Teriberka is expensive now. In the footsteps of Leviathan: Polar Teriberka. Drunks and Lapps

“Leviathan” by Andrei Zvyagintsev brought the director a Golden Globe, and the small village of Teriberka in the north of the Murmansk region, where the key scenes of the film were filmed, world fame. In the three years since the premiere, four hotels, a hostel, a restaurant were opened in the village and the third Arctic festival “Teriberka” was held. New life". “Snob” decided to see how “Leviathan” influenced the life of the village

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- So this is the Teriberka River! - We've only driven halfway.

— You didn’t specify... Last year tourists got lost here just like that. Family with a small child. We walked for two weeks. Well, at least there was a fishing rod. And my son has some gingerbread in his backpack.

Panorama of Teriberka

To the right of the bridge stood the house of Kolya from Leviathan

Teriberka is a godforsaken place on the shores of the Barents Sea. 1973 kilometers from Moscow, 120 from Murmansk, the last 40 kilometers along a broken dirt road. Just 10 years ago people were allowed into the border zone with special passes. At the end of the 2000s, the village, lost between rocks and tundra, attracted fans of hiking, as well as kite surfers who went to ride the waves of the sea that turned into the Arctic Ocean.

Previously, there were two villages on the coast - old Teriberka, where the first settlements of Pomors appeared in the 16th century, and young Lodeynoye. In the mid-nineties they were united into one village: Teriberka became the “old Teriberka”, and Lodeynoye became the “new”. The road between the villages goes past copper-colored mountains and hummocky, moss-strewn hills, on which blackened snow can be seen here and there.

New Teriberka: displaced people and police in the bathhouse

As soon as we entered the village, we dived into thick fog. Even in July, the temperature here rarely rises above 11 degrees.

We settled on the outskirts of new Teriberka in a two-story house. For the first minutes, it seemed as if there was nothing outside the windows - only a green meadow, an overgrown lake and fog. Unusual silence - you can’t hear any seagulls or dogs, only the wind.

The village is tiny. Five or six five-story buildings and a dozen small houses. More than half of all buildings - both stone and wooden - are abandoned and destroyed, with yellow notices saying “Your house will be moved no later than 2017.” All houses, including seemingly abandoned ones, are hung with satellite dishes. Old people are swarming around their plots.

One of dozens of destroyed houses in Lodeynoye

New home for displaced people from emergency housing

Previously, there was a school and a kindergarten in two villages, but now they remain only in Lodeynoye. The school does not have enough teachers; some lessons are conducted via Skype.

In Lodeynoye there are three grocery stores with Moscow prices, a bakery and a hardware store. Not far from the local church, on Pionerskaya Street, there is a house that has everything: village administration, post office, Sberbank, library, hospital, police, pharmacy, housing and communal services and a bathhouse.

Library director Tatyana Nesterova immediately signed us up for the reading room. According to her, in total, “either 885 or 895 people” are registered in the library - these are both local residents and tourists who are interested in the history of Teriberka. Locals, according to the director, read the same books as in “any other library”: science fiction, romance novels and women’s detective stories.

Tatyana Nesterova, director of the Teribersky library:

Photo: Natalya Vasilyeva Director of the Teribersky Library Tatyana Nesterova

When I was seven or eight years old, these five-story houses were built in Lodeynoye. And in that Teriberka, Nina Ivanovna works for me, the Pomorye service department, this is my mother. When I was in elementary school, I went to her work. There was a boat, there was no bridge, you could only get there by sea. When I went to her library, it seemed to me that it was a huge village. So many people!

In the late seventies people began to leave. When I went to school in 1976, there were 32 of us in the first class. When we finished elementary school, there were 20-something left. Within three years, my classmates and their parents left here. This happened not only here, but probably throughout the country: people from small towns and villages moved to the city for a better life.

Now a lot of young families with children have left under the program of relocation from emergency housing to Kola. Those who don’t want to move have a house built.

There is plenty of work in Teriberka. We work in the library, someone at school, in kindergarten, at the post office, we have Sberbank, Serebryanskaya Hydroelectric Power Station, our people also work there. The road transport section is where my husband is. The fish factory is private, all our people work there. There is also a collective farm in that Teriberka, all local too. Those who want to work work, naturally. Men catch beluga. And I, for example, spend my evenings in the greenhouse. We live normally, no worse than in the city, and maybe even better. It's quiet here, it's good.

I ask what problems there are in Teriberka, Tatyana first refuses, and then talks about two troubles - a bad road and high prices in stores. “That’s why we go to Murmansk for groceries,” she says.

