Teriberka: road and shore of the Barents Sea. February 28th, 2015
Travel to the Murmansk region. Part 4 - Teriberka. Shore of the Barents Sea.
As promised in the last post, today we will go to Teriberka. Now, after the release of "Leviathan", Teriberka has turned into a fashionable place based on the film, as a result of which the entire population of the small village was attacked by an army of journalists and travelers. I went to Teriberka in September and didn’t even suspect that it would soon become a victim of such a pilgrimage)
What can I say, I didn’t even know about Leviathan.
The post about Teriberka will be divided into two parts. In this one I will tell you about how to get to Teriberka and directly about why I went there - about the natural beauty of the shores of the Barents Sea. In the next post we will see how the village lived at the time of September 2014.
1. In order to get to Teriberka from Murmansk, you first need to travel about 90 kilometers to the east of the Kola Peninsula towards the village of Tumanny, then turn left and cover another 40 kilometers to Teriberka. And if the first 90 kilometers of the road are not particularly difficult, the road is asphalted, albeit with potholes, then the road along the grader will shake the soul out of you.
No, there is nothing terrible or frightening about this road, but it will shake you from the heart and the chattering of stones in the wheel arches will remain in your ears for a good half hour after you have passed this grader.
In general, our journey to Teriberka passed without incident, which cannot be said about the guys on the Tuareg who met us halfway. I don’t know how this is possible, but they simply lost the rubber from the rim! There is no tire service in Teriberka, so they had to wait for help from Murmansk.
And the grader itself looks like this:
2. About halfway there is a very strange installation, stylized by unknown authors as...a traffic police post)
4. During the day it’s certainly fun and cool, but if you’re driving at night and don’t know about these nice guys, then... Well, you know, you might start to stutter a little)
5. No, well, as if alive. Just a moment he will look with honest eyes in a gas mask and say: “Are you bringing drugs, psychotropic substances?”
7. And here it is - the goal. The cleft in the rocks and the resorts of the Barents Sea welcome you!
8. About resorts later, we would like to go to the sea! Oh, it seems our horse won’t go any further. It's time to stretch your legs.
9. How unrealistically beautiful it is here. Autumn with its colors only emphasizes the beauty of northern nature, and fog coupled with light rain only adds to the feeling of magic.
10. Almost the end of the earth.
11. Now a hedgehog will come out of the fog and call the horse)
12. The stones look like the eggs of unknown birds.
14. And we are approaching the sea. The Barents Sea, which just to the north will become the Arctic Ocean. If we discard conventions, then we can tell everyone that we were relaxing by the ocean.
15. Let's climb higher.
16. There are no resorts on this sea. But this only adds to its charm. It's just not for everyone.
17. And we are climbing up.
18. And behind the rocks, Maloe Batareiskoe Lake begins to appear.
19. Beauty everywhere you look!
20. We also have landscapes no worse than Norwegian ones!
21. Let's go down and continue our journey. Somewhere very close, the main goal of our route is Teribersky Waterfall.
22. Here he is! Beauty!
23. For centuries, and maybe even millennia, water has been cutting its way through these rocks...
24. ... to escape into this cold and harsh sea.
26. The surroundings of the waterfall.
27. After some time, the constant light rain overcame us completely and we set off on our way back.
28. Road to nowhere.
29. Foggy Teriberka on the horizon. Or rather the village of Lodeynoye. In the next post we will definitely walk through the streets of this locality and understand why Lodeynoye became Teriberka for everyone. Keep in touch! :)
It so happened that we ended up in the village of Teriberka even before the release of Zvyagintsev’s film on the big screen. So much the better - the impressions brought from the trip were unbiased and objective.
Leviathan sleeps here.
Somewhere here, 18 kilometers before the village, I recently got stuck in the snow Sergey Dolya
. We were luckier and we passed this section at cruising speed, at the limit of tire adhesion to the packed snow.
True, about the cities of Kirovsk and Monchegorsk, where the famous film was also filmed, Seryozha still managed to make an excellent post, so here is only one photo from the city near the mountain:
Checkin at the pier.
The fish factory is the only operating enterprise in Teriberka. We settled in his hostel.
This is perhaps the nicest and neatest place where you can spend the night in the village.
Don’t judge by the numerous depressing articles about Teriberka: there is civilization here too.
Cheerful contrasting details in the interior are designed to brighten up the neighborhood with the old seaport.
Even from simple paper blinds here, like from napkins in provincial restaurants, they try to squeeze the positive out of them.
Open hatches do not bother anyone; almost no one walks here.
For a second, let's find ourselves in a frame from the film and look around.
Boat parking numbers are like memorial plaques.
In fact, private boats are simply hidden for the winter in wooden stalls, or, in most cases, spend the winter offshore with their bellies up.
