The winter season can be brutal. People living in the cold parts of the world are always counting down the days until summer, when the sun is shining bright and it's perfect to stroll out during the day without worrying for frostbites and several layers of clothing.
But can you imagine living in the coldest town in the world? Where temperatures can drop as low as -67.8 °C and summer is nonexistent?
Oymyakon is a town in Russia with a population of 500. And since its location is just a few hundred miles from the Arctic Pole, it's recorded as the coldest inhabited town on earth.
The people living on this side of the world must be the toughest people on the planet. To live and survive every day with its dangerously cold weather conditions is a feat in itself. To get there, you must first travel two days in the cold wilderness from its main city, Yakutsk, another brutally cold place you will probably have second thoughts staying in.
Photographer Amos Chapple visited the town in 2013 and 2014 and spent several weeks capturing the daily life of the town's inhabitants, and when interviewed about the experience, he said that he cannot imagine how the people there can survive the town's brutal cold.
He recalled the time when he had to take an overview picture of the town. Because the cold made it so difficult for him to shoot, he took off his gloves to get a proper hold of the camera. After the shoot, he almost lost his thumb to frostbite.
"I had to make a dash for my guesthouse with my hand shoved down my trousers. For the next two weeks the skin on that thumb peeled like some kind of terrible sunburn," Amos said.
The town's inhabitants have several daily activities and tricks to survive. These include eating mostly raw meat, as it is next to impossible to plant vegetables on the ground. If they have to bury their dead, they first have to light the ground on fire for several days, before they can dig the ground. Locals are not that friendly, and to appease the cold, alcohol-drinking is rampant.
But amazingly, the town of Oymyakon is enduring. Even with its harsh weather conditions, the people there survive.
Even with difficulty, Amos Chapple has captured some amazing shots of what's living in the coldest town of the earth is really like, so before you complain about winter, think about Oymyakon, their daily conditions are a hundred times colder than yours.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
