Though Polyarny means “Polar”, we were actually not that far north - not even within the Arctic Circle. Still, a good opportunity for a “hello, this was me” Google Maps screenshot.



After taking our celebratory picture in front of the Polyarny airport, P and I quickly explored the outside of the airport, which didn’t have too much in the way of attractions. A stone with a plaque commemorated the 25th anniversary of the airport in 2000.



It was not a blistering cold but rather frigid, especially coming from more temperate climes and after inadequate sleep, and I was certainly glad to retrieve a down jacket from its storage in the bowels of my backpack.

The airport steps were painted a colourful gradient, perhaps simply to improve visibility in the rather bleak surroundings.



Here, unlike all other airports I had visited on this trip so far, there was no security to enter the airport terminal - an indication of how far North it takes to be considered “safe”. There were printed sheets of paper taped to every possible surface, however, pronouncing (only in Russian) that there is camera surveillance and absolutely not to take any photos - “We Are Watching You”. The unknown enemy is much more frightening than the visible one, so my pictures were unusually poor on this instance.

The pre-security area was plain, without any adornments, while the check-in “desks” were unusual hole-in-the-wall offices - like a currency exchange booth.





There was a small souvenir store with a chatty lady; she was intrigued to find us in Polyarny. The store had magnets depicting the very Tu-134 we had flown with a stylized “Полярный”. The aircraft was photographed landing in Polyarny on a day not unlike this one (white, light snow), so of course we bought one each. Since she was the only employee beyond the surly officials of the airline and the state, we inquired whether there was a postbox somewhere. “No, but I can take them into town and mail them for you, if you’d like”. She loved the postcards and wondered where they had been acquired; since I had an extra unwritten one I gave it to her, eliciting more gratitude than I would have expected.

The check-in line was moving slowly, and there was no urgent need to go through security, so we wandered around, finding a baggage-wrapping station - even here, cling-wrapped luggage is a necessity!

Since airplane toilets are for taking pictures of, not for actual use, I went off on a quest to locate the airports facilities. No signage existed, of course, but as usual, following the stream of people led to the room. A typical feature of former Soviet airports are long hallways at both ends of the check-in hall, for unknown reasons. They have this unexplored feel to them, a sort of aura and mystique of what may lie behind that unmarked doorway…



A wonderful vintage Soviet payphone still adorned a wall - unfortunately long disconnected, but a lasting original element of this building.





With only about thirty minutes left to departure, we queued for check-in and retrieved only part of a boarding pass - the stub was immediately torn off by the check-in agent. “Airports of the North” - a memorable card stock!



Posted at the check-in desk was an informative placard listing relevant rules: “travellers may have a maximum of two dogs and any guns must be handed over to inspection”.

Next was the typical assortment of safety checks, this time in a rather unusual arrangement. First, “Miss Polyarny” (a rather attractive young lady adorned with a fur throw and client of a local botox clinic) checked the (remaining) boarding pass against your passport and placed the ever-important stamp. Next, on the opposite side, another lady with a computer monitor checked us off of a list of passengers. Finally, the “official” passport check on the briefcase-computer. This far north, uniforms are not a priority, and even the government employee was simply wearing a black t-shirt. The final step was security, a roulette as usual, on this instance challenging us with an unusually sensitive metal detector.

The room right after the security check was full of people standing shoulder to shoulder, but everybody was respecting the signs on the parapet - “no sitting”. Just a touch further was a sort of conservatory, an added glass structure, where there was absolutely no one and we were able to take tarmac pictures unimpeded. A massive snowplow caught my eye, a rather mean-looking machine, which could definitely eat a man for breakfast.



Literally moments after our arrival, boarding was initiated by the simple action of opening a door onto the tarmac. The herd instinct kicked in, and everybody filed through the open door and headed towards the aircraft.



Careful as always, I managed to sneak in some pictures heading towards the aircraft.



A close-up shot of the beautiful maintained and painted UAZ airstairs.



Upon arrival in Polyarny for the layover, the engines were immediately covered with wooden covers. Only after boarding was completed and we were ready for departure were the covers removed once again.