In the best years, five thousand people lived in Teriberka, recently - a little more than a thousand, and now - about 800. Two hundred people moved from dilapidated houses near Murmansk. Those who refused to leave Teriberka were given apartments in a new three-story multi-colored house near the school in Lodeynoye. It is due in September.

Old Teriberka: ship graveyard and Gazprom

You can walk from Lodeynoye to old Teriberka in 40-50 minutes, five minutes by car is enough, there are no buses. Along a dusty dirt road stands a church, a chapel, a fish factory, a hotel and a dilapidated port. In an hour, at most a dozen cars pass along the road.

On the approach to old Teriberka, the rusted skeletons of ships are buried in the water. The house of the main character of “Leviathan” Kolya stood here, but nothing remained of the film set - only the steps to the pier.

Old Teriberka is cut in half by the so-called Gazprom road. It runs through the entire village, past a dump of old Lada cars and a cemetery, through a mountain crevice and out to a small bay. The road was supposed to connect Teriberka with the Gazprom gas liquefaction plant, but the plant was never built. Rockfalls are possible on the road, locals warn. Once a mother bear and her cubs were seen there; a family with children stumbled upon them.

Photo: Natalya Vasilyeva The lake near which the Gazprom road ends

There is a two-story cultural center near the Gazprom road. Here they teach how to play the piano, button accordion, and accordion, the oldest Pomeranian choir rehearses, photographs and paintings are exhibited, and there is a library. The Museum of Pomeranian Life was recently opened. Nearby, in the building of the former administration, there is an office of a Gazprom subsidiary, and next door is an abandoned hospital. Throughout the village there are rickety gray houses of one or two floors, and it seems that no one has lived in them for a long time.

Drunks and Lapps

On the way to old Teriberka we met Kirill, our guide. He hitchhiked to the festival. “I went to a rave at the end of the world. I went for two days and stayed for a week,” says Kirill. At first he lived in a tent on the seashore in old Teriberka, hung out among the rocks, drank with local alcoholics, and when a storm began, he joined the crowd of Norwegians.

Chum built by the Norwegians

Sign outside a local resident's house

Guys from Russia and Norway gathered in the tent (wigwam, tipi, and in Norwegian lovva): journalists, cameramen, photographers, builders. Actually, they live in a hotel, and use the tent as a kitchen and meeting place. Together they are building a mobile library: they want to cover a Ural truck with planks and collect more Russian classics “for the whole world.” The administration of Teriberka has allowed two dilapidated houses to be dismantled for the library, the locals are already aware - some are helping to build, others are asking where to take the books.

Together with Kirill, we went into a dilapidated wooden house, where the somewhat naive, kind alcoholic Kostya lives. The stove is on, there are shabby sofas along the walls, there is no light or water in the house. Kostya is from Murmansk and comes to Teriberka to fish. He lives in the house of his friend Filipich, with whom he goes to sea on a boat. “Border guards prohibit fishing for crab and salmon, but there is cod. There’s enough to eat.” Friends sell some of the fish to Murmansk stores.

Filipich will arrive only in three days, Kostya drinks and suffers from the dirty tricks of his drinking companions. While drinking, Kostya hid 10 thousand rubles in a suitcase and woke up - there was no money. I fell asleep again - my tablet was stolen. I sent “one woman” for vodka, gave 700 rubles, but she never returned. And on this day Kostya doesn’t want to drink with them at all: “They are dirty. And again they’ll steal something.”

During the festival, guests of Teriberka began to relieve themselves at Kostya’s house, so he hung up a sign “Come piss in the house,” put a glass in the toilet - and they began to leave him 50-100 rubles. So in a couple of days he collected one and a half liters of vodka. One day a man started shitting right under the windows. Kostya was indignant.

“You have a thousand, just don’t blow your mind,” he said in response, holding out the bill.

“For a thousand, you can even shit on the roof,” answered Kostya.

According to Kostya, people continue to live in the destroyed houses, but often there is only one person per 8 apartments. In a couple of houses there are alcoholics, in another there is an elderly woman who is waiting to be rehoused. There is no electricity or water anywhere. Kostya believes that no more than 50 people live in old Teriberka.

We enter a rickety building that seems uninhabited; there is a guitar deck hanging on a cabinet in the hallway. In another house, sheets are dried in the attic. These houses will soon be demolished. According to the plan of the local authorities, only two three-story houses, small dachas and hotels will remain. It is impossible to build permanent residential buildings here - the old Teriberka is located in a flood zone if the nearby hydroelectric power station suddenly breaks through.

