Kolyma Highway - The Road of Bones. Distance in miles
If the world would have an end, the Kolyma region would be surely a firm candidate. The end of the Russian almost uninhabited Far East offers a mix of adventure, unknown, picturesque people, incredible nature and cold. A lot of cold.
Made by forced labour in Stalin’s times, the road M-56 is also known as the Kolyma Highway or the “Road of Bones”, because of many people who died building it were directly buried under or along the road. It begins in the big city of Yakutsk, in the region of Sakha, and finishes in the Pacific coast, in the city of Magadan. The original route via Tomtor was 1900 km long, and distance increased with the new road. On the road you can find the coldest inhabited place on Earth, ghost towns, several old gulags and a stunning nature all over the landscape.
Traveling the Kolyma highway is a challenge itself and should not be done by people not ready for extreme conditions of isolation, cold, inexistence of public services (such as health, transport, security, etc), wild nature (wolves, bears and those dangerous ticks), and bad road maintenance that can lead to an accident. Alcoholism and nature of locals can be tricky, as well as their lack of foreign languages knowledge, but I suppose this should be considered as part of the fun.
Oymyakon is considered the Pole of Cold…
We are moving the blog. Please, keep reading this post at:
210 Countries – The Kolyma Highway
You have more “Places to go” pages there. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Thanks for reading!
Through the wind slope 