There is a grocery store at the entrance to the fishery. There is also positive creativity here.
In contrast, there is a still from the film, filled with piercing hopelessness, filmed in the same place.
Former cultural center.
The main problem with old buildings echoes the plot of the film: each such building has a private owner, and the demolition of junk that spoils the landscape can lead to legal proceedings.
Many residents of the once large fishing village are in search of better life They abandoned their property, gaping with broken window sockets and holes in the right side.
Now, unwanted private property is being torn apart by the piercing winds from the Arctic Ocean.
And again a still from the film:
We are approaching the village of Lodeynoye, which is called “New Teriberka” here.
The part of the village that is collapsing is post-war construction.
The rest are five-story panel buildings from the seventies, built to replace the already collapsing wooden two-story buildings.
With the collapse of the Union, construction stopped.
Local residents say that the boiler house, built in the eighties, breaks down once a year and the entire village is left without heating, saving itself with potbelly stoves. Tap water is also a gift, as dilapidated pipes burst.
The only new building here is a school. Opposite it is a local boutique.
But this is an old school building in another part of the village - “Old Teriberka”.
Several years ago it was bought by an entrepreneur who had never been seen here for a hotel.
And yet, there is life here.
Despite everything.
Behind the “old Teriberka” begins a wide, by local standards, cosmic road, cut right through twenty-meter granite rocks.
Judging by the sign, in 2009 Gazprom decided to build an oil refinery here on the coast, receiving raw materials from the Shtokman field, but the project was soon declared unprofitable and construction was frozen in 2011. Now the wide highway, perhaps not rolled up with asphalt, leads for 10 kilometers and breaks off there, resting on a rock.
The Kola Peninsula is a mecca for fans of harsh polar nature. This is where real, indescribable beauty begins.
The views are crazy.
Of course, spending the night in a tent in winter was not part of our plans. This is the setting for the final episode of "". Although, it is in this picture that all the thrill and romance of a trip to the Arctic Circle is contained.
At the beginning of December, the daylight hours above the Arctic Circle are very short, from about 11 to 14, and the sun does not even appear over the horizon. For example, it’s “dawn”, then it starts to get dark again (turn on HD).
Director Ilya Povolotsky is imbued with the morning landscape and meditates. I won’t lie, while filming the time-lapse, I undoubtedly joined.
Small streams, gathering into waterfalls, wash iron out of granite rock, because of this, ice stoloctites shimmer with completely unexpected colors - from emerald green to reddish-violet.
Harsh granite rocks are everywhere here, along the entire coast, and snow falls here even in June. There can be no talk of any agriculture in such a climate.
The rescue ship is the only flag reminiscent of civilization around. Yes, we had no plans to throw ourselves off a cliff.
Not even a couple of hours have passed before it begins to get dark. It is worth resting in the hotel and gaining strength for the evening, because at night there will be something to see.
Around one o'clock in the morning one of the operators film crew flew into the hotel with the words “It has begun!”, grabbed the camera and ran away. Everyone rushed out into the street.
And together they got stuck on perhaps the most beautiful natural special effect.
For contrast, the picture is just 140 kilometers from Teriberka, from Murmansk, which we stopped at on the way back. About him - in the next post, subscribe !
And here is the map. It will help those who follow in our footsteps to the shores of the Barents Sea to navigate the area. Not so much in search of ruin and desolation, but in anticipation of meeting the magnificent and powerful pristine nature.
Yes, I'm not saying goodbye!
By the way, it’s especially beautiful here in the summer:
Kola Peninsula. Teriberka from cr2
Abandoned school in Teriberka from cr2
Ship cemetery in Teriberka from
December 19th, 2015
Do you know what the path to the End of the Earth is? And from polar Murmansk there is a bus that makes it possible to feel this. He goes to Teriberka - a fishing village on the Barents Sea, which became the finale and the most vivid (in every sense of the word) impression of my trip to the Kola Arctic at the end of June this year. One of northern seas- I already saw white on this trip. But the White Sea is still inland, and the Barents Sea can already be considered part of the Arctic Ocean, although it does not freeze in winter. Teriberka (emphasis on the I!), where I am heading, stands among harsh rocks facing arctic winds. Half abandoned in our time and a very colorful village among the amazing northern nature. And there comes that same feeling that you are at the Edge of the World. The bus goes from Murmansk to Teriberka in the evening and back in the morning. So I have to spend the night there without sleep. And it’s even more interesting, because at the end of June at these latitudes there is a polar day, and the sun does not set around the clock, continuing to shine from the north, that is, just from the sea, creating an amazingly beautiful light. In the first part of the story about one night of the polar day, I will show the road from Murmansk to Teriberka, which only preceded my nighttime impressions.
