Taimyr

The Taimyr Peninsula is the northernmost territory on the Asian continent. Lying north of the Arctic Circle, it is washed by the Kara Sea and Laptev Sea.

Taimyr is covered in a blanket of snow for three hundred days a year. In December, it is only daylight between noon to two o’clock. Temperatures of minus fifty degrees centigrade are not uncommon.

The sun first appears in the sky in February. The spring ice begins to flow at the start of May, when the sun stays in the sky for days on end. But the earth remains under snow until the middle of June, when flowers briefly bloom.

Traces of the woolly mammoth and the muskox have been found in Taimyr. In 2000, the world’s only museum of the muskox and mammoth opened in the village of Khatanga. Khatanga is often visited by sporting expeditions, who travel on skies along the drifting ice floes or by helicopter towards the North Pole.

On the right bank of the River Yenisei is Dudinka, which is the administrative centre of Taimyr district and the northernmost town on earth. Norilsk lies two degrees north of the Arctic Circle, at the foot of the Putorana Mountains, which are rich in deposits of nickel, copper and coal.

Taimyr is home to the world’s largest population of reindeer. In May, they begin their annual migration northwards along the canyons of the Putorana Plateau. When autumn comes around, the reindeer return by the same route southward to spend the winter.

The non-urban population of Taimyr is not large and numbers at most forty-six thousand people – Russians, Dolgans, Nenets, Nganasans, Evenks and Entses. These groups engage in reindeer farming, pelt trading, fishing and livestock breeding.