The Coldest Village on Earth (Lost my health for this video) -71°C, -96°F

A frozen wolf. If you don’t move, you freeze. Imagine a village where temperatures
drop as low as minus 71.2°C. This is Oymyakon. Just to stay alive, I’m wearing more than 20 layers of clothing, weighing nearly 14 kilos. Stepping outside from a warm 30°C home means facing a temperature drop of over 100 degrees. That’s why I’m also wearing gloves, boots, pants, and a coat,
all made from reindeer fur. And even that’s not enough. And now, I’m about to show you what life is like when simply going outside becomes a battle for survival. Within seconds outside, ice crystals start forming on the eyelashes and the skin starts to sting. The village feels like it’s been abandoned. The cold burned my finger. The cold doesn’t just affect people and wild animals. It stops everything from functioning. Phones don’t work properly and often shut down Cars left outside freeze in just a few hours. Since the ground is always frozen,
no fruits or vegetables can grow here. We boarded a plane in Moscow,
flying east for seven hours to Yakutsk From there, we covered an 18 hour, 900 kilometer road trip. It’s 2 a.m and we’ve finally arrived
at the coldest village in the world. The thermometer reads minus 60.5°C. When we stepped out of the car,
it felt like we were on another planet. The hairs in our nose were frozen,
and we felt them prick with every breath. The dry air makes us cough uncontrollably. Oymyakon is home to around 800 people,
spread across 1.5 square kilometers. Seeing anyone else outside is almost impossible,
as if time itself is frozen in this place. – It’s really cold, we have been walking
around for about 15 minutes. – As you see, my friend’s eyelashes are full of ice. – You can see another ice droplet on his upper lip. – Oymyakon, our land surrounded by mountains. – It gets brutally cold here, the temperature drops
to minus 63°C or even minus 64°C. – Because Oymyakon is located in a basin,
there’s hardly any wind. – The cold just settles in and stays. In this region the ground stays frozen all year round. This layer of frozen earth is called permafrost,
and it can reach hundreds of meters deep. To survive the cold, the villagers built a central heating system. A single coal-powered boiler sends heat
to most homes through pipes. The system must run non-stop — even a short failure
puts everyone at risk. The interiors of the houses differ from traditional village homes. Heating pipes connected to the central boiler run through the rooms to keep the houses warm. To build on the frozen ground, thick wooden beams are first laid down to create a flat base. Then the main logs go on top. A 30-cm thick subfloor is added, followed by insulation,
and finally the finishing floor. Each wall is made of seven layered materials. There is wood on the outside, then basalt wool
as the main insulation barrier. Then plaster, mesh, foam insulation, another layer of plaster,
and finally a wooden panel inside. The windows are triple-glazed, forming a vital barrier
against the bone-chilling temperatures, and the attic is insulated with sawdust and soil. Combined with a stove or heating system,
this setup keeps the residents warm. In nearly every building, the entrance room is
intentionally left unheated. – We freeze everything in the front room. – Look at this refrigerator, natural. – Here, I have frozen milk and frozen meat
that I store in the cold. – As you can see, these first two rooms at the entrance are used for storage and as a refrigerator. These unheated rooms also serve as a buffer
against the freezing cold. – You can see ice and snow covering the interior of the room,
especially the ceiling. In Oymyakon the day begins early,
Yevdokia is already at the barn. Cattle farmers here wrap a cloth around the cow’s udder to protect the sensitive tissue from frostbite, and to keep it clean. – The udder isn’t at risk of freezing anymore, but once the milk starts flowing, we have to be careful. Because of the extreme cold in Oymyakon,
no water pipes run to the buildings, they would freeze almost instantly. The cows must step out into the cold every morning
and make their way to the river to drink. One by one, they step into an icy hell, moving quickly, knowing they must return
before the cold becomes too harsh. Their hair became crusted with ice almost immediately. – This part of the river is not frozen because
it is coming fresh from the mountain. – Underground spring water meets with this river
and keeps this part of the river unfrozen. Then all of a sudden, my whole face went numb. I couldn’t move the muscle on the left side,
like I was having facial paralysis. When my nose started freezing, Yevdokiya noticed right away. – Ohh! Yeah. – Is it frostbite? – Yeah. The cold shrinks the blood vessels and eventually
reduces blood circulation. Without enough warmth, water inside each cell
