Oymyakon: Going to Extremes

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The Pole of Cold as it is known is a town in the Sakha district of Eastern Russia, an area also known as Siberia.
I used to use it as an example of an extreme environment, and made frequent use of a programme made by the geographer Nick Middleton.
It describes his journey to the coldest inhabited place in the world, and the impact it has on him. He eats the meat-rich diet that local people rely upon, and finds that as the temperature drops, things start to break and stop working properly.

Siberia is a region of Asia which I would use for my Russia case study for the new KS3.

You can watch the programme in four sections on YouTube. The image quality is not the best, as its presumably ripped from a video tape (my copy is probably still languishing in a filing cabinet in my former school...)
Enjoy the journey, and wrap up warm...
And you can learn Dutch from the subtitles as an extra bonus...

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

 

 Part 4

 

Comments

kevincooper777 said…
Love these programs - Sand and Ice from the next series are v relevant to Edexcel B Spec... When I was at CGP I made contact with the film maker Zam Baring (Oxford geography graduate) about making a textbook / resource pack based on the films... Obviously wasn't there long enough to follow through. :-)
22 December 2013 at 11:24
Alan Parkinson said…
Agree with you there Kevin. They're all really good programmes. There was a project that Dan Ellison and I were planning that was due to involve Nick, but it didn't go ahead in the end...
22 December 2013 at 11:50
Unknown said…
The Sakha region is also economically important. There are major diamond deposits to rival South Africa. 1/5 of the world's diamonds comes from this region.
23 December 2013 at 15:45
Unknown said…
I've seen this documentary. I thoroughly enjoyed watching it. Seeing this kind of extreme makes me want to go there and see the place for myself.

I've written a blog entry on Yakutsk, which has the coldest winters for a big city.

http://pangeographic.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-diamond-in-cold.html
30 December 2013 at 22:28
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