Teriberka is located 85 kilometers northeast of Murmansk geographically, and 120 kilometers by road. Moreover, if Murmansk is located on the shores of the Kola Bay, which, although it is part of the Barents Sea, looks more like a wide river, then Teriberka is on the open sea. North coast The Kola Peninsula is historically called the Murmansk coast or Murman - presumably, the Pomors named it so from the word “Normans,” that is, in honor of the Vikings. And it was not the Murmansk coast that received its name from the city of Murmansk, but on the contrary - the city was founded only in 1916 under the name Romanov-on-Murman. And it is Teriberka that is the most accessible place where you can see the open Murmansk coast, and therefore the open Barents Sea in general. Other settlements along the coast are mostly closed naval towns with nuclear submarine bases, and the average person cannot get there. There are, however, other places, for example, the Rybachy Peninsula, but not every car can drive there, and there are no populated areas nearby. Therefore, we are going to Teriberka.
The bus leaves Murmansk at six in the evening, and, according to the schedule, goes to Teriberka for four hours, but in fact it arrived there an hour and a half earlier. Return departure is at seven in the morning. This means that I will have the whole night to visit Teriberka and its surroundings.
2. Murmansk bus station. On this green bus, manufactured in the glorious city of Kurgan, I have to go to the End of the Earth... The person on the left, entering the bus, is, by the way, the driver.
Today is Monday, so the bus leaves a little earlier - at 17-40. Once a week he makes a stop at Kola.
3. So, boarding is finally over, let’s set off. Hooray! My epic overnight ride began. Murmansk is still outside the window. The sun is shining brightly, but it is clear that it was raining 15 minutes ago. The weather here, on the edge of the Arctic, is very changeable.
We pass places that are already familiar to me - the center of Murmansk, the entire Kola Avenue from beginning to end.
4. Then we enter the city of Kola - actually a suburb of Murmansk, where we come across some buildings that look like dachas. Yes, there are also dachas in the Arctic Circle! And even vegetable gardens.
5. And this is the city of Kola, which we caught a glimpse of from the bus window. I was impressed by the railway track that runs next to the bus station. It seems that this is the access road of some kind of plant, but in fact it is the protected railway line Kola - Nikel.
6. The city of Kola, as already mentioned, in current realities is a suburb of Murmansk. Therefore, leaving Kola, you can say goodbye to civilization until tomorrow morning - after returning from Teriberka, the landscape of Murmansk nine-story buildings and busy streets unusually hurt my eyes.
7. Road work is underway - the Kola-Murmansk bypass is being repaired, along which you can get from the P-21 "Kola" highway to Severomorsk.
8. But this road junction is left behind, and our bus leaves on an almost deserted and still asphalt road to the End of the Earth. Around the sides there is low-growing forest-tundra. But this is for now... The closer to Teriberka, the more the landscape will change.
There are quite a lot of passengers on the bus. Apparently, these are residents of Teriberka, working in Murmansk and Kola, returning home in the evening. I had already seen photographs of Teriberka on the Internet and had an idea of the decline and ruin in which the village is now. It would seem that the people in such half-abandoned places should not be very pleasant. But this is absolutely not true, exactly the opposite. Residents of Teriberka leave the impression of pleasant and friendly people, completely different from the “residents of the outback”. And this is amazing in combination with the state of the village (I will show this in the following parts). What's the matter? And it's in the North! Life in the Far North is not the same as in the Middle Zone. Weak people cannot live here. Therefore, residents of the Far North, even its most depressing places, leave a very pleasant impression.
Among the passengers was a group of tourists—about five people, among whom was a guy with a broken leg. Having heard snippets of their conversations a couple of times, I realized that they were also from St. Petersburg. Then I met them once again in the middle of the night. Being, as already mentioned, the most accessible place on the open Barents Sea, Teriberka has become very popular with tourists in the last few years. Until 2009, not everyone could come there - Teriberka was located in the border zone. Now, in one night, in addition to the people traveling with me on the same bus, I saw cars in Teriberka several times with license plates from other regions. But still, Teriberka has not yet become a completely pop place. And this is good.
10. Let's move on. Outside the windows of the bus there is still forest-tundra, hills and lakes. The usual landscape of the northern part of the Kola Peninsula. The weather, meanwhile, has become more stable - no rain, no clouds visible. So maybe it will be sunny all night?
11. Picturesque expanses of Kola Lapland. One hill gives way to another, one lake to another - and they are all at different heights. On the ground there are swamps, low fir trees and crooked birch forests.
