Finally, the time came for me to travel to Eastern Siberia. I was actually looking forward to this since it was a part of Russia I hadn't seen yet and have been getting a bit tired of the usual locations. I'm also very glad that my trip was taking place during the spring-summer instead of the dead of winter. The intermediate city I had to travel to, Krasnoyarsk, is a large Siberian city and said to be the most beautiful city in Siberia. On the outskirts there is a national park area which offered a good hike and pleasant views of the surrounding area. Instead of getting a chance to see that I luckily got to spend the day in the office. Maybe I'll get that opportunity on my next trip out this way. Below is a view of my stops as I traveled from Tyumen to our remote base.
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| Flight Path |
I was only spending a night there and the next day was off to a large oilfield to the north of Kranoyarsk. This was the more 'interesting' and unknown part of the trip as I had to take a plane to a small town near the oilfiield and then jump on a chopper to go the rest of the way. To give you an idea of how far north I was, the town where I would switch to the helicopter was already 163km into the polar circle. The flight was a charter plane set up by the oil company and the plane design was more for function than comfort but just because it lacked comfort didn't mean I was very confident in its functionality.
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| Something resembling a plane |
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| Massive leg room and in-flight meal |
It was easily the worst plane ride I've ever had topping the previous one of flying Moscow to Tyumen when I first arrived in Russia which now seemed more like a flight on Air Force One compared to this one. It had the traditional fold down seats, the leg room was adequate for someone 4 feet tall and the safety card, found in the pocket in front of me, said 'Don't Bother'. I spent the 3+ hour flight with my one knew jammed into the back of the guy in front of me, the other in the aisle. There is the feeling in flights, usually when beginning the final descent where the plane does a few quick drops and you get brief feeling of weightlessness before it stabilizes. Like most people, I absolutely love that feeling so I was pleased this plane did the same thing every few minutes during the entire flight. It was the first time I thought I might need to use the air sickness bag but i held out. To finish the flight the pilots did a triple-tap landing just to make sure they had good contact with the ground. It wasn't a surprise the pilots were the first ones off the plane.
It was a self-service airline so that more revenue could go into purchasing high quality planes and doing proper maintenance, obviously.
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| Baggage Claim - Get it yourself |
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The helicopter ride was the more comfortable part of the trip, even though the first thing I noticed when I boarded is there was a large drop hatch behind me and started worrying about the string and tape that was most likely being used to keep it closed. Anyways, we made it without issue and I took a quick video of the some of the landscape we flew over. It's not very exciting but was a different view than flying over the Gulf. I can't wait for the flight back.
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| well, hi there |
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| Transportation for the 2nd leg of the trip |
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