Extreme Northern James

Petropavlosk-Kamchatsky, Kamchatka Krai, January 2, 2020 My decision to go to Kamchatka for the first week of January was made after much deliberation as to where exactly I wanted to go.  The New Year vacation is the longest that I get during the school year, and with eight days to go wherever I please, I am naturally inclined to go somewhere far away in Russia.  For a couple months I had my sights set on a city which fascinates me called Yakutsk, which is in the far-northern and eastern part of Russia.  It is called the coldest city in the world, with temperatures reaching minus 60, or more.  I read about life in Yakutsk and watched videos of how people survive there, hurrying from building to building wearing thick fur coats to avoid the discomfort of extreme cold.  Tickets there were not so expensive, but they weren't exactly cheap either.  And the more I thought about it, the more I asked myself: what am I going to do for eight days in minus 60 degree w...

Makhachkala, Republic of Dagestan, September 21 2019 I decided to go to Dagestan because a coworker of mine, Katya, had invited me to go there with her family as they were 'seeking better weather' before the dreary overcast of Moscow began.  But at the last minute, they canceled their plans due to a 'poor forecast'- or perhaps they were simply hesitant- I don't know.  The tickets were so cheap and I had recently come back from Lake Baikal and the city of Irkutsk, so I had a massive case of the travel bug.  I doubled down and bought a cheap ticket to fly there on an early Saturday morning and come back on a Monday morning- a short trip. I didn't know much about Dagestan, which got its name from a Turkish-Persian hybrid meaning 'mountain land'.  I knew that it was located in Kavkasia, which is Russian for the Caucasus mountain region; I have become accustomed to referring to it as such.  A two hour flight south of Moscow, Dagestan is in the North...