freezes into ice crystals, causing the cells to rupture and triggering a stabbing pain and tissue to die. – You should cover your face, like this. – Walk while covering your face. – Be careful, or it might turn black. From this point on, until the end of the documentary shoot, I won’t be able to stay outside
for more than 10 minutes at a time or my already frostbitten nose could get even worse. But as the documentary progresses and the
temperatures drop even further, we’ll be pushing our limits to show you
what survival here truly demands. – Here is the cure! – This is aloe and just alcohol. – You soak it like this and apply it to the area that’s frozen. – And don’t rub it, okay? – Otherwise, you’ll damage the vessels and the capillaries. – And it’ll lead to sores. Then Yevdokia began her daily chores by hanging freshly washed clothes in the yard. Within just minutes, they completely froze solid. – Her clothes are completely frozen. – My hands are freezing. After that, she headed into the barn to milk the cows. – I keep Yakut cows because they produce
really high-quality milk. – The fat content can reach 7 to 8% – As you can see, there is some ice and snow
covering the ceiling, but it is warm here. – The sides are also covered in snow. – You can see some droplets from the ceiling,
that is because of the humidity. The air is thick with the smell of hay, warm milk, and livestock. – Now we’re gonna meet a horse master. We’re about to see the wild Yakutian horses
in their natural habitat. – Mikhail. – Ruhi. – Here are the Yakut horses. – The conditions here are so harsh that
only they have been able to adapt. – What is the temperature today? – It’s somewhere around minus 50 degrees celsius here. – It’s also hard to be outside for a long time. – We have a system of fences in the open area. – They mostly graze freely. These Yakutian horses don’t need heated shelters as they can endure minus 70°C outdoors day and night. – Unlike regular horses, they are short. – This also helps them to stay outside during winter, – because a short body means it can radiate
heat to a smaller area. – Their body looks very puffy, very rich in fat and round. – This is because of their thick fur, and also their horseshoes are very tall, allowing them to stand on this freezing
ground for a very long time – They’re not captured, they’re just being fed here. – Their body means food. – This is horse meat, they eat it here. – As you can see, it got a lot of fat. – This is one packet, a packet of horse meat. – This was ordered and it’s going to be shipped to a customer. This large pile of hay has been stored since summer. It’s the main food supply for the horses during winter. Mikhail offered us a taste of his horse’s meat and liver, which is only eaten raw and frozen in this region. – Raw horse meat. – It’s full of vitamins and good stuff. – Since we don’t have fruit or vegetables here,
we get our vitamins from meat. – It tastes like ice, I can’t feel the taste of it because it is frozen. – This is the liver. In Oymyakon, daylight lasts only about
four and half hours in January. It’s 3:00 p.m. now. As darkness falls, we’re calling it a day. Before cars, animals like horses, cattle, and of course,
reindeer were used for transportation. – Reindeers are very important in this region, not just for transportation but also for its meat, skin and milk. About half a kilometer beyond the village center,
frozen forests of Oymyakon begin. In this village, most people herd animals for a living. But for those like Ivan, hunting becomes
the main source of income. – I am a man of the forest. – These lands are my hunting grounds. – And here is my tent, my home. – He’s making fire now. – We need this fire because it is too cold here. – We must walk on the paths. – The ice underneath is thin. We made our way to the frozen river to check
the fishing net he had set the day before. Ivan warned our cameraman just in time,
he was about to step onto a cracked patch of ice. One wrong step could cause him to fall into the water… – Ooo Heyy! …and get wet. – In the winter, when it was just as cold,
my dad was out riding his horse in the woods. – He fell through the ice and started freezing right away. – Realizing that there was no warm shelter nearby
and no chance of rescue, he made the decision to shoot himself, to avoid a slow, painful death. – Oh, some water splashed on the lens. – It’s already frozen. Our gear was already struggling to work in this temperature, and now this frozen lens is useless and we’ll
have to give up on it. To get the net, he is removing the ice
from the hole using a small shovel. The fish remained alive for only a few seconds
after touching the freezing air. – The water was warm, but now on the surface,
this fish is shocked. – It’s completely frozen. To make it easier to cut, he is warming the frozen fish by rubbing it with his hands. He is carefully slicing it into thin pieces. – Frozen and raw wild fish. – When it’s frozen you feel like you’re just eating ice. – You should eat with salt. – Fish are loaded with vitamins in the winter. – Inside the tent it’s warm as you can see
