In Siberia, Russia’s largest region, there are few roads and they are mostly bad. In all fairness Siberia does present challenges for road builders. There is its immense size, larger than the USA or Antarctica. It also has a severe climate, temperatures in winter can plummet to below -60°Celsius (-76°F), while in summer they can reach a sweltering hot + 40°(104°F). At those extremes, no conventional road surface would last long.

Siberia may not have many conventional roads but it does have an extensive network of winter roads. There are hundreds of thousands of kilometres of cross country routes used by trucks and a variety of all terrain vehicles that carry supplies to isolated communities. Winter roads are made in the late autumn once the rivers, lakes and bogs freeze and the ice is thick enough to take the weight of heavy trucks, about 30 cm. The roads are used throughout the winter months and only abandoned in the spring, when the ice on the rivers and lakes becomes dangerously thin and the melting snow makes the land boggy. Many of Siberia’s more isolated villages, particularly in the North, have come to depend on winter roads which provide them with a vital lifeline enabling supplies to be brought in from the outside world.

Last winter Bryan Alexander went to Eastern Siberia to see what travelling is like on these isolated winter routes.

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