On the outskirts of old Teriberka there is a farm, a former collective farm, where cows and calves graze. Near it there is a sign with a three-line inscription “No entry.” Many years ago, Lapps (or Sami, a small Finno-Ugric people) lived on this street; they kept about 200 reindeer, but then they sold them all to Lavozero. Former farm worker Mikhail, a short man over 60, whom we meet when he is walking his dog Taiga, tells me about this. Mikhail says that he saw the plagues of the Sami, but in his childhood they already lived in wooden houses. “There were also houses on the bank where the film was filmed. There’s nothing left,” he says sadly.

Mikhail, former electrician:

Photo: Natalya Vasilyeva Former farm worker Mikhail

I was born in Teriberka. Now I’m retired, I need to rest sometime, otherwise some people struggle and struggle until they get old. I live with my wife in that three-story house. For the winter we go to Murmansk, but there you only go to the store. Pulls here. In winter we watch TV, not Channel One, of course, but what we like. And in the summer we go foraging for mushrooms and berries, and fishing again.

When the road gets swept up in winter, you can’t leave Teriberka for a week or two. They used to clean the road, but now they have stopped. But no one is starving, they don’t drop food on helicopters: I looked in the pantry and there’s food for you.

Previously, there was a border zone here and people were allowed in with special passes. And now the border guards are foolish, what is there to protect? The border is far away. It is also prohibited to catch crabs. What is prohibited? Full of crabs! There are so many of them that they scared away all the fish.

Leviathan is a good movie. Alexey Serebryakov is the right guy. I shook his hand, he was simple, no frills. After the film, there were more tourists. Some of us say, why are you coming, this is our land! Even Murmansk. But I don’t have such thoughts - we live in the same country.

Old school in Teriberka

Not far from the local cemetery there is an old three-story school with broken windows. You can get inside from both the main entrance and two spare ones. Kirill from Moscow says that he has already gone to school twice in a week, and once with local boys aged 10-13. Among the teenagers there was the most desperate one - he threw and broke everything, and in the biology classroom he split a model of the brain.

We enter the school from the back door. The inside smells of stagnant dust and there are wires hanging from the ceiling. The gym has no floor, but does have basketball hoops. Books, slides for filmstrips, and posters are scattered in the classrooms. There is graffiti on the wall: “I am a bohemian.” “It’s like I was in Pripyat,” says Kirill.

There are few children in Teriberka; many come here only for the holidays. They wander between playgrounds, ride on swings, hang on horizontal bars, and ride bicycles. “We do the best we can,” says a blond boy of 11-12 years old, who is fishing with a friend on the pier at the port. “Flounder is everywhere here, near the port you can go,” shows a fish the size of a hand, “and there,” he waves his hand towards the sea, “there!” - and spreads his arms as far as he can.

Frozen Chinese

A large orange bus stops near a store in old Teriberka and tourists get off. “Oh, the Chinese have arrived,” says the guy who is painting the wooden extension near the House of Culture.

When there is snow all around, snowboarders go to Teriberka, and kitesurfers go to Teriberka in the spring. Most tourists come in June-August, when the air warms up to 20 degrees and above. From September to December there is a decline. And then the Chinese come.

“The Chinese are hunting for the northern lights,” says sound engineer Igor, who works at the House of Culture. - They are offended if he is not there. They have a belief that if you conceive a child during the northern lights, then a great destiny awaits him.”

Barents Sea in winter

In winter, when the road to Teriberka was covered with snow, power and water were turned off in the village for a week, mobile communications were lost, and bank terminals stopped working, says Igor. In the old village they turned on the generator, but in the new one, he claims, for some reason they didn’t. “And here are the Chinese. They don’t have cash, they don’t give them loans - no one knows them. Some came up to me and said, “Take us away,” but how can I take them away? Someone fed them."

Igor, sound engineer at the House of Culture:

In winter, the road to the city was blocked 22 or 23 times. The snow is removed by auger rotors, but they are old, constantly breaking down, and no one wants to help. We then wrote an open letter, told how this problem could be solved, and offered to update the fleet of equipment. They distributed the letter to stores, and in one evening 200 people signed it in the new Teriberka, and another 30 in the old one. And that’s in one evening. And the next morning all the letters were gone. They say that the head of Teriberka herself took the letter from one store. We then complained to the prosecutor's office, and she made a representation to the governor.