the outer part is completely frozen. – He’s feeding the fire and sharing some of the fish to nature. – O spirit of nature, accept our gift. – Bless us with a successful hunt and grace us
with the abundance of your land. According to his shamanic belief,
he must keep the spirit of the hunt satisfied, or next hunt, he might come up empty. We’re heading into the wilderness. Ivan wants to hunt something big. Looks like something’s been through here. There are footprints and little patches of urine left behind. – Look, roe deer tracks. – We’re getting close. Because I stayed out in the cold for more than 10 minutes, I’ve started to feel numbness in my nose again. I have to be more careful. – I don’t feel my… nostrils. – Okay. – From that side, it ran towards the forest. – That’s where I’ll set the trap. He hopes to catch a large animal. The hunter knows that the animal follows
the same path everyday. So he is placing the trap along his daily route. He is covering the trap with snow. He is using a dog’s tail to remove the traces smoothly. We’ll return to this later to see what he catches. But first, Ivan wants to check the trap he set yesterday. He scans the snowy landscape carefully. – Everything here is like a book to me. – When the snow falls, I track how many animals
there are by their footprints. – I already know how many animals live in this area. The Sakha are a Turkic people who migrated from Central Asia. And I’m from Türkiye, a country whose
roots also trace back to the same region. A solid catch. – He got a hare. A very big one. Quite enough for all of us to eat. It wasn’t the trap that killed it, the freezing cold did
as he lay there, stuck and helpless. – So, the nature has no joke here. This trap is smaller than the one we set today. I’m curious to see what the next catch will be. But for now, there will be meat on the fire tonight. – In Oymyakon, there are a lot of hares. – During the war, it was actually because of
hunting hares that our people survived. Tamara cooked the hare and prepared
a dinner table at her house – It does not have any fat. It’s a very lean meat Some of the upcoming scenes were
among the hardest to capture. Thanks to the help of The Ulengovs — the leading YouTube channel on rural Russia — we were able to make it happen. At the first light of morning, we come across something unexpected near the house, a giant snake sculpture. It’s entirely made of cow waste. Weighing more than 360 kilograms,
it was built by a local farmer. The region’s subzero climate also
makes plumbing systems inoperable. If water pipes were installed, the water inside
would freeze almost instantly Instead, residents meet their needs, such as washing their hands from water they had previously stored in tanks. – Our sink is old There’s a bucket underneath to catch the water, when it fills up, we just take it outside and dump it. Once again, the absence of plumbing infrastructure means
that houses have no indoor showers or toilets. Instead, these essential facilities are
built in the gardens, inside unheated cabins. The lack of a sewage system means that human waste
remains where it is accumulated.. Since waste freezes instantly upon exposure to the air,
it often accumulates into frozen columns. Sometimes reaching up to one or two meters in height
before eventually being broken down When someone has to use the bathroom,
they need to put on a lot of clothes, and they must be fast to not get frozen. Using these toilet is never a pleasent experience
but this one is different, it is heated. But the problem with it, it cannot be ventilated
as the cold disrupts the heating system. – Ohh! Look. Ahh! This type of toilet is still preferred to be protected from the cold despite the unpleasant odor that accumulates inside. To bathe, cook, wash dishes,
or simply drink, clean water is essential. But getting it is a whole other process that takes a lot of effort. People here collect blocks of river ice and melt
them to get fresh water for daily use. Right now you’re looking at a vast white blanket of snow, but under there’s a frozen river, the only source of water. He’s using a chisel to cut into the thick ice. – You have to work quickly if it’s cold. – Otherwise you’ll freeze. As we carve out solid blocks one after another,
we lift them and place them onto the sled – One, two, three! – Haha! Yeah! We’ve loaded as many ice blocks as a sled can carry. – Our ancestors used to transport ice with oxen. – Nikolai, how long are these gonna last? – I have a big family. – It’ll last us two, maybe three weeks. These huge blocks are kept
either in a cold room inside the house or just outside in the backyard. – They put them in a barrel and let them
melt and then they’ll drink it. The ice blocks we collected together will not only
be used in his own home, but also shared with neighbors
so they can use the clean water to bathe. In this village a bathing routine
doesn’t start with turning on a tap, but with chopping wood. The boy is grabbing a large chunk of ice
