning. How long have I been aboard now? Lulled by the cradle-rock of the train, we fall asleep.
As the train crosses the Polar Ural mountains—the natural boundary between Europe and Asia—and enters Siberia, we are refreshed to experience a real adventure in the Russian Far North, yet still my anxiety grows. What is there awaiting us at the edge of the world?
About 45 hours after leaving Moscow, the train finally stops at the terminus on the west bank of the Ob River. Across the river lies the city of Salekhard. In summer the city is served by ferry, but in winter, when the river freezes, the trip between Labytnangi and Salekhard is made by taxi on the ice road.
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Salekhard port |
My worries about whether we would be able to find a taxi to our Airbnb turn out superfluous. There are more than enough taxis waiting for the train’s arrival. As soon as we step out from the comfy +23 °C temperature of the train to the -23 °C outside temperature, an elderly driver offers his services. Upon surviving the first frost-shock, I show him the address written in Russian and ask him to type in the fare on my phone. He asks for 1000 Russian Ruble (~15 USD), 800 RUB is the local fare according to our host. But we don’t bother to negotiate a couple of dollars off at this frosty temperature, and we jump in.
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Stela monument marking the 66th latitude, which runs directly through the city. |
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Obdorsky jail – Cossack fortress in Salekhard |
Closely tied to the Soviet Gulag system, between 1949-1953 Salekhard was one of the construction bases of Stalin’s incomplete Trans-Polar Mainline project, aka Dead Road.
The Railway of Death — Stalin’s Railway to Nowhere
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Source: https://www.rferl.org/ |
Not far from the monument marking the exact line of the Arctic Circle in Salekhard, there is another one mounted on a plinth to commemorate the victims of Stalin’s Railway of Death—a steam locomotive that once ran on the line between Salekhard and the city of Nadym back in the 1950s.
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Memorial Construction no:501, aka The Road to Nowhere |
Today there are no roads to connect Salekhard to the city of Nadym or the rest of Russia, except for the seasonal ice roads. Obviously, the nomadic Nenets people aptly called their distant, rarely visited wilderness land, the Yamal Peninsula, as ‘the Edge of the World’.