On June 1, the head of the Kola region, Alexander Likholat, came to the village. He then said that snow is no longer relevant, why wave your fists after a fight. He refused to update the fleet of equipment, saying that there was no money. A new screw at the factory costs 6.2 million rubles. As soon as Likholat left, the road was closed again.

There are problems here. When I worked under a contract, I was not paid a salary for a year. I came to the administration and they told me: “There is no money, write to the prosecutor’s office.” I wrote, a week later they gave me the money. Then the administration was offended, saying why didn’t you come to us right away.

My girlfriend and I rented an apartment for 8,300 rubles, and then the owner kicked us out and rented us out to kiters for 45 thousand. He said that it was only for two months, and when the surfers moved on with their lives, he apologized very much. During the festival, one one-room apartment was rented here for 20 thousand for two days. The hostess said it out of the blue, and they agreed.

Teriberka in inscriptions

Many of us leave for Murmansk, St. Petersburg, where it is simpler, but here we have to fuss here and there, plow here and there. You can get a job as a security guard at a hydroelectric power station, but not everyone is hired; for example, if you drink, they definitely won’t hire you. After Leviathan, there are more people working with tourists.

I don't want to go anywhere. Those who say there is nothing to do here are lying. There's plenty to do. After the film, my life changed dramatically: before I did nothing, but now I communicate with such people!

Urbanists in Teriberka

In July, the third Arctic festival “Teriberka. New life". It was organized by the LavkaLavka farmer cooperative and the Bolshaya Zemlya Rural Development Fund. Back in 2015, one of the founders of LavkiLavka, Boris Akimov, said that he wanted to “breathe life” into the village and turn it into a “paradise.”

At the Teriberka festival. New life"

This is how urbanists see Teriberka

Three thousand people came to the festival. The organizers set up a campsite on the seashore (not far from the Zhiguli dump), set up two stages, invited artists, and organized several lectures. While some were talking about urbanism, others were riding boats on the sea and watching birds, others were watching circus performers, and others were swimming, squealing, in the icy water.

All that remains from the festival are the stands near the House of Culture. One published excerpts from the concept of the “Master Plan for the Teriberka Eco-Village”, which was prepared by urbanists from the USA, the Netherlands and Russia. They proposed clearing Lodeynoye, installing children's and playgrounds and sports equipment on the streets, organizing 25-45 places where you can relax or take shelter from bad weather, and building a new village with two-story houses.

The authors of the concept propose to divide Old Teriberka into two parts: the ethnoterritory and the territory of the dachas. On the ethno-territory, by the sea, build one-story houses, like the Pomors, and two-story boarding houses, similar in appearance to barracks, put up wood warehouses and antique telegraph poles. It is proposed to divide the second territory into land plots from 4 to 15 acres for dachas. Urbanists also propose creating a warning and evacuation system in case a hydroelectric power station breaks through.

Mayor of Teriberka: My dream has come true - we will have asphalt

Photo: Natalya Vasilyeva Head of the rural settlement of Teriberka Tatyana Trubilin

Tatyana Trubilina headed Teriberka in 2013, and this September she will run for a second term. After the release of Leviathan, she criticized Andrei Zvyagintsev for showing “dirty, unwashed Russia” in his film. “The film crew did not see anything good that was happening in our village: what a wonderful House of Culture we have, a library equipped with all multimedia systems and a satellite dish. Neither the film studio nor the director approached us with a request for help in filming. But they left a lot of garbage behind,” Trubilina in January 2015.

Now she is sure that it is thanks to her that tourists go to Teriberka.

“If we, myself and maybe others, hadn’t expressed our opinion about the film, it would have gone unnoticed,” she says. — A lot of reporters from all over came to me, I even had it recorded. Such companies came, newspaper men, I had never even heard of such things before, I saw them for the first time in my life. Almost from Africa they came here and did interviews.”

After the release of Leviathan, the mayor believes, the lives of locals have not changed at all. “It doesn’t affect us in any way that festivals are held here. Muscovites are having fun, relaxing, but the population is still living,” she says.

At the same time, Tatyana Trubilina is sure that the urbanists are right and one day Teriberka will turn into a holiday village.

Tatyana Trubilina, head of Teriberka:

When we had a festival that year, I was also interviewed. I said that I have a dream that there will be asphalt here - in our rural settlement of Teriberka. You know, my dream has come true, we will have him. It is still very expensive to pave the 40 kilometers to Teriberka. But I think that by 2019 the issue will be resolved.