given by Nikolai and he is bringing it inside. – Our grandparents take baths for two hours. – We usually stay for about an hour and a half. – How long does it take for you to complete your bath? – The whole process takes around four or five hours. – We bathe once a week, on Saturday or Sunday. The next step is to turn frozen shampoo
into liquid near the stove. They are rinsing themselves using a ladle. When they finish, they are dressing quickly
as they will step outside from 60°C to minus 54°C, a difference of 114°C. After their weekly bath ritual ends, the
next morning begins early. It’s 7:30 a.m. And, children are waking up to a freezing
cold morning, still pitch black outside. Thanks to this simple indoor tank, the kids can wash their faces and brush their
teeth in the warmth of the house. But for other needs, the kids still have to use the outdoor toilet. Jana helps her daughters get dressed for school. The children wear many layers of clothing for their commute. Before they leave, Jana wraps a wool shawl
tightly around their faces, covering their mouths and noses to
protect them from the biting cold. Now they are ready to go outside. The walk to school is about half a kilometer. Every winter morning, Nikolai walks his daughters. The school remains open in Oymyakon unless
temperatures drop below bone chilling minus 55°C. Below that point, it’s too dangerous to go outside. Today the thermometer reads minus 51°C. As the kids arrive at school, daily life for people like Ivan is focused on survival and hunting. – Ivan has got a lot of animals here. – He even has a frozen wolf. He caught this wolf before dawn—about
two hours ago—in the trap we set together. – It died because of the cold when it couldn’t move. If you don’t move in the cold, you die. This is a male one. Ivan will sell the skin of the wolf, and take the meat of it and make another trap, put the meat in the trap and he will hunt a bear. He’s showing us his hunting collection These are the pelts of the foxes
he tracked throughout the winter. – This one was a fully grown bear. – These bears were killed because
they kept attacking my livestock. – Every year they come onto my land, and
each time there are more of them. The cold in Oymyakon is so extreme, even the most durable vehicles would
fail without proper preparation. If a vehicle is left outside for even a few
hours without the engine running, it completely freezes and won’t start again
without a full defrosting process. – How are you planning to unfreeze your car? – We’ll use a jet heater. – We’re not sure if it’ll start. Every part is frozen solid, metal, fuel, oil, even the battery. They start by brushing off the heavy
snow that’s built up on the car. – The tire has turned solid like a rock. – It was minus 56°C outside. The tire’s gone flat not because of a leak, but because cold temperatures cause
the air molecules inside to shrink. – They are going to install this to heat the vehicle. – We try to close it tightly so that the warm air
does not escape out, but stays inside. – Take this one. – It’s too cold outside. – Because of this, everything needs to be kept warm. – Since the car is diesel, the diesel fuel
in the tank completely froze. – The car will stay like this for about 3, 4 hours. If a local is lucky enough to have a heated garage, they can store their vehicle there for months
without risking the engine. As the car was being defrosted, we made
our first stop at one of these garages. – The door is very well insulated. There is no open spot in this garage. They use this material. You can see the wall—layer upon layer. And, there are pipes here to heat the garage. – We heated the car for three hours. – Now we’re going to try starting it. The accumulator is installed. And the oil level is checked using the dipstick. – It’s the first time he opened the door. – Yeah! – Great. – This vehicle brought back from death. – Now we’ll try to leave the place. In Oymyakon, survival isn’t about conquering nature
—but about living in harmony with it. Guided by ancient shamanic wisdom, the Yakut people don’t fight the cold; they respect it, and endure within its rules. – Look, the temperature does not rise at all. Here, even the cruelest winters are met not with fear, but with ritual—and the unshakable belief that
nature gives as much as it takes. This isn’t just survival. It’s coexistence. Huge thanks to my dear friend Turgut Ekim, who was with me every step of the way during this journey. He also filmed a video in Oymyakon, where he accepted an extraordinary invitation from a local family, and captured daily life in this freezing village. Also, while filming with Turgut, we jumped
into a frozen river at minus 55°C — one of the most extreme experiences of my life. If you want to catch this unseen footage of the journey, and get a much closer look at the
region’s culture and traditions, click here to watch his documentary. Last but not least, click the link in the
description or scan the QR code,