This time, we elected to sit in the “exit row” - judging by original Tu-134 pictures, this was actually the historical location of a mid-cabin bulkhead, and the outline of it remained in this retrofitted aircraft.

Sitting on the right, I enjoyed taking in the sight of the Polyarny airport and of this dog happily running around the tarmac. The owner was the snowplough driver, and the German shepherd mutt happily jumped into the cab of the truck once the door was swung open.





Taking a close look at the buildings adjacent to the runway - in Soviet days this would have been spying.



A 180-degree turn at the end of the runway presented a view of the undulating runway and surrounding snow-covered landscape.



Racing past the terminal building on our take-off roll, I noticed the Angara An-148 had followed us to Polyarny! Today was a busy aviation day in Alrosa-world…



After a final look at the white boreal forest, the flight was completely uneventful, and I must admit we were knocked out cold by the many experiences fo the past hours and didn’t actually see anything inflight.



Sitting on the right, I didn’t get the “gaping-hole” view on this landing, but there was still plenty of entertainment. The meeting of plane with land was so violent that beyond the rattles and shakes, an entire panel above me crashed open, held loosely in place only with one hinge. The surly Russian man seated beside me immediately proceeded to try to fix this panel. He would not give up, and brusquely enlisted the help of surrounding passengers to put the panel back in place, to no avail.



We had asked our friendly flight attendant to see the cockpit, and our wishes were granted after landing in Mirny. Our instructions were to wait for the cockpit crew to leave, but thereafter we could enjoy the (rather cramped) quarters of the three-man cockpit freely.









Not wishing to risk the ire of the photography overlords a third time in one day, I refrained from taking any more photos - especially since all eyes were already pointed at us, seeing as we had held up the entire planeload of passengers on the bus while we happily visited the cockpit.

I too would like to thank you for this amazing TR!

HERE

HERE

Indeed, I would hardly advise Bora at this point - frankly, as I wrote on the blog, I had to do it so I could stop baselessly claiming the Cook Islands to be “better” and have a point of comparison. (it did also help that I was referred to the GM of the IC there who took pretty amazing care of us. Guilty.) That said, I would have loved to try the other islands, and I yet might.

As for sour cherry juice - pfft. What’s 500 miles when some people apparently fly to Siberia for it :P

An important fact about P is that he has many friends all around the world - and I mean lots of friends. His definition of this word is much looser than mine: I would be more inclined to call them acquaintances. Come to think of it, perhaps that is why I don’t have as many friends as P. In the unlikely event he still doesn’t know someone in the city he is headed to, P uses a vast friend empire network to locate a new friend. In this case, he originally tested the waters when our initial itinerary was still in play. Without any troubles he located a potential target, but we decided to put the issue to rest when those flights fell apart and it seemed we wouldn’t spend any time in Mirny. When our plans finally settled completely, it became clear that we had enough time to meet this “friend”. This man, living in Mirny, was the third cousin of an elementary school classmate of P’s. We had no idea how he looked like nor what he did, and when P was filled with a nostalgic desire to ride in an old Soviet car, I joked that we would be picked up in an old Lada in Mirny. P quickly rebuffed this overture: “I don’t have friends who drive Ladas”.

—

After our Tu-134 cockpit visit and bus transfer to the arrivals shack, we shuffled into the luggage collection room and out the other side. Since M, the Russian avgeek we encountered on the Tu-134 flights, was also flying on the evening flight to Novosibirsk, we felt bad abandoning him at the airport and extended our hosts hospitality also to him. Out on the wooden steps that had nearly knocked P off his feet earlier in the day, the ice had completely melted and the temperature risen a few degrees. P pulled out his friend-empire iPhone and tuned to WhatsApp. There was the magic identification key - “I’m in a silver Honda CRV with license plate XXX”. A quick scan of the parking lot with our darting eyes located our new friend, and after a quick, rather cool introduction, we set off. P and I, being well-behaved capitalist children with propaganda morals etched into our minds, instinctively reached for our seatbelts, only to be immediately told off by X (as I will call our new friend): “here, you don’t need to”. Without a word, X drives us into town and starts a customized tour. Of course we had been in no position to request anything from X beforehand: all we knew is he would pick us up, and insisted on taking us to eat something before our departure. Thus it came as a pleasant surprise that X had planned an in-depth and varied excursion, as if he were a tried and tested tour guide - an old hand at giving tours of Mirny.



