Polar Yamal. Meeting Authentic Cultures.
Year after year, this world is getting smaller and smaller under the onslaught of civilization. The internet and fashionable gadgets, social networks and television impose refined culture of consumption and new rules of life...
And there are very few places remaining on earth where everyday life and traditions have managed to stay safe from new fashionable trends, where indigenous peoples live and bring up their children the way their ancestors have been doing it for many millennia in a row.
Polar Yamal is one of such rare preserved places.
For centuries, this region was inaccessible to most travellers. The Ural mountains in the west, foul marshes in the east and unpredictable rivers in the south have been protecting this region from the invasion of strangers. Vast distances, tough climate and complete lack of infrastructure have preserved the unique culture of the indigenous people of Polar Yamal.
This trip is for everyone who wants to take time getting acquainted with the authentic way of life of reindeer nomand herders who are trying to survive under the pressure of civilization, temptations of city comfort and imaginary well-being of modern life.
THE NOMADS.
Every spring the Nenets migrate from winter pastures far beyond the Arctic circle, to save their deer herds and the growing offsprings from midges and predators. They would walk for up to 60-80 kilometers a day, then set up camp, and next day everything repeats anew. This migration takes almost a month. And nomands' families and their herds will spend all the summer months in the Northern regions, closer to the Kara sea where the cold wind and the lack of lush vegetation will protect young deer from midges and ever-present gnat.
In autumn, when larches turn golden, deer driven by instinct and herders' families following them set off on their journey back to the South, into the zone of tundra thin forests, where they will be able to find shelter rich in game, fish and fuel for heating their homes during harsh frosty nights, for almost six months of the long polar winter.
This life cycle has been completed for hundreds of years. Frosts, predators, snowstorms, avalanches, river floodings – everything that we've only read about in adventure novels – is and will remain the path of life of these unique people.
For a short time, you can become guests of these hard-working and brave families. This is the only opportunity to see with your own eyes and carefully touch the fragile culture of nomads who are surviving under the most tough conditions of the onslaught of civilization and the complete merging with Nature.
So, are you ready to discover Polar Yamal?