In 2015, we planned to organize a connection between Lodeyny and Teriberka. Even the Kola region provided us with a car. We put it in order and asked people 50 rubles for the trip. Why did you ask? To buy gasoline. After all, you have to go to something. But people refused, they said it was too expensive and they didn’t want it. We launched it, he literally went once. And no one else came. That’s why we canceled the flights, because the driver has to pay, and gasoline has to be bought, and we still have to go for gasoline. And our people are accustomed to not paying for anything.

Former mayor of Teriberka: In 5 years nothing will happen here

Before leaving Teriberka, we go to visit Tatyana Nereiko, who led the village from 2003 to 2007. While working as head, she launched a program to resettle residents from dilapidated houses. The village administration’s plans to build an asphalt road in Lodeynoye surprised her: “Why do we need a road in the village?! We need a normal road to Teriberka. And now we’re ruining our cars for 40 kilometers.”

Nereiko is one of those who call Teriberka “our land.” And she doesn’t like the fact that tourists come here at all. She does not agree with the festival organizers who declare the development of Teriberka. “Why resettle people to develop it? I think that if Teriberka is developing, it will be in the direction of private business. It’s for their own pockets, but definitely not for the benefit of the rural settlement,” she says. When I ask Nereiko what she sees Teriberka like in five years, she sighs: “Honestly, I don’t see it.”

Tatyana Nereyko, former head of Teriberka:

There is nowhere to work. And they are already accustomed to not working. Basically these are people leading, say, an antisocial lifestyle. Why do people from Murmansk come here to work? Yes, because locals work until the first salary or until the first ruble. And then they go on a drinking binge, that’s all. I manage some things here myself—there’s no cleaning lady to be found.

Even before Leviathan, we had enough sailors who fished in the sea and brought in income. But Leviathan, of course, brought a certain percentage of tourists.

Although this brought problems to the local residents. Firstly, prices in stores have increased. And now we bring food from Murmansk, we buy food for a week for 5-7 thousand, here these products would cost 10-12 thousand. I understand entrepreneurs, because there is a demand, but okay, we have a car, but what should a retired grandmother who lives alone do?

Secondly, this is a dump. Historically, we have a landfill, and those who come here point to it and take photographs. But, my dears, she has grown exponentially because of you. Thirdly, garbage in the tundra. That year the tundra burned five times. We always came to pick cloudberries, but then we arrived - everything was black, scorched earth.

Around Teriberka

In March-April, beluga whales and killer whales approach Teriberka and chase cod into the sea. A blue whale was once seen here. Whales appear infrequently in the bay, but in the open sea they can be seen throughout the spring.

The main attraction of Teriberka is the waterfall. Any local will show you the way to it. The path to the waterfall passes by the weather station, along the seashore, where at high tide the waves crash against the rocks. Near the waterfall lies a large lake, in which green hills are reflected in calm weather.

Along the way you can see stone pyramids. These are seids - sacred stones of the Sami. It is unlikely that there are real waterfalls on the road to the waterfall - most likely, they were built by tourists, collecting stones from the tundra. However, here you can also find seids with “stone legs” - one huge stone lies on two or three smaller stones. It is unlikely that a tourist is capable of this.

You can also just walk across the tundra from hill to hill, from lake to lake. The colors of the tundra are striking, as if someone had deliberately turned up the brightness knob. On the seashore there is a clearing of snow-white dandelions, moss blooms on black stones, there is so much greenery all around that it gives your eyes a rest. And there is such silence that sometimes you can’t hear anything except the waves and the cry of seagulls. And in the hills even the seagulls fall silent.

Prices in Teriberka

Photo: Natalya Vasilyeva In one of the stores in Lodeynoye

In the shop

• The cheapest vodka is 245 rubles
• Cabbage - 70 rubles
• Carrots - 85 rubles
• Beets - 65 rubles
• Small pizza in a bakery - 57 rubles
• Fresh white bread - 43 rubles

At the restaurant

• Ukha - 500 rubles
• Venison stew – 600 rubles
• Scallop in cheese - 600 rubles
• Crab meat - 750 rubles
• Scrambled eggs - 150 rubles
• French fries - 150 rubles
• Tea in a kettle - 350 rubles
• Coffee - 150 rubles

Housing

• Double room in the Ter Hotel in old Teriberka - from 3000 rubles with breakfast
• Double room in a hotel near the fish factory - 2500 rubles with breakfast
• Double room in the Normann hotel in old Teriberka - 2300 rubles
• Place in a bungalow in the tourist complex “Teribersky Coast” - 1800 rubles
• Hostel “Hold the Crab” in Lodeynoye – 1000 rubles
• Accommodation with locals - from 500 rubles

