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There's a city deep inside Russia that shouldn't exist.
Here, people endure the harshest climates on earth every single day.
What's the lowest temperature you've experienced in Yakutia?
- 65°. Yes
This is Yakutsk, the world's coldest city, and breathing is difficult here.
For over 1000 years, people have called this frozen land home.
They have built a life here through brutal winters, endless
isolation and sub zero temperatures.
With a population of over 350,000 people, Yakutsk is one
of the most remote cities on earth.
Here, temperature falls to as low as -71°.
As an African born and raised in the warmest parts
of the planet, I was left with many questions.
Why would anyone choose to live here?
How do they endure this extreme weather?
And most importantly, how long can I survive in the
coldest city on earth?
Like I do for most of my trips, I watched
as many videos as possible about the city.
I knew Yakutsk was brutal, so I prepared coats, boots,
gloves, the complete survival kits.
I thought I was ready.
But these videos don't tell you that getting here is
a battle on its own.
With Russia at war with Ukraine, simple travel routes became
a logistical nightmare.
I had to postpone this trip twice because something would
change every time I thought I had it figured out.
The further I dug, the more it felt like Yakutsk
was a place I wasn't meant to reach.
I started my journey in sunny Portugal.
From there, I flew through Istanbul, one of the last
few places in the world where you can get a
flight into Russia.
The next stop was Moscow, and that's where another challenge
arose.
You see, because of the war, Russia is under heavy
sanctions, which means no foreign bank cards work.
There's no Visa, MasterCard or Apple Pay.
So I couldn't just withdraw cash or swipe my card
like anywhere else.
If I ran out of physical money, I'll be stuck.
We are currently in Moscow and it's -1°, and we are already freezing.
and we are still going to a place that is -40°,
-50°, -60°.
Do not go to Yakutsk.
Good luck to us? Good luck guys, good luck.
He Is laughing at us for going to Yakutsk.
I'm like, wow, are we sure we want to do this?
Well, you only live once so, we go!!!
Hello.
Finally, I secured the last flight to Yakutsk and my
journey into the unknown began.
Welcome to Yakutsk.
Where's the car?
Where's the car?
Where's the car? (X3)
My hands are freezing.
Hey Siri, what's the temperature at the moment?
It is -40° outside.
WOW!
Just few seconds after stepping outside and look at
Kofi's eyelashes.
His eyelashes already has Ice on it.
Every building here has rugs on their staircases so you
don't slip off.
Everything is frozen.
The staircases are frozen.
Every single thing you can see around me is all
frozen.
Today is Sunday and I can see all these
cars here are parked in front of the Orthodox Church.
During the duration of the service, everybody literally left their
cars running and they went into the church to pray.
And church service is just over now.
If you switch your car off, the engine oil
freezes and you can't start it again.
The car is on, but nobody is inside.
Many of the cars have this covering in front of their
radiator.
The purpose of this is to make sure that the
cold doesn't get into the engine of the car.
When parked, most of the cars were covered with a very thick
material called the Natasha.
This cover ensures the car stays warm when the temperature drops.
They cost around $100 to $400, depending on the size.
Cars that are like this cant be driven again till
the summer because everything inside it will probably already be
frozen.
So those people who have money, they have access to
these garages that are heated.
Like this is 1 heated garage here.
And you can see there's pipes outside.
And if the person parks this car inside this heated
garage, it doesn't get frozen.
Guys, look at my nose.
This is what happens when you walk around
for 10 minutes.
The temperature here is really brutal.
and even though I'm wearing these gloves, my hands are
starting to feel numb.
I can't really feel my hands as much.
My legs felt heavy with every step and I had
a cold-induced headache from the blood, which struggled to circulate.
Here passing out in the wrong place doesn't mean you wake
up with a headache, it means you don't wake up
at all.
One of the questions I've been trying to find an
answer to is, if the temperature here Is this brutal,
Why do these people still keep trying to continue living
here?
Centuries ago, this entire land was home to indigenous Yakutsk,
a turkisk speaking people who thrived in this climate long
before any invaders came.
They lived off hunting, fishing and reindeer herding, which was
attuned to their frozen world.
During the Soviet era, thousands of prisoners were exiled here,
Not criminals, but political opposition, scientists, writers and intellectuals.
So many of them never made it out, but some
survived and their descendants still live here today.
As of a 2021 census,
Yakutsk make up around 60% of the population, while Russians
account for roughly 26%.
Against all odds, they were able to build a life
worth living.
So as much as I question why people chose this
place, for many Yakutsk wasn't really a choice.
It's simply all they've ever known.
Even the snow that is falling is so dry it's
like sun falling from the sky.
It's not even like normal snow that has a lot
of moisture.
I'm already starting to lose the feeling in my fingers
already and it shows that we are actually getting really,
really cold.
My greatest fear was getting frostbite, which is a
major possibility if the cold gets into your skin.
Leaving your fingers exposed could lead to permanent loss and
many people have lost their limbs from making this grave
mistake in the past.
