TravelSEP 24, 2017

Riding The Road Of Bones In Russian Far East With My Father

This summer me and my father (66) crossed Russia by motorbikes. We started in our home in Bucharest, Romania and rode all the way to Moscow. From there we shipped the bikes to Vladivostok and we took the Transsiberian Train for 8 days to reunite with our steel horses.

From there we started the way back but we made a detour to reach Magadan. It is the most eastern point in Russia that can be reached by road. The road from Yakutsk to Magadan is called the Road of Bones because of the skeletons of the forced laborers who died during its construction were used in many of its foundations.Locally, the road is known as Trassa, or Kolymskaya trassa – "The Kolyma Route", since it is the only road in the area and therefore needs no special name to distinguish it from other roads.

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First glimpse of Lake Baikal, as seen from the northern side, close to Severobaikalsk

Infinite Russian fields and fairy tale sky

The main junction with the Transsiberian Highway. From here until Yakutsk we have followed the Lena Highway before starting the Road of Bones journey

The beginning of Road of Bones. Nothing but gravel for the next 2000 km

The scenary changes very often. Here are a lot of puddles in between pine forests

Infinite straights along the Road of Bones

One of the many bridges we crossed. The road curves along the nice valleys of Sopki Mountains

Oymyakon District. The coldest place on earth with. Minimum temperature recordered is -67,7 celsius

The junction between the Federal Road and the Old Summer Road, in Kyubeme

Our stay in Kyubeme

Nothing but ghost cities all along the way. The area is very rich in gold and diamonds but harsh life conditions made people flee away. All left these days is just abandoned houses

Remains of formerly populated cities

One needs a good mental condition to cope with he infinite emptiness and total destruction

One of the most emblematic ghost cities, Kadychan

One of the few cities where there are people left is Susuman.The town's economy relies mainly on its status as one of the centers of gold mining in the Kolyma region

As we push even far east towards Magadan, we start to see higher peaks. Here snow never melts

We arrived in Magadan around midnight with outside temperature no more than 5 degrees. Dear tired but happy!

We changed the oil in the garage of local bikers club - The Polar Owls

Magadan was founded in 1930 in the Magadan River valley, near the settlement of Nagayevo

During the Stalin era, Magadan was a major transit center for prisoners sent to labor camps. From 1932 to 1953, it was the administrative center of the Dalstroy organization—a vast and brutal forced-labor gold-mining operation and forced-labor camp system. The town later served as a port for exporting gold and other metals mined in the Kolyma region. Its size and population grew quickly as facilities were rapidly developed for the expanding mining activities in the area. Town status was granted to it on July 14, 1939.

The Mamoth of Time

Magadan

Lenin Statue in the center of Magadan

The Mask of Sorrow is a monument perched on a hill above Magadan, Russia, commemorating the many prisoners who suffered and died in the Gulag prison camps in the Kolyma region of the Soviet Union during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s

It consists of a large concrete statue of a face, with tears coming from the left eye in the form of small masks. The right eye is in the form of a barred window. The back side portrays a weeping young woman and a headless man on a cross. Inside is a replication of a typical Stalin-era prison cell. Below the Mask of Sorrow are stone markers bearing the names of many of the forced-labor camps of the Kolyma, as well as others designating the various religions and political systems of those who suffered there.