Services

• Boat trip with fishing for the whole day - from 3000 rubles per person, for 4 hours - 2500 rubles
• Ticket to the bathhouse - 110 rubles

Roads of the north in winter: Tersky coast, Teriberka, Tumanny, Kirovsk, to the Norwegian border. April 24, 2017

In the Moscow region, although it is rainy at times, it has long been spring, and in Kola there is still plenty of snow and snowdrifts. Our test trip in February turned out to be very successful, so I can safely recommend that everyone follow our example. In this article I will try to answer the most popular question about the Kola Peninsula: “Well, what about the roads?”

I'll start with the main thing: there are main roads in winter and they are regularly cleaned. The equipment travels systematically and if the weather conditions are tolerable, then getting to Varzuga, Teriberka, Tumannoye or returning from Nikel via Prirechny will not be difficult.

It is worth paying attention to the fact that in the vast majority of cases the road surface is pure ice or densely packed snow. Don't expect asphalt. Considering that, due to the terrain, many roads are winding and have elevation changes, I highly do not recommend driving on all-season or simply bad winter tires. Extremely. I also remind you that no matter how good winter tires are, the laws of physics have not been repealed, so you should not rush along icy roads at high speed.

Now in more detail about what to expect from each direction.

Tersky coast

Grader to Varzuga (47K-011)

Before Varzugi the road is good. There is more ice on the asphalt part, and compacted snow on the grader part. By the way, the snow itself is up to your ass, both literally and figuratively - there are huge snowdrifts almost everywhere.

Asphalt from Kandalaksha to Umbu (47K-010)

There are no turn-offs except to large populated areas, of which there are very few. TO Amethyst shore don't pass.

Kashkarans

IN Kashkarantsi You can easily drive to the lighthouse and admire the White Sea.

Road to Kuzomen

WITH Cuzomenho somehow it’s not entirely clear. After the turn, the grader area and a small parking lot were cleared. There are cars in the parking lot, and further along the road there are only tracks of snowmobiles. But on the other hand, it is clear that the forest road was clearly cleared, and this was not the case in any other place on the snowmobile trails. Fishing forums claim that the only way to the village is by snowmobile.

Towards Khibiny

Of course, you can drive to Apatitov And Kirovsk, and in Kirovsk itself to the botanical garden and Tirvas sanatorium. There is no road to the mountains Even the nearest quarry can only be reached by snowmobile.
Roads to the village October and in Koashvu cleared, covered with compacted snow.

Towards the Norwegian border

The road has been cleared, but there’s no point in driving like crazy on it: drivers on this road sometimes can’t control it even in the summer, and there’s definitely no point in taking risks on winter ice. What looks like dark asphalt in the photo is actually transparent ice.

Highway Murmansk - Norwegian border (R-21)

Border control points in Titovka and at the fork Prirechny – Murmansk – Lotta are working.

Checkpoint Murmansk - Prirechny - Lotta (47K-092 - 47A-059)

Road to Rybachy and Middle From the asphalt exit there is only a snowmobile, you can’t even get to the nearest waterfall.

Turn to Sredny and Rybachy

Get to by car Kola superdeep well no chance, only until the quarry.

Road from Nickel to Murmansk via Prirechny(including entry into the village itself) has been cleared, no problems. On this road we encountered quite heavy fog. To what extent this is a typical phenomenon in that particular area, I do not know. In general, when traveling in the north, you should be prepared for strong fogs at any time of the year.

Highway Nikel - Murmansk via Prirechny (47K-092)

Towards Teriberka and Far Zelentsy

Grader in the direction of Tumannoye and Dalniye Zelentsy (47K-050)

The general asphalt part of the road in that direction has been cleared and, as usual, is covered with ice and snow.
Graders up to Teriberki, Foggy And GES-16 They are regularly cleaned, but there is one “but” :) The cleared road in those places can be swept away very quickly and the main problem here is the wind. Snow drifts sometimes form by the time the special equipment has not even had time to go all the way and turn in the opposite direction. And this is with a wind of only 8-10 m/s! I think it’s not difficult to guess what happens there during stormy winds and snowstorms. The photo below shows snow beginning to cover the road, which had already been cleared earlier that day.

Asphalt part of the road to Teriberka and Dalnie Zelentsy (47K-050).

After GES