Overland expeditions

M​ost of the Russian North is completely roadless. Whole villages, towns, and cities lie beyond any road or rail network. In summer they are supplied by boats which ply every one of Siberia’s great north-flowing rivers. In winter, however, a vast network of ziminki opens up. A zimnik is a temporary winter road, either on the surface of a frozen river or solid ground and made out of compacted snow and ice. For six months of the year, areas that are completely cut off from the rest of Russia in summer become accessible to anyone with a good all-terrain vehicle. The best zimniki are even passable by ordinary cars.

When the zimniki open up, the ice road truckers come out. They spend the winter coursing up and down from the Arctic to “the mainland”, as the rest of Russia is referred to by isolated Arctic villagers.

These truckers are hardy people who spend most of the winter out on the ice roads, very far from warmth, comfort, and their families. They sell their goods in Arctic villages for roughly four times the regular price, which makes a 6000km 1-month journey profitable. There is something of an ice-road culture among these truckers. They have their own etiquette, superstitions, rituals, way of life and unusual semi-nomadic community.

​Thanks to these zimniki, Russia has a great potential for serious overland 

driving trips in areas that would be considered “off-road” in summer but are almost “on-road” in winter. We can organise overland expeditions on all the greatest Siberian zimniki:

  1. Yakutsk to Yuryung-Khaya (starting point for our Dolgans trips) and onwards to the Taymyr Peninsula
  2. Yakutsk to Tiksi on the Arctic Ocean coast
  3. Yakutsk to Chukotka, even all the way to Uelen, the easternmost settlement in Russia.
  4. Salekhard to the northern coast of the Yamal Peninsula

Please contact us for advice on organising overland trips on the above or any other zimniki. We can also, of course, organise completely off-road trips in areas where there are not even zimniki.

Please see the links below to some of our standard itineraries. Some, like the Archangel trip, are long overland tours, although not quite as extreme as the great ximniki mentioned above. Others, such as the Dolgans migration tour, are ones that do not usually involve an overland expedition but can potentially be combined with one. The Dolgan area, for example, is located at the end of a 3000km zimnik from Yakutsk.

M​ost of the Russian North is completely roadless. Whole villages, towns, and cities lie beyond any road or rail network. In summer they are supplied by boats which ply every one of Siberia’s great north-flowing rivers. In winter, however, a vast network of ziminki opens up. A zimnik is a temporary winter road, either on the surface of a frozen river or solid ground and made out of compacted snow and ice. For six months of the year, areas that are completely cut off from the rest of Russia in summer become accessible to anyone with a good all-terrain vehicle. The best zimniki are even passable by ordinary cars.

When the zimniki open up, the ice road truckers come out. They spend the winter coursing up and down from the Arctic to “the mainland”, as the rest of Russia is referred to by isolated Arctic villagers.

These truckers are hardy people who spend most of the winter out on the ice roads, very far from warmth, comfort, and their families. They sell their goods in Arctic villages for roughly four times the regular price, which makes a 6000km 1-month journey profitable. There is something of an ice-road culture among these truckers. They have their own etiquette, superstitions, rituals, way of life and unusual semi-nomadic community.

Thanks to these zimniki, Russia has a great potential for serious overland driving trips in areas that would be considered “off-road” in summer but are almost “on-road” in winter. We can organise overland expeditions on all the greatest Siberian zimniki:

  1. Yakutsk to Yuryung-Khaya (starting point for our Dolgans trips) and onwards to the Taymyr Peninsula
  2. Yakutsk to Tiksi on the Arctic Ocean coast
  3. Yakutsk to Chukotka, even all the way to Uelen, the easternmost settlement in Russia.
  4. Salekhard to the northern coast of the Yamal Peninsula

Please contact us for advice on organising overland trips on the above or any other zimniki. We can also, of course, organise completely off-road trips in areas where there are not even zimniki.

Please see the links below to some of our standard itineraries. Some, like the Archangel trip, are long overland tours, although not quite as extreme as the great ximniki mentioned above. Others, such as the Dolgans migration tour, are ones that do not usually involve an overland expedition but can potentially be combined with one. The Dolgan area, for example, is located at the end of a 3000km zimnik from Yakutsk.

Overland expeditions to the Russian Arctic