Russian Far East 2014 05

The weather today was perhaps the worst we have experienced so far on the trip. I woke in my tent at Dneprovsky Gulag Camp to the same sound of steady rain that had continued unrelentingly throughout the night. Looking out from my tent revealed a cold, wet day, with people standing around talking with visible white breath coming from their mouths as they did so. The temperature remained at about 8 degrees Celsius throughout the day, and the rain never stopped.

We had a shared breakfast under the shelter of a tarpaulin that had been erected the previous evening between the two Kamaz truck-buses. Even as breakfast was finishing, the tents were being disassembled, usually as soon as our bags had been removed.

There were two more places within the gulag that we visited before we left. The first was the old cemetery (actually one of the gulag’s two old cemeteries) where about 50 prisoners had been buried. Because of the rain, we drove to the bottom of the hill where the graves were located rather than walking, climbing only the last 30 metres or so across a steep hill of mine waste.

We were told that as a final insult to the prisoners, they were buried face down and with their feet to the west rather than the usual orientation with

feet to the east. The prisoners were identified by their number, and despite some fairly thorough searching, only one number seemed still to be visible.

Then, after returning to the base camp and loading all our luggage aboard the two Kamaz truck-buses, we left the base camp and headed for our final gulag stop, which was the remains of an old factory that operated as a mill to refine the tin ore until it closed in 1954. Much of the structure seems to have been of timber construction, because all that remains today are some concrete foundations with burnt wooden beams. Nonetheless, it was fascinating to be able to walk through the burnt out ruins of the mill, known officially as “Factory Number 8”, locating and identifying various parts of machines and equipment.

At about 11:30 am, we began the one hour 18 kilometre drive to the Kolyma Highway where two minibuses were waiting for us for the next section of our trip north-west from Magadan. It took about half an hour to transfer all the luggage across from the Kamaz vehicles, and we were on our way at 1:00 pm.

Our destination for the day was the small gold mining town of Susuman, located about 400 kilometres further inland on the Kolyma Highway. We stopped a few times to stretch legs or purchase refreshments, but otherwise I saw nothing of the journey as the windows of the minibus were caked with mud sprayed up by the wheels from the wet gravel road. Almost all the Kolyma Highway is unsealed road, though still fairly smooth, and travelling on this surface when wet was visually like travelling in the back of a slab-sided van.

We reached Susuman at a little after 8:00 pm, and headed for our hotel, the Hotel Susumanzoloto. Operated by the company that also manages the gold mines, the room was cozy though plain, and hugely over-priced at 5,500 roubles per night room only (about $170). Nonetheless, the sight of the room, and especially its bed, was very welcome after my previous night’s cold experience in the tent. Especially welcome was the sensation of hot water for washing, once I figured out that the hot water came from the tap labelled “C” and the cold water came from the tap labelled “H”. I was lucky to be in a single room as none of the twin rooms had hot water.

We had dinner in a small café in the centre of town. At first glance, Susuman looks like an abandoned town because the roads are in very poor shape and the buildings appear to be poorly maintained. Indeed, the town looks like a cross between an old Soviet town and a frontier town, which is probably to be expected for a remote mining settlement such as this. Dinner finished at about 10:30 pm, and although it was still light, the rain was falling steadily and it was decided that we would postpone looking around the town until the following morning.

Day 5 - Dneprovsky to Susuman

Saturday

5 July 2014