We set off on the paved road from the airport. This colour I had observed from above, a characteristic dirty brown, was pervasive. It permeated every surface, as if we had been given sepia-tinted glasses.





Near the airport was the mine administration building.



The first destination was the massive open-pit mine, мир. We drove towards town, made two lefts, and started losing some altitude. The only signage was a barrage of “no entry” circle signs, which X paid no heed to. We were soon driving on a mud road, at least as wide as a six-lane highway. The only other vehicles were massive trucks - yellow mining vehicles and old Zil trucks with a fresh coat of dark green paint.

On the left was a man-made hilltop, where there was a memorial to this extraordinary feat of engineering - rather resembling hillside propaganda one would encounter in communist countries. At the very summit was a digger, the very type which was used to dig the entire hole.



On the right was an embankment, about 2 meters tall, as if a trench had been dug and the soil left adjacent.

After a kilometre or so, a spot of colour came into view, and we pulled over. This was another monument, and here, like a mirage, was a lone man standing in front of one of the giant information billboards. We eyed him with curiosity - could it be? A tourist in Mirny? There was no car in sight, nor any other human or building on this side of the hole. He was crouched down, lacing his leather shoes - they looked spotless, not encased with brown mud. Perhaps this was only a jogging route for the local population? We got out, did not approach the unknown man, and by the time we were leaving he was gone, never to be seen again.

First, we took a look at the billboards, but frankly I only had time afterwards to read the information posted on them. My favourite detail from the right-most board: “Mir pit has been acknowledged as one of the most perfect masterpieces of mining art by the specialists of mining countries”. Of course the amount of diamonds sold - $17.5 billion - is listed in USD.



Our attention was dedicated entirely to the massive hole that lay in front - and beneath. About 500 meters deep and ~1200 wide, it is enormous, and the pictures don’t do it justice. From what X told us, they had hit the water table while digging deeper still, and it had flooded the mine, making the open-pit mine unviable - though there was continued mining in more typical underground shafts until an accident in 2017 halted operations entirely. Seeing no sign of a path leading down into the mine, I was curious whether this was natural erosion (if so, those houses perched on the ledge are in a precarious position), or whether the hole was filled. X told us the hole had not been filled up; later searches on the internet provided evidence that 45 meters of rubble were dumped into the mine to stabilize the underground operations. Then again, even such a simple fact as the year marking the end of open-pit operations isn’t equally represented online, with dates ranging from 1991 to 2004.



A massive machine was parked facing the mine, with the appearance of a viewing platform on tank treads. However, the first staircase had been sawed off and lay tossed to the side. X explained that people had been climbing the machinery, and the government had decided to remove the stairs to prevent it.



The billboards on the left had faded pictures of the glory days of the pit.



Before leaving, I managed to capture one of the giant yellow Belaz haul trucks going by - we would pass by more exiting the mining area.



Because of it’s unusual nature, I present some more reading on Mirny mine. There’s a theory that “helicopters could be sucked in”, and though I doubt an actual vortex is formed, it is probable that there are air pressure differences, especially considering that the mine is very near the airport, meaning low altitude flights would be likely. Note also the older pictures of the mine, while it was still in operation and before the bottom was flooded.

https://interestingengineering.com/m...helicopters-in
https://gizmodo.com/the-nearly-mile-...the-1593234924

With the main sight of Mirny checked off the sightseeing list, we headed back up and into town. We had no clue where X was taking us, nor was there really the need to ask: we were wide-eyed, taking in all the sights of this foreign and remote land. There were plenty of the typical Russian mini city-busses, but also a few Kamaz busses interspersed. These were mean machines, and looked like business. Unlike the Canadian tundra-busses or the Icelandic “off-road adventure” F-road conquering ones, these were for common transportation, not for touristic exploits. They transport workers to mine-sites, and obviously can go anywhere they need to.