So we need to find somewhere to run into now
where we can heat ourselves up.
Wow, this is locked.
Let's find somewhere else.
This is too extreme!!!
This is too extreme!!!
I just feel sharp pains all over my
fingertips.
Today is warmer than yesterday.
So this to you is warm?
It's very warm, yes.
What is cold to you?
How many degrees? -40° -45°.
-35° - 30° Yeah.
I can just go for a walk. Really???
Yes, yes.
Signs and traffic lights here aren't just left alone.
They must be cleaned daily or they'll be buried under
layers of frost and ice.
We are the Chinese market now.
I want to get a new shoe because my shoe
is not doing the job.
In Yakutsk, normal clothes just don't cut it.
Dress for the weather or freeze to death.
These are the kind of shoes you need to wear
if you're in Yakutsk.
They made it fur on the side and they have
these beads here.
So it's kind of like a cultural shoe they have.
It keeps you warm.
It also has fur inside it.
This is the shoe you wear if you don't want
to have frostbite on your feet.
Is this the big one or the small one.
This is 46.
How do you feel?
I feel like a Yakutian.
I've got my shoes so ready to hit the streets.
In most parts of the world we rely on refrigerators
and freezers to keep our food fresh, but here the
entire city is a giant freezer.
It's believed to be the coldest market in the world. Oh Wow!
Even up to -50°,-60°, people sell outside.
They don't go inside.
It's always outside.
With winters lasting over half the year, growing crops is impossible.
The frozen ground makes farming out of the question, so
people rely almost entirely on fish, meat and stored foods
to make it through the cold season.
Guys, it's so heavy.
This thing is rock solid.
It's like a stone.
It's heavy.
To put this into perspective, the average freezer in a
household runs at about -18°C, but Yakutsk has temperatures that
can go as low as -71°C, which is more than
four times as cold as a freezer.
So for those people who are selling in the market,
people who are going to have to stand for a very
long time.
They put this on the floor here.
This is deer skin, so you can stand on it
and your leg doesn't get cold fast enough.
So she's wearing two of what I'm wearing just to
keep herself warm whenever she's selling fish in the fish
market because it's really cold.
Yeah.
So this, this two?
Hello.
How are you?
The primary language of the locals is Yakutian, but over 70%
also speak Russian.
Very few people here understood English.
When she's cold, she drinks tea.
Yes.
Oh, wow.
Hot tea.
Hot tea.
Of course.
I heard you guys eat horse here.
Yes.
Horse.
Horse.
Where is it?
Where is the horse?
This is a horse.
This one.
This horse.
Do they eat horse meat in Russia or just Yakutsk?
No, no, Russians don't eat horse.
We, Yakutian people, we eat horse.
Why? Does it make you stronger?
It's normal, it's traditional.
So can I try out tasting horse meat later today?
Of course!
Just to show you guys how cold it is.
They have bus stops and the bus stops are heated.
Because they don't want people standing outside in the cold.
The reason they created bus stops like this is so
that people can stay inside a warm place while they're
waiting for their bus.
There's a screen up here that literally tells you when
your bus is arriving, and then once you see your
bus outside, you just run outside and get into the
bus.
If there's one way for me to fully understand just
how brutal this cold is, it's through science.
We have an apple here, we have a banana, and
we have eggs.
So here we have boiling water.
You guys can see it's literally boiling water.
Boiling water is literally freezing in seconds when you
throw it up.
That is crazy.
We have some clothes that we just washed.
I want to see how long it will take to
dry in this weather.
We want to see how long this noodles is going to take
to freeze.
I have this banana that I left outside.
and we are gonna use it as a hammer to
nail this into this.
Check this out.
That broke. This is actually really strong.
Let's try it with this, with the apple.
Oh wow, this actually works and see the apple is
really smooth because it's literally as hard as a stone.
This egg, we left it out for 5 minutes and
it has literally cracked open by itself because it just
expanded due to how cold it is.
This is what happens to an egg that is left
outside in Yakutsk.
You can see we just left this out for
less than 10 minutes, and it's literally already frozen.
Look at it?
If I was wanted to eat it now, but it's
frozen already.
Guys, Can you imagine?
This is the cloth I just washed just now.
It's like a piece of wood.
Now, if you wash your clothes and you spread it outside,
this is literally what happens to it.
Yeah.
It's now a piece of wood.
All of these just happen in less than 10 minutes.
Surviving in Yakutsk isn't just about dressing warm.
It goes way deeper than that.
It's about adapting your entire way of life.
Due to the fact that we're in the coldest city in the world.
The way they build their buildings here is totally different.
All the buildings have to be built on pillars.
If houses start directly on the ground, the Permafrost
will shift, causing buildings to crack and collapse.
The Permafrost is the permanently frozen layer of ground
ice that runs 400 to 600 meters beneath the ground,
making building and construction in Yakutsk very difficult.
This one is tilting already because there's was no separation between
the foundation and the actual building.
You can see the building tilting already.
The entire city relies on a centralized heating system, meaning
instead of individual heaters, Yakutsk runs on one massive government
powered infrastructure that keeps homes and buildings warm and prevents
them from turning into ice coffins.
Russia is the second largest producer of natural gas in
the world, which makes heating cheap.
Without this continuous heat supply, people would freeze to death
in their homes.
That's also why buildings here have multiple doors.
There are three different doors that you have to go
through before you get outside.
So this is one.
This is two and the final one.
In this city, pipes can't run underground because
the floor is frozen solid,
So water, gas, and sewage pipes have to run above ground.
Because the ground is so hard,
Whenever they want to bury their dead, they need to
take wood and burn the ground for like 3-4 days
and then when the ground gets softened,
they can now break the ice
and bury their dead in it.
Usually, some people have to wait till summer
for them to bury their dead.
This is a lake now but it's literally frozen at
the moment.
I'm literally about to walk on water right now.
Here goes nothing.
Hope I don't go down
Like, you know those movies that they go down in
ice?
I'm actually in the middle of the lake right now.
This is the center.
The camera screen is already misbehaving.
It's so difficult to film outside here, man.
To continue filming, I had to device a plan.
When we film a bit, we have to come back
and put the cameras and the phones and everything on
the heater because it's so cold outside that we can
only film for 5 minutes.
So everything just starts misbehaving.
So we have to heat our cameras so that they
get warm before we can go out again to film.
So filming here is crazy.
This is the hardest place I've ever had to film
anything in my life.
Being a travel creator is expensive and a lot of
times I lose money on making these types of videos.
Working with brands is one of the ways I'm able
to support this channel, which is why I like to
thank the sponsor of today's video, Better Help.
I'm always in support of therapy, especially for men because
we live in a culture where men are always made
to feel like even if they are going through something,
they should always be strong and if they seek help
or if they seek treatment, it makes them look weak.
But I totally disagree with this.
I wish I had found therapy sooner because it has
life changing for me.
One of my goals this year is to find a
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this is really difficult because I'm always on the go.
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Thank you Better Help for sponsoring this video and supporting
my channel.
Now let's get back to exploring Russia.
Guys, Out here only few animals can survive.
As you can see, there are some dogs here.
These are some of the only dogs that can survive
in this temperature.
Deep beneath Yakutsk.
The ice never melts, not in summer and not in
centuries.
Everything is literally ice.
We're literally underground now.
You can see ice everywhere.
This frozen layer of ice goes down 100 meters.
Welcome to my Kingdom.
This is my chair.
I am the Ice king of the Permanent Forest Museum.
All of you must bow down to me.
Now.
Bow down!!!
This is a chair, all made of ice.
Ancient animals are trapped inside these ice, which means that
perfectly preserved mammoths buried for tens of thousands of years
have been found here.
Because of climate change and the ice cap melting, some
are now emerging from the ground still intact.
Guys, we are about to enter the coldest hotel in
the world.
This is the coldest bed of the coldest hotel in
the world.
I'm literally sleeping on ice.
Can the magic happen on an ice bed?
If you don't get it, forget about it.
Beneath all this ice in Yakutsk also lies one of
the greatest hidden treasures on Earth's diamonds.
The diamond industry isn't just one of the reasons people
come here, it's also what fuels much of the region's
wealth.
This frozen land accounts for over 1/4 of the world's
diamond supply, making it the biggest diamond mine on the
planet.
I've never tried out Horse before, but we came to
this restaurant and we're about to try out Horse for
the first time.
Bon Appetit!
What do you feel about it?
It tastes like regular meat.
It's actually not bad.
Before coming to Yakutsk, I had heard the common whispers
that Russians can be cold, unwelcoming and even racist
towards outsiders.
And as the only black person for miles, I wasn't
sure what to expect.
But what I experienced was nothing but warmth.
Hello Africa!
Strangers stopped me to take pictures, asking where I was
from and what brought me here, and also what I
thought about their city.
It was a level of hospitality I never expected in
a place so harsh, and it made me realize that
even though Yakutsk may be the coldest city on earth,
Its people are some of the warmest.
The people's resilience
was unlike anything I'd ever seen before.
They lived in conditions that most of the world would
consider uninhabitable, where everyday task would require an extra level
of endurance and preparation just to avoid the risk of
frostbite or death.
and not once did they complain.
My dream is I want to be a traveller.
I want to learn many languages, English, maybe Chinese, Japanese, Korean.
I want to visit many cities, maybe Georgia, London. I want
to visit Seoul, and I want to travel this world.
If people can create a home in a place where
winter lasts for seven months, where the roads never truly thaw
and where stepping outside unprotected can be fatal, then
maybe we are all capable of more than we think
as humans.
This city is proof that no matter how harsh the
world is, life will always find a way.
This video is the first episode in my "The African
Exploring the World Series".
In our next video, we'll be going deeper into the
remote parts of Siberia to figure out how the locals
here live.
So if you don't want to miss that, be sure
to subscribe.
Thank you guys for watching and I'll see you all
on the next one.
Peace.
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