FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Vice Blog

SIBERIA - A MAN WHO LIVES ALONG THE HIGHWAY OF DEATH

So that we don't get all psyched just because spring is nigh (anyone feeling that yet?), here is a story about the Siberian cold. Andy Winter (not this guy) and his friend Roland Prokein visited the coldest place on earth, where they met a guy who got fucked by fate so hard he's got to be karmically in the clear for his next ten lives. Let's talk to them about it.

VICE: Hey, Andy Winter, why the hell did you go to the coldest place on earth?

Advertisement

Andy: Roland, a friend of mine and I travelled a lot, but always on our own. I had already been in the area when I was in Siberia for the first but somehow I didn't manage to really go into the coldest cold. I hitched back to Vladivostock, but I wasn't able to forget the place and always wanted to go back to the highway of death and into the mountains …

Did you just say "Highway of death"?

The name is Kolyma-trace or highway of death for two reasons: It was built in the 1940s by Stalin's "detainees" and most of them died there. The highway is 2,000 km long and ends at a place called Magadan. Also, a lot of car and truck drivers died in the canyons or their cars or trucks broke down and froze to death. There's no railway, so they really need this highway. The whole road is marked with temporary gravestones on the sides.

OK, so you really wanted to go back to this wonderful place.

Roland and I were both pretty fascinated, so we decided to travel there again together.

So, where is the coldest place on earth?

The name of the village is Oimjakon. The lowest temperature ever reported was minus 71.2 C° and that was in the 1920s.

MINUS 71.2 C°?

On the way back our truck broke down and we needed to stop at a village. The locals told us that it would get even colder. There we met Polikari.

Colder then minus 71 C°?

Normally they just get minus 50 and 60 C°.

And you met the guy Polikari in this village? Can you tell us a bit about him?

Advertisement

He used to work as a forester. We sold our truck to him cause he wanted to use it to go out hunting. We couldn't take the truck with us anyway, because our Visa ran out.

How does he live there?

He has a family and two kids but five years on, when we came back, he was sitting in the corner totally fucked up and talking on the phone. In Siberia you don't tell people that you are coming, you just go and show up cause you are always welcome and they will always remember you. I wanted to say hello to him and shake his hand but then I realised it was missing. When he saw Roland he took his other arm to wave and we saw that the other hand was gone, too.

Fuck.

We were really shocked. His wife was gone, too. She moved to the city about two years ago.

How did this happen?

First I thought that he ran into a buzz saw but then he told me that he went out to go hunting on his snowmobile--Buran--and then the ice on the lake cracked. He was 25 km from home. In the ice. The snowmobile sank to the ground but he got the chance to get out of the ice through an ice hole. This isn't a great situation when it's minus 50 C°. He had to walk home and that took him a couple of hours. A normal walker can do 4 km in an hour but when you are fucked like he was, you need a little longer …

And he was wet, so everything froze right away?

He was probably pretty drunk and when you are drunk you don't recognize the cold that fast. When he reached home he was just able to kick at the door with his feet till someone opened up. He wasn't able to knock on the door because his hands felt like metal. They drove him to the hospital but they couldn't help him cause they didn't have the right medicine. They had to take him to the closest big city which is 900 km away. This took about a day and a half. There is no highway just some kind of piste. When he arrived the only thing they could do, was cut off his hands.

Advertisement

Is it possible to live in Siberia without hands?

Actually, no. The people need to chop wood every day. You can't just turn on the heat down there. Also, you have to cut out huge pieces of ice and take them home so that you have drinking water. He can't do anything. When you don't have hands you can't even wipe your ass on your own.

How does he survive?

His uncle took care of him but when we were there during summer he was all on his own. From time to time someone from the village comes along and brings him some stuff. He was totally frustrated and just drinking all day long. He wasn't even able to open the bottles of schnapps. He was always yelling at us to give him more drinks. "One more please!"

Is there any hope for him, at all?

Not really–if he lived in Germany the state would have taken care of him and an insurance, he would have a nice prothesis or something but they don't have that in Siberia. We really wanted to take him with us but he has been living in the same village his whole life, so he doesn't want to leave. That's just the way it is. The European Russians are different. They go to Odessa or other bigger cities but people like him stay where they were born. It's that simple.

JULIANE LIEBERT

(photos by Andy Winter and Roland Prokein)