Regular busses:





Kamaz bus:



The most lasting impression of driving through town, beyond the aforementioned dirt-brown colour of absolutely everything, was the outward normalcy of life here, in such an abnormal and unusual place. There were the representative Soviet hexagonal brick sidewalks, street lights, barriers on the side of the road, signage like everywhere else in Europe. Most of all, it was the people that gave the city its otherworldly surreal ambience. Women in dresses pushing a stroller over the uneven pavement, requiring them to lift it every fourth step. Children in jeans and down jackets, with white sneakers a vivid contrast on the brown earth. On the one hand, Mirny had been frozen in time. The apartment blocks looked exactly as they may have 30 years ago - concrete slabs with visible joins, haphazardly self-made enclosed balconies that were commonly used as a way of expanding floorspace. The school had the Sputnik-like sparklers next to the entrance, and a hammer and sickle adorned the city hall facade. A large cinema complex was adorned by movie posters, and the theatre looked positively gigantic, with the fly tower possibly taller than any other building in the city centre. In all this, the citizens were going on with their lives. This was their reality, their world.

















..and an old Zil fire truck, mounted for display in front of the fire station:



The older wooden structures were quite charming, and I would not have been surprised to find them in Norway or Newfoundland.



We drove out of town a little, and turned down a dirt road, finding ourselves on the banks of a pond. My mind led me to assume we were driven out here to see some nature, but I could not explain why there was a guard booth and two barking dogs at the end of the road. X got out and opened the gate for himself. We drove in, and stopped in front of a massive metal door leading straight into the ground.







X goes to find someone, with us still completely oblivious to what it was we were standing in front of. A bomb shelter? An old military tunnel? A man emerges with X, and we can hear X asking to go inside, only to be told that it’s locked and that he should know the opening hours. X defers and ignores this light reprimand, and tells them to go find the key and let us in. There’s no explaining, no request for a favour to be made. A few moments later the old man returns, key in hand, and opens the first set of doors after connecting some cables outside. He is slightly hunched, with gleaming golden teeth when he smiles, and shuffles his feet, weighed down by heavy rubber boots.



The first door creaks open. The golden-toothed man asked M, who was trailing behind, to close the door behind him. At this point X started leading the way, and two men were needed to open the third set of doors. The tunnel glistened with ice crystals, with a temperature to match. X flipped a switch, and the tunnel was illuminated, lit by a string of incandescent bulbs leading into the distance.







I immediately correlated this long underground tunnel with military installations, and as gently as I could, I prodded what its original purpose had been. “Originally built for refrigeration”. My curiosity was most definitely not satisfied, but I was not going to get any more information. Is it possible this tunnel was built purely for keeping things cool? As much as I would like to believe otherwise, this is a plausible explanation: tunnels built in permafrost are not uncommon in polar regions, a natural way for keeping things frozen without electricity.

https://siberiantimes.com/other/othe...s-in-cold-war/

We walked quite a distance, and reached another set of doors. These opened reluctantly onto a square room without any lighting. Pointing a small flashlight upwards, our guide illuminated a shaft with a metal ring-ladder, leading to an unknown edge. This was explained as a ventilation shaft leading to the surface, much higher at this point than at the entrance to the freezer.



With some chuckles, we were told of one year there was a leak, most likely somewhere in the shaft, and the whole freezer flooded and froze. When they managed to open the doors at the peak of summer, the water rushed out and the men barely hung on to the door handle without being swept away.

At “only” -12 degrees C (interestingly the same temperature as in the article linked above), it felt cold and we were shivering uncomfortably. On the way out, we were shown the items stored in this vast expanse - under the tarps were deer, stacked one on top of the other, still in their pelts, as the meat preserves better than way. Apparently this was a popular facility with the first nations Yakut people, who store their hunted supply deep in the permafrost.