12. Here and there on the hills there are the remains of military installations from Soviet times. The Murmansk region is not just a border region, but borders on Finland and Norway - “capitalist” countries, one of which, moreover, is a NATO member. Therefore, in Soviet times there was a particularly high concentration of military bases and units of various branches of the military. And even now there are a lot of them (what is the Northern Fleet worth with nuclear submarines), - if you travel on a train going to Murmansk, then there will definitely be recruits in at least one carriage, and in the opposite direction, accordingly, demobilization.
13. The road winds through the passes, from one hill to another, going further and further. Do you see the white five-story buildings on the right side of this frame?
This, as they say in everyday life, is Troika - the closed military town of Severomorsk-3, which is part of the urban district of the ZATO Severomorsk. What is especially interesting is that despite the closed location of the settlement, a transit bus to Teriberka enters it and reaches the center! At the entrance to the village, everything is serious - there is a checkpoint with a barrier and a guard in camouflage with a machine gun. But the barrier opens, and no one is checked - since the bus is transit, it will simply enter the town and go back. What is interesting here is the unique opportunity to travel on a passenger bus and see the inside of a city that is closed to the public. Even if he is not particularly remarkable in his appearance. Two and a half thousand people now live in Severomorsk-3 (not to be confused with just Severomorsk) (the vast majority are military personnel with their families). This is also one of the bases Northern Fleet. But since the city is not located by the sea, nuclear submarines are based, which is quite unusual, in tundra lakes.
Just kidding:) In fact, there is a military airfield here. That is, this is a town of pilots.
14. This is what this small town looks like (by the way, this is my only picture of it). Just a few blocks of five-story buildings, but the impressive thing is that you look at the closed city from the bus, although you have no right to get off.
Interestingly, there were no residents of Troika among the passengers on my bus, and no one got off here. The bus just stood for a couple of minutes at the bus station, turned around and drove back to the road to Teriberka. By the way, I didn’t even understand how the control system for those getting off the bus was organized in Severomorsk-3 - there were no inspectors in sight.
15. We pass through the checkpoint again and return to the Path to the End of the Earth. While our road still goes east, as can be seen on the map, only after the fork with the road to the village of Tumanny we turn left - to the north.
16. This seems to be Lake Kitenyavr - as in the Khibiny Mountains, in the north of the Kola region the toponymy is mainly Sami.
17. A high-voltage power line constantly stretches along the road, supplying energy to remote settlements of the Kola district of the Murmansk region. In general, the places along the road look less and less lived-in. The atmosphere of the wilderness is intensifying, but it is felt here somehow completely differently than in the middle zone. Including, as already mentioned, thanks to the special northern people.
Somewhere here on the road I came across the word Teriberka for the first time - the road crosses a river with that name, flowing into the Barents Sea, which gave its name to the village.
18. Unusually bright polar sun and unusually blue sky. All this never ceases to amaze me...
19. We make a short stop along the way. For about ten minutes. You can go out and stretch a little. The time on the clock is already approaching eight in the evening. In the polar summer, the fresh air is cool - like in Murmansk, it’s about +12 degrees here, and there are also mosquitoes flying around.
20. Forest-tundra crooked forest. So far this is not a dwarf birch, but an ordinary one. We will see the dwarf one in the vicinity of Teriberka.
22. ...and the real tundra begins! White-greenish moss, mosses, and now dwarf trees, no higher than the knee.
23. In some places small trees are still growing. Mainly closer to lakes and in lowlands. But in general natural area the tundra is already finally coming into its own.
24. The sun, while still high, sinks lower and lower towards the horizon by night. But it won’t go in completely; it will go in a circle from the north side. Of course, seeing this over the sea will be especially interesting.
Soon we pass a fork in the road marked with a bow cross. The road goes to the right to the villages of Tumanny and Dalnie Zelentsy (the latter, by the way, is also on the coast - I hope to visit there someday), and we turn left and head straight north - towards the Barents Sea. There are forty kilometers left to Teriberka. The asphalt ends here, and now the bus rustles among the tundra on dusty gravel.
25. And even the atmosphere of the surrounding landscapes somehow changes as a whole. There is a feeling that I am really approaching the End of the Earth.
26. Lake Kiyavr. Since the bus has turned, the sun is now shining from the west, that is, directly on my left side of the bus. Even though it was +12 outside (and maybe even colder), but sitting by the window in the sun was so hot for me that it seemed as if it was at least +23 outside. Apparently, this is again because the sun in the Far North is brighter than in more southern latitudes - due to more transparent air.
27. And this transparency of the air, combined with the unusualness of the tundra landscape for me, gives rise to an amazing feeling. The sense of the eye is greatly impaired here. Looking at the bare tundra (even hilly), it is unusually difficult for me to determine by eye the distance to this or that object, for example, a hill or a lake. It's not very clear in the photo, but when you look at it with your own eyes it's impressive.
