Tiksi - a harsh Arctic oasis

We drove into Tiksi late at night, and besides houses with large snowdrifts, it was hard to see anything. They immediately checked into a hotel, although I would not call this establishment a hotel, and spent the miserable rest of the night there to open my eyes full of sand at six in the morning, at least that was the feeling I had in the morning.

And only in the morning, going out into the street, I appreciated the scale of these open spaces, the abandoned and dilapidated city and the amount of snow around it!

Immediately striking is the fact that part of the five-story buildings is abandoned! At the same time, you can find ads on the sale of real estate on the network and at the same time you can completely “enter” one of these apartments for free. I do not know exactly why so many people left here, but, of course, I can guess about it.

In some places, snowdrifts reach phenomenal sizes, and some of them are used by children as slides for skiing.

Tiksi is divided into at least two parts, in one that is located away from the winter road and near the airport, there is such a beautiful post with mileage indicators to different cities.

I can imagine what starts here during a blizzard. And snowstorms can be one at a time, two weeks ... I think that after two weeks, the city has to be literally dug out from under the snow.

The city has several large streets. In the center there are many wooden houses, the windows of which were once carefully beaten up, but now the snow is filling in the gap. At first everything seemed very similar to Teriberka, but looking closely, I saw more of the story. And in general, I think that chic scenery disappears here. True, the city is located in the border zone, and will it be allowed to make a film there? But the location here is what you need!

The airport building.

The first time I see an icon at the airport. On the other hand, under such conditions and weather, one should not be surprised that people are trying to at least somehow reassure themselves.

At first we saw this bar, but the word "north" already fed us so much that in the end we went to some kind of oriental eatery. The food is ordinary, the table format, only a little more expensive, but still cheaper than in Moscow. I didn’t look at the products in stores; I think the price tag is space.

Literally at every step there are traces of the Soviet Union.

There was a school. Now there are only posters with promises of a bright future and security.

On one house I noticed an inscription with a date of 19 **, it is hard to believe that in those distant days such buildings could be erected here, probably it was very modern and cool, at that time. In general, Tiksi is full of old wooden housing stock, which still stands in whole non-residential streets and confirms the fact that the city was once more crowded.

Wild wild north.

In the midst of this total desolation there is a brand new, fresh, I would even say, crunchy, log church. I’m not sure that it helps, in my opinion, one solid boiler room would be more appropriate here.

And these are brothers, the port ... Snow has covered a lot from our eyes, and I don’t even want to imagine what it is hiding.

Not only the old wooden buildings are empty, there are many reinforced concrete houses with no windows and doors in the city. While part of the team was solving the problem of a broken wheel at the trailer, finding a replacement for it in the old cemetery of frozen cars, Sergei Dolya and I looked into one such open-air museum.

It seems that they came out five minutes ago and did not return.

All the salt is in the details: a hoop, an agitation poster on the wall with the phrase "no," there’s an icon, a singer’s poster ...

But the most annoying thing in these paintings is abandoned children's toys.

Interesting: the higher we rise, the more and more textured the snowdrifts. In one place on the stairway there is so much snow that you can ski.

In general, the house does not seem so collapsed and unsuitable for habitation, and yet it has long been abandoned by people, an apartment in such a house can now be purchased for free, and you won’t even be asked for a rent, stop by and live.