The dogs were content to see us emerge, and greeted us with excited barks. One of them was free to roam, while the other was tied up, though with rather generous ability to move around the grounds. When I inquired the logic for this, apparently the latter was a wolf-mix, and had a penchant for running away.







Once again on the move, the atmosphere between P, X, and I was getting more relaxed and comfortable. With our next destination still unknown, we drove back towards town and passed some cows wandering onto the road; I eagerly tried to photograph them. M broke his silence at this opportune moment, asking how I was doing - how I was coping with this experience. Without even allowing me to answer, he continued “this is too much Russia even for me”. Nah, man. I came here for this.



The next point on our touristic itinerary was the memorial complex “Viluy Ring”. https://eng.russia.travel/objects/316301/ Once again, we were in awe not only of this impressive and huge monument built in 2005, but of the superficially pointless idea, in the middle of nowhere, not even in the centre of town. Efforts were made to create a semblance of a parking lot - completely unnecessary, as there is no traffic here in the first place. The ring was fittingly bathed in the brown sediment.









This was a good vantage point for a look across the creek, towards the Mirny suburbia (or should I say dachas?).



That was the direction we were headed next, towards the exit out of town. We passed cars caked in fresh mud, paint barely visible underneath, all refuelling at the gas station marking the entrance to town. P and I were naturally curious whether the road actually led somewhere, and the answer from X was an “of course” - it went on to Lensk and Yakutsk. A ways further down the road was the requisite Soviet welcome sign into the city, and not far beyond, the end of the pavement. I don’t think this is what we had in mind when we asked whether the road continued…





Mind you, the road to Yakutsk is an ice road in winter and a rather challenging track in summer. Another must on my to-do list - come back to Mirny on land. Having driven Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk on the Mackenzie River delta, I would love to repeat the experience - in Siberia.

The monument marking the entrance to the city, complete with memorial for the heroes who constructed it in the first place.







Now, finally, we went to the restaurant. A typical example of early 2000s architecture, it was in a rather nondescript office-like building.



The decor inside was from another planet, however.









We proceeded to the second floor, and sat at one of the tables. Perusing the menu, some items were ordered for the table, and a deer steak was our main. Ah… yes! Plus vodka of course.

See, I am a born and bred Canadian. My parents joke they moved from the area of the world where vodka is imbibed precisely to get away from it. As a result, though I take pleasure in an occasional drink or two, I was never exposed to vodka. Never at home, never while traveling. (And before you ask, I did go to university but I didn’t actually go there. Long story.) In a sense, I was waiting for the right occasion to properly experience vodka drinking in a shameless environment. Well, without any doubt, today was the day. This was full-on immersion, meeting a runaway train head-on. I’m thankful to P for having negotiated somewhat of a hall pass for me. Being the foreigner, I was allowed a slightly less generous pour at each round.

The deer was alright, more of a patty than a filet, but the presentation was spectacular.





The owner of the restaurant appeared, and he was Ukrainian (thus the decor was immediately explained).



The first bottle of vodka was complete by the end of the main course. We started on the second. North America had woken up at this point and I had a phone call to make. Passing by the bathroom, the water spilling out of the tap was - par for the course - brownish.



My phone call complete, I returned to suspicious glances at the table. “We were worried if you’re OK?” Gee, thanks, you were worried but stayed put in your seats? Yes, I was totally fine.

By this point, M was acting a bit strange - perhaps this presents a worthwhile opportunity to describe the characters involved.

X, our local newly-made friend was a strong, heavyset North Ossetian man, with a buzz cut and big round eyes. He was in construction. When pressed for more specifics, he simply said he was opportunistic and built whatever was needed. Previously he built high-power transmission lines, now he’s building a hotel and a restaurant.

M, our fellow avgeek from Blagoveshchensk, was a somewhat unusual character. He had finished railway university, and had done such crazy escapades as taking the Novosibirsk-Vladivostok section of the Trans-Siberian 40 times, back-to-back. Or so he claimed, in any case. (My question was, how did he shower? To which there was not any suitable reply.) He had an unusual air about him, slightly awkward, and spoke some English. He also shared his love of KLM with us, for no apparent reason other than having flown with them to Curacao.

P has a strong stomach. I know it, because I’ve experienced it before, on our previous trips. Uzbekistan drinking by night with a diamond smuggler or 24 hours on a ferry - twice - sure! He’s also a friendly drunk, at least for the most part, as will become apparent later in this series. He gets happy, and pretty much nothing else transpires.

X was a proper North Ossetian. Of course he could handle his alcohol.

M, not so much. He also didn’t uphold the basic rules of vodka drinking. Even with my lack of experience, I knew the rules of engagement. Don’t drink until the person toasting does, and always drink your shot in one go. M would clench his cherry (alas, not sour cherry) juice tightly in his left hand when it became clear another toast was coming. He would then drink the vodka before everyone else and chase it with the cherry juice. This still didn’t save him from being completely out of his element.

At this point, I looked out the window, hearing the unmistakable sound of an approaching aircraft (alas, a Boeing 737-800) and spotted palm trees. No, not drunken delusion, but some fake palm trees to liven the atmosphere.



… and a passing logging truck.



By this time, the second bottle was nearly empty, and there was talk of a third. Uh-oh. The toasts were getting decidedly more slurred and philosophical, “to encounters such as this one” and the like. P decided this was a good time to order more food, which I readily agreed to. Borscht was ordered, and the third bottle arrived. By this time, it was only an hour to departure, and I was prodding P and X to ensure we wouldn’t miss our Tu-154 flight. Vodka in a bizarre place is all fun and well, but we were here to fly a Tupolev 154, after all. X made a phone call to a buddy working at Alrosa. Not to worry, no way we would miss our flight!

The third bottle of vodka was finished about 40 minutes before flight departure. Of course P offered to cover the bill, but this was quickly rebuffed by X. In fact X did not accept any remuneration or compensation for all his troubles, for his day off from work, for driving us around, for a dinner at indisputably the best restaurant in Mirny. A true show of hospitality and generosity to strangers, and a demonstration of one of the best aspects of the Russian nation. Thank you X.

Unfortunately I have no sensational news to report about my reaction to the copious alcohol - I think I did quite well for a vodka virgin.

Now we get to the point of driving back to the airport. It was out of the question for us to take a taxi, and after X’s portion (the lions share, I might add) of the three bottles of vodka this was going to be a scary ride. I quickly, quietly, and unnoticed, fastened my seatbelt, in the hopes of at least the slightest protection of indisputably the most dangerous section of our trip. When I hear the comment that the Russian planes must be so dangerous and frequent “I would never fly that!” phrases, I say driving is still more dangerous. Exponentially, both are probably more dangerous in Russia, but the old adage “you are more likely to die in a car crash to the airport than once onboard the plane” still holds true.

Not that I have any experience with drunk driving, but X was not the typical drunk driver encountered on North American roads. He had no issue staying firmly within the (faint) painted lines, he simply chose not to. Swerving, passing in tight corners, and avoiding a red light by turning right, making a semblance of a U-turn, and turning right again - these were his moves. He was simultaneously looking for something on his phone, even P was slightly unnerved (though didn’t show it) and asked what the urgency was… Apparently usually when he’s drunk, X drives backwards to the airport, and he was looking for a video of this feat on his iPhone. In what could not have been a more adrenaline-filled and heart-racing 10 minutes, we arrived extremely quickly at the airport.

A memorable afternoon, indeed. But we did not know that the best was yet to come, excitement that far eclipsed everything else so far on this trip…

This reminds me of when I was flying Air Rarotonga many years ago, and we hit major turbulence in one of their little Saabs. It was bad enough that some people screamed. I was considering I should panic but my next thought was, “they’ve been doing this for many years - I’m sure they are experienced and know what they’re doing, I’d have read in the news if something ever happened.”

Then I realised I’ve never read ANYTHING in ANY news EVER about ANYTHING happening in Cook Islands, related to Air Rarotonga, or anything of the sort.

Then I knew fear.