It got down to -24 degrees Fahrenheit in Oymyakon, Russia, over the weekend.
As frigid as that seems, it’s typical for this town, long known as the coldest inhabited place on Earth. If that kind of number is hard to wrap your brain around, such a temperature is so cold that people here regularly consume frozen meat, keep their cars running 24/7 and must warm the ground with a bonfire for several days before burying their dead.
It’s hard to know why anyone would want to live in such a place, and harder still to imagine why anyone would want to visit. But photographer Amos Chapple just couldn’t resist.
“I shoot travel photos aimed at the news sections of papers and need a headline to hang a story on,” the New Zealander said. “‘The coldest place on Earth’ is pretty irresistible.”
He traveled more than 10,000 miles to reach this village of 500 residents tucked away in a remote corner of Siberia. It’s so nasty that planes can’t land during the winter, and it takes two days to arrive by car from Yakutsk, the nearest major city (it’s 576 miles away).