28. Before you even reach Teriberka, you already begin to understand that everything is really different here...
29. Pay attention to the sticks stuck in the ground. This is a fence (though already pretty broken) to protect the road from snow drifts. Winter on the Kola Peninsula is not very cold for the Arctic (due to the Gulf Stream in the Barents Sea), but it is very snowy. This is especially felt in this part of the region. There is no high mountains and there is no forest - the tundra along the Murmansk coast is open to all Arctic winds. And in winter, a blizzard here can suddenly begin and rage for several days - it happens that Teriberka becomes cut off from the mainland for this time.
What a blizzard is, people in the middle zone do not always know. More precisely, ordinary heavy snowfall with gusts of wind is called a blizzard. But here everything is different. The winds in the tundra near the Arctic Ocean blow in a way that is sometimes difficult for a resident of the Middle Zone to imagine. I myself felt this in Teriberka, but if heavy snowfall is added to this in winter, then a real snowstorm begins. Imagine a snowstorm lasting several days with a wind of 30 m/s in the middle of the remote tundra, and even on a polar night. Imagine this, and you understand why people in the North are more open and reliable...
30. Here comes the snow! It's the end of June, and its remains still lie among the tundra. Firstly, the already cool summer here has just begun, and secondly, there is so much snow here during the long winter that it can then melt until the fall.
31. After eight in the evening, the rocky hills become higher and higher, and the bus goes along the shore big lake, in which the blower is already close sea the wind drives the wave.
In fact, this is the Teriber reservoir. In the 1980s, a cascade of two hydroelectric power stations was built on the already mentioned Teriberka River. The bus drove over one of the dams over a bridge; there was a noticeable large difference in the water level between the riverbed and the reservoir. But I didn’t have time to capture it.
32. The rocks around the road become higher and more inaccessible. There are only the last kilometers left to Teriberka. Probably, when you look outside, you can smell the sea.
33. Then the road enters a harsh-looking gorge. Weathered, bizarre-looking and reddish-colored rocks look like someone's face...
And after the gorge the sea appears ahead! That's it - you can come to the sea not only to the south, but also to the north! Houses are visible along the shore of a secluded bay - this is Teriberka. The village consists of two parts - Teriberka itself (which is closer) and the village of Lodeynoye two kilometers north, closer to the open seashore, now this is the main part of the village. The road goes straight to Lodeynoye, but the bus first stops at Staraya Teriberka, where I decided to get off (so that I could get to Lodeynoye closer to the middle of the night, and then go back from there in the morning). Turn, a bridge over the Teriberka River - now at its very mouth, then the bus passes several rural houses and stops. Most of the passengers (including the mentioned group of tourists) go to Lodeynoye. Here, in Staraya Teriberka, besides me, there are four people coming out. Among them, for example, is a man who is met by a family with a little girl. I must say that people here have no less happy faces than in big cities...
34. People dispersed, the bus left for Lodeynoye. And in front of me is Old Teriberka. For the first few minutes I was just trying to figure out where I was and get used to the incredible landscape that surrounded me. Gloomy treeless rocks, the Barents Sea with a salty and icy wind, a dazzlingly bright polar sun, and among all this - seemingly ordinary rural houses and even vegetable gardens. Somewhere on the fishing line, laundry is drying; at the neighboring house, a grandmother is weeding the garden beds. Does such a combination really exist? Still, how diverse our country is!
The bus was running significantly ahead of schedule, and the clock hands still showed half past eight in the evening. I have the whole night at my disposal - however, at this time of year, night here is only on the clock. The bus will leave back at seven in the morning.
In general, I got into amazing place. And I will tell you about how I spent one night of the polar day on the shores of the Barents Sea in the following parts.
On this trip, I definitely wanted to get to the village of Teriberka, which is located 130 km from Murmansk. This is the only road to the Arctic Ocean in Russia that can be reached without any checkpoints by car or public transport. At first I took these photos purely for myself, but during the trip I received several questions from readers about the quality of the surface and decided to devote a separate post to this road. But it’s really worth it, in general, look.
The road to Teriberka stretches east from Murmansk past the turn towards Severomorsk, a closed military city that is home to the Northern Fleet of the Navy, including nuclear submarines. There is an asphalt road for 90 km to the next fork in the village of Tumanny.
It’s worth warning right away that there are no shops or gas stations along the entire route from Murmansk to Teriberka, so when leaving the hero city, fill up your tank full
Gradually, the road begins to deteriorate and collapse in places, and our speed of movement decreases. In some places our Pradik was jumping up and down like on a springboard, I’m afraid to imagine how it would be possible to fly up here in a passenger car. Military Kamaz trucks constantly drove to the meeting, apparently coming from training exercises.
The bushes gradually disappeared, and vast expanses of rocky tundra opened up to our eyes. IN autumn colors it looks absolutely amazing!
These fancy wooden structures are snow guards that were installed in places where snow drifts most often occurred. In the background is a power transmission tower structure that I saw for the first time. The places here are swampy, so they are installed on piles and pulled down with cables.
42 kilometers before Teriberka, the asphalt ends and the furious gravel road begins. A grader, even over such a short distance, can shake the soul out of you. average speed even on Pradika it was about 30-40 km per hour.
Reflective plastic posts are installed along the edges of the road, which make it easier to identify the road at night or in winter during a snowstorm.
It would be a sin not to take a photo of the team with the car against the backdrop of such nature and unusual places..
The air here is pristinely clean, and the endless wavy surface is covered with mosses of two colors and hundreds of lakes, which are located at different altitudes.
Around every turn there is a better view than before.
There are hundreds of cairns on one of the hills. We have already seen this near the border of the Arctic Circle. Most likely, another place of power.
Having not been repaired for many years, the snow retainers hardly help anymore, and in winter, during heavy snowfalls and winds, the road gets stuck, and Teriberka becomes cut off from civilization. Until the road is dug up again, food is brought to the village by helicopter.
A huge lake appeared ahead, stretching for tens of kilometers; at first there was a feeling that it was the Teriberk Bay of the Barents Sea, but it turned out that it was just a reservoir. On the Teriberka River there is a cascade of three hydroelectric power stations, which we also passed.
The last 5 km the road is fantastic and the most picturesque. And here are a couple more hills...
And the resorts of the Barents Sea are waiting for you :)
In the next post I will show Teriberka itself and tell you about it in detail.
So, it all started when, before the New Year, I saw a photo on the Internet that really struck me with its unusualness. The photo was taken in the village of Teriberka, which is located in the very north of the European part of Russia, beyond the Arctic Circle, on the coast of the Barents Sea, at a distance of 2040 km from Moscow (where I actually live). I immediately wanted to go there!
However, after studying the issue, it turned out that getting there is not so easy (although in principle it is not difficult). Trains don’t go there, and you need to go to Murmansk, and from there look for someone who would drive you to Teriberka in a big, strong car with all-wheel drive. Why all-wheel drive? I think one look at the map will be enough to understand this.
However, the obsession is so obsessive that it did not want to leave me. The more I read about Teriberka and the Kola Peninsula, the more I wanted to go there. The last straw was the mention on the Internet that this year some truly unimaginable northern lights are expected in the Teriberka area. I completely lost my peace.
Having decided that close people should share each other’s sadness, joy, and obsessive thoughts, I simply sent the photo to my friend. Ready! An obsessive thought settled in his head. In the same simple way, a friend was infected with an obsessive thought. In general, we decided not to delay and go to New Year's holidays.
Since none of the three of us had yet found a chest of gold, we had to be at our Moscow working machines by January 6, that is, we had 4.5 days to do everything about everything. We couldn’t make it on time by train, the plane was very expensive, and we decided to go by car. Only Slava has rights. Our car, to be honest, is not entirely suitable for such trips (it’s already a middle-aged hybrid car), but judging that Fate favors the brave, on the night of January 1-2, while the whole country was struggling with the consequences of the festivities, making sandwiches from the remaining New Year’s delicacies, and grabbing a bottle of champagne (for the ceremonial opening on the shores of the Barents Sea), we set off.
It’s dark, it’s difficult to drive, and the roads are covered in ice. We decided to drive carefully, not drive too hard, and stop for rest and sleep as soon as we felt tired. Apart from mini stops at the call of nature, we reached Petrozavodsk (1020 km) in one breath. But our breathing was still lost, and we decided to make a more or less long stop.
We found the cheapest hostel, dropped off our things and went for a walk around the city. The city, namely the embankment (the city is located on the White Sea) produced a very good impression. It's obvious that we love the city. On the embankment there is an outdoor gym with a large number of exercise equipment. Moreover, the simulators are actively used for their intended purpose (this is in January, in the dark, at -25!) By the way, considering that we drove 1000 km to the north, the temperature in Petrozavodsk was already significantly lower than in Moscow, and, despite Even though we thought we were well insulated, it was still cold. After dinner at a chic restaurant on the shore of the frozen sea with a view of ships encased in ice, we went to the hostel. The hostel turned out to be a very cozy, pleasant place with lovely owners. It was clean and very warm inside (Glory to Russia's central heating!) After taking a shower and drinking hot tea, we went to bed. We slept for 3 hours and hit the road. We left Petrozavodsk at about 4 am (3.01).
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It’s easier to overcome long routes if you split them into smaller sections, so we set the next point to be the sign for the Arctic Circle (600 km north of Petrozavodsk). None of us had been to the Arctic Circle before and anticipation spurred us on. The mood was the most joyful. We seemed to ourselves to be brave pioneers. The first discovery was that we glanced at the route briefly, not particularly bothering to check the location and frequency of gas stations along the road. For those who are planning to repeat our route, on the road from Petrozavodsk to Murmansk there is a blind section of the road about 300 kilometers long. There's no settlements, gas stations and does not catch the network. At all. Only ice, snow and cold. And the breathtaking beauty of northern nature. Despite the fact that we have lived in Russia all our lives, and we have snow 6-7 months a year, that is, in theory, it should no longer surprise or amaze, but we could not stop admiring it. 50 shades of white and visible cold. This is when, even while inside the car, you look out the window and realize that it is cold outside. Very cold. And incredibly beautiful.
It was not easy for our car; it began to drive noticeably louder. And we began to look more often at the thermometer, where every 30 km the temperature dropped by a degree. When there were 100 kilometers left to the Arctic Circle, the thermometer showed -26. And there are still 500 kilometers to the final goal..
When they saw the signpost that marked the border of the Arctic Circle, they jumped out of the car and, with children's squeals, rushed to take pictures against its background. The pillar was covered in places with stickers from football groups, which somewhat blurred the feeling of discovery. Having frozen our fingers and phones, we moved on. The next point is Murmansk. The temperature, by the way, continued to drop, and by the time we arrived it was -38. Try to imagine our condition, after 2000 km of driving on icy roads, most of the time in the dark, almost without sleep... and now we found ourselves at -38. -38 at sea, where there is humidity and wind. Introduced? Great, right?
We booked a cheap hotel via the Internet (one well-known resource, we won’t point fingers) and, not expecting anything bad, looked forward to a long-awaited vacation in the warmth. However, after driving about 10 kilometers through a creepy-looking industrial zone and staring at the sign “ funeral service pets,” we were somehow depressed. The “hotel” turned out to be some kind of construction barracks made of plasterboard. The inside was not only dirty, but downright disgusting. Absolutely everything was broken, and not only did it not work, but it was broken, broken, torn out by the roots. The landscape is like in the creepiest horror films. The temperature inside this abode of sorrow was 5 degrees higher than outside. The guests of this establishment also resembled zombie killers from a horror film. In general, despite the terrible fatigue, we decided not to stay here and look for a better place, namely where there is a chance to wake up alive. This was perhaps the most negative part of the trip - an attempt to return the money, calls to the online resource where the reservation was made, asking if they check locations before recommending them, and so on. In the end, justice prevailed and the money was returned to us.
As luck would have it, there were no free hotels or apartments in the city, and we were forced to check into a nearby barracks, where it was a little better in terms of public and warmth. As for the warmth, that’s what we thought from the street. A good indicator of the temperature inside this hotel was the fact that the antifreeze, designed for -35, which we brought with us, froze and turned into jelly by morning. But let's not talk about sad things, let's talk about interesting things!
After scouring the Internet for ideas on how we could see the Northern Lights, we found several tours. However, we decided that we ourselves had a mustache and, having downloaded several applications from the world's leading institutes involved in research of the northern lights, and, focusing on information about the location and time of the probable detection of this natural phenomenon Let's go search.
In general, it is not recommended to do this, since we do not know the area, the roads are skidding and you can end up in a deplorable situation, especially if the car is not an all-wheel drive jeep, adapted for such trips. But let's remember those whom Luck loves! We set out to search.
We immediately agreed not to be upset if we didn’t manage to see the lights, because the original purpose of the trip was to see Teriberka. Moreover, we are new to catching the northern lights. And what? We had not even driven 30 kilometers from Murmansk when suddenly part of the sky above us lit up! We jumped out of the car and screamed! We jumped and laughed, holding our heads up, and couldn’t believe our eyes. I used to think that the northern lights were something like a rainbow, that is, a static phenomenon in a small section of the sky. It turned out that this is a light wind, moving at breakneck speed across the sky and shimmering with all the shades and flashes. Capture it on camera mobile phone impossible. A friend took a semi-professional camera, but did not take a tripod, which is necessary for such photographs. Having placed the device on the roof of the car and holding it with her hands, she tried to take pictures. After about 10 minutes we were so cold that we decided to get into the car to warm up. However, this was not possible right away, as the friend’s hands were frozen to the roof and she had to be carefully torn off from the car. I had to warm my fingers in my mouth.
Cold but happy, we decided to drive a little further. Having driven another 50 kilometers, we ran into a barrier and a checkpoint. We talked to the soldier at the checkpoint and said that we were planning to go to Teriberka, to which he smiled and said that the forecast there for tomorrow promised -52..... I didn’t want to believe it...
We turned around and got ready to go back to the city, because fatigue was taking its toll, but then the sky lit up again and an even more grandiose spectacle appeared before our eyes than the first light we saw! They jumped out of the car again, laughed and jumped with delight again! A military jeep was passing by, the soldiers in it saw us and stopped. Well, that’s it, we thought, now they’ll drag us off to find out what we’re doing on the border of the closed zone in the night. It turned out they thought our car had broken down and we needed help. Having learned that everything was fine with us and we were just admiring the northern lights, the jeep moved on. It was very nice that people did not drive by indifferently, but asked if they needed help.
Having arrived at our wonderful hostel and having agreed to meet in the morning with a guide who would take us in a jeep to Teriberka, we went to bed. Despite the fact that the temperature in the room was well below zero (read above about antifreeze), we slept like logs.
At 8 am the next day we went to Teriberka. The guide provided cookies, chocolate and coffee in a thermos. How delicious it is! You need to spend more than 2 days in the cold to truly appreciate this simple snack. We also had plain water, but it froze into ice, and we had to warm it up on the torpedo.
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From Murmansk to Teriberka it is 135 kilometers drive. In principle, it’s not far, but in winter the roads are often impassable even for jeeps. However, we were lucky and ended up in the village.
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During our lives, we have visited more than 50 countries, and countless cities and towns around the world. And guess what? None of us had ever seen anything like this or experienced such emotions. This is the most psychedelic place we have ever been, and probably will be.
Having driven through the village and stopping on the seashore, we clearly understood that it would be impossible to drink champagne here, because your hands would fall off before you took a sip. Although the soldier’s forecast about -52 did not come true (thank God), and it was only -20, the strong wind and high humidity turned being there into a test. I can imagine how the residents of the northern regions of Russia and Siberia are grinning now.
But for us it was unusual and uncomfortable.
It was not possible to take many photos, because the delicate phones (what kind of owners are such phones) died almost immediately (mine lasted because it was in a special case with an extra battery). After a “walk” by the sea, we went to explore the village. It is very difficult to describe what we saw and the emotions that overwhelmed us at that moment. But look at the photos and try to imagine this place.
This place is real. People live there, rejoice and grieve. Children go to school and play snowballs.
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Teriberka awakens a whole range of conflicting emotions. The sadness of contemplating decline and destruction is mixed with delight from contemplating the power of nature, which takes its toll. Looking at the houses dilapidated by the wind, analogies come to mind with Stalker’s pictures of the post-apocalyptic world, with few people surviving, but alive, and, in spite of everything, enjoying life. We couldn’t tear ourselves away from contemplating the lonely window glowing with festive New Year’s lights in a dark, ruined house. The only resident lovingly decorated the home and is celebrating New Year. It made me think about our attitude towards life in general and about the fact that we perceive too much and take it for granted, forgetting to enjoy every day.
We returned to Murmansk completely frozen, a little busy, but happy. We said goodbye to the guide. We decided to look for a new, warmer and more comfortable place to live. We found it, agreed, and were about to get into the car and go to the address. However, when we approached the car, we found a piece of ice instead of the car. The car stood on the street for a day, and that was enough for it to freeze to stone. This is where the adventures began. Attempts to pour boiling water from a kettle onto the castles did not lead to anything, and probably worsened the situation, since the water froze instantly. March rush to the store with a chemical solution - antifreeze, attempt number two, and again failure. The services for opening locks no longer worked in the evening, especially on holidays; we were already tired and cold, and deciding that the morning was wiser than the evening, we took a taxi to our new home.
After sleeping for about 5 hours, we continued trying to save our swallow. There was no way to save him, and the prospect of waiting until spring until the car thawed began to dawn. Well, or take a tow truck to St. Petersburg (1350 km), and figure it out there. I think everyone can imagine the cost of such a tow truck trip. That's it. But time passes, and we should already be halfway to Moscow, to the machine, and we are in Murmansk. I had to call, warn, take a vacation at my own expense. But we did not lose heart, and even found a part-time job at a local supermarket in case we really had to wait for spring.
However, by evening we managed to revive the swallow, and we went home. The car was roaring, the sensors were malfunctioning, and, to be honest, it was scary that the car would break down and we would get stuck somewhere in between where there were no gas stations, no people, and no network coverage. For some reason they decided that if we crossed the Arctic Circle without any problems, then everything would be fine. We crossed the Arctic Circle, the temperature slowly, but still crept up. When it finally became warmer than -30, we somehow immediately perked up and realized that everything was fine. As a reward for madness, the North gave us another Radiance. Big and incredibly beautiful. We no longer shouted or laughed. We just stood near the car and, not feeling the cold, looked at the sky for a long time.
