Gallery: What It's Like Living in the Coldest Town on Earth
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A man leaves his van idling as he walks into Oymyakon's only shop. The shop's paper waste is burnt in a 40 gallon drum at right.
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Alexander Platonov, 52, a retired teacher, dressed for a quick dash to the outdoor toilet at his home in Oymyakon.
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The soviet era sign reading "Oymyakon, the Pole of Cold" in the centre of Oymyakon.
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A drunk local in Oymyakon. He warned Chapple should stay off the streets at night because after dark "these streets belong to *me*."
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A man walks away from Oymyakon's general store.
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A digger piles coal ash on a heap near the Oymyakon heating plant.
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Overview of Oymyakon at dusk. The town's heating plant is at left. While taking this photo Chapple's thumb nearly froze solid.
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An Uazik van in the tundra outside of Oymyakon. The soviet-era vans are widely favored in Siberia for their ability to stand up to the cold. They are often equipped with industrial-sized heating fans in the passenger compartment. They are known as "loaves" for their distinctive shape.
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Petrol station midway between Oymyakon and Yakutsk. Extremely remote petrol stations such as this one are open 24 hours and staffed by men who have two-week on two-week off shifts.
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A toilet on the tundra, midway between Oymyakon and Yakutsk. Inside are two wooden slats above a pit. A sharp spire of frozen excrement rose almost to ground level within the pit.
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In the city of Yakutsk, a woman walks over a frost-coated bridge.
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A woman holds up an arctic hare for sale along with stacks of frozen fish in a market in the centre of Yakutsk.
Amos Chapple13No-nonsense guard dog in the suburbs.
No-nonsense guard dog in the suburbs of Yakutsk.
Amos Chapple14Frost-encrusted house in the city centre.
Warm draughts of air escaping this house freeze into puffs of ice which form, fall and reform throughout winter in Yakutsk.
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Frost-crusted statues in a Yakutsk park commemorating WWII.
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Ice-crusted traffic light in Yakutsk. The freezing fog which settles on the city in January coats everything in a sugar-like frost.
Amos Chapple17A local woman enters Preobrazhensky Cathedral in a swirl of freezing mist.
A local woman enters Yakutsk's Preobrazhensky Cathedral on Christmas Day (January 7th in Russia) in a swirl of freezing mist.
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Summer shoes waiting out the winter in a shed in the suburbs of Yakutsk.
