Moscow the winter is cold, but in Yakutia the word takes on a whole new meaning. At minus 40°C, exhaled breath crystallises and falls to the ground with a gentle tinkle the Yakuts call the whisper of the stars. A few degrees lower there is a roaring in the ears, and eyebrows become coated in frost in minutes. Plastic bags, cables and clothes hung out to dry become brittle and snap like matchsticks. Fuel freezes. Metal cracks. At minus 50°C settlements become engulfed in a layer of thick fog. Locals say it is the frozen breath of the people who live there. It can become impossible to walk even a few metres without becoming disoriented.
At about minus 60°C the very ground seems to crack and split. "It is an awful sound," says Albina Vinokurova, a 43 year old housewife in Oymyakon who has lived in Yakutia all her life. "It wakes you up in the dead of the night and if you don't know what it is you'd think the end of the world had come."
Few people in Oymyakon are old enough to remember the record breaking temperatures of the 1920s and 1930s, which some scientists say will never be repeated because of global warming. One of them who does is 75 yearold Yegor Vinokurov. "The most awful winter came when I was about five or six years old," he says. "We couldn't leave the house for weeks. It was so cold that birds froze in midair and crashed to the ground. At that temperature the very air crackles like dry hay. The only way we could go outside at all that winter was if we covered our faces in rabbit furs."
At such temperatures, not only the people suffer but the animals, too. Even during a normal winter, the cows in Oymyakon have fur pouches tied to their udders to stop them freezing. During a very cold winter cows can collapse and die. Ponies frequently miscarry.
Despite the privations, many say that they love the climate and look forward to the winter. Atlasov says, "The cold is good for you. It keeps you healthy and it kills bacteria. Nobody gets sick when it's minus 50°C.
"I could live in Moscow. But this is where I want to be - the land of hunting and fishing. Life here might seem difficult to you, but we have clean air, clean food, mushrooms, berries. We are happy."
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