Photo Gallery, Pictures of Khatanga Siberia

These are pictures from the city of Khatanga located on the Khatanga River
in the very northern part of central Siberia Russia.  The city here is small with
a population of about 3500.  There are roads within the city, but there are no roads
outside of the city and no way to make roads.  The next nearest town is about
fifty miles away and it is much smaller.  The only large city, Norilsk, of about 300,000,
is about five hundred miles to the west. 

The temperatures in the Khatanga drop to about -90 Fahrenheit in the winter.
The meteorologist, Yuliya, told me that the when it is that cold, you can see
the air swirl.  To me this sounds like it is almost at a liquid state.  She went
on to say that at these very low temperatures, the street lights shine straight up.
Her English wasn't good enough to explain this very well to me and my Russian
isn't very good either.  But, I am suspecting that there is a layer, low to the ground,
that becomes reflective. 

Khatanga, in Russian, is pronounced Ha-tin-ga, but the rest of the world, and
even in some parts of Moscow, uses the pronunciation, Khatanga. 
Khatanga is basically a military base with an over the pole anti-ballistic missile
radar system and a small airport with a long runway capable of handling very large
aircraft. 

In the summer the Khatanga river is used for a waterway for only two month out of the
year that it is thawed out.  In recent years due to global climate change this may be
extended a little bit.  Their summers also last only two month and it may snow in
the middle of the summer.

The education in Khatanga seems to be very well.  There are two major schools, one for the Russian
Students and one for the Dolgan students.  My first impression was that this was
discrimination by the Russians against the Dolgan, but I was totally wrong.
The one thing that I have learned about Russia, is that the people are very well educated
and the seperation of the schools were to allow the Dolgan to have the best chances
of attaining a good education that they could.  The problem is that the Dolgan, the indigenous
people of Siberia, don't speak Russian very well and also they come from poor families
that are often affected by excessive alcohol use. 

 Khatanga is the home of the famous Woolly Mammoth that is often seen on television.

They have stores, called shops, that resemble a semi truck trailer that had it's wheels
taken off.  The cost of living there is quite high since all of the food has to be flown in,
otherwise it must be trapped in the wild.

Yuliya told me that if a person didn't eat about seventy percent of the food that came from the wild,
that they would end up with gum disorders and other medical problems. 

The streets are filled with somewhat large dogs that wander freely.  Much to my amazement,
the dogs all had a very good personality.  After being in Khantaga for some time and watching
the people, I noticed that many of their winter garments were made from dog fur.  It is my
guess that the dogs who were mean, turned into a hat, coat, boots or just a quick meal.

Most of the people lived in apartments with about eight housing units per apartment.
Other people lived in metal shipping containers, typically 8x8x20 or 8x8x40 feet.

I found the people there to be very friendly and kind.  Drinking a beer or a bottle
of Vodka was very common.  The one thing that did surprise me was that
when you knocked on a persons door, they would be very cautious about
identifying who you were before they would open it up.  The doors on the
houses usually had a normal door handle lock, a dead bolt and a chain lock.
This tells me that the city may not be as peaceful as one might consider.

In the winter the sun does not come up and there is about three months
of twilight, then three months of total darkness, then again three months of
twilight, then in the summer there is three months of total daylight. 
As I watched the sky, I could see the sun in one place and the moon
in another place.   At midnight the sun would be very near the horizon,
and at noon the sun would be high in the sky.

This was my first expedition to the North Pole, and on my second expedition
we went Longyearbyen Norway.  There, a Masters Degree Student from the
United States said that it was impossible to see the sun and the moon
at the same time and he knows that this was a fact because he did
a study on that subject.  The one difference was that he did his study
at about 42 degrees north where Khatanga is around 78 degrees north.
This is a big difference on how the universe and solar system appear
to a person standing on the surface of the Earth.


C. Jeff Dyrek, Expedition Leader and Arctic Guide.

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Complete Photo Gallery, With Beautiful Photos of the 2002 North Pole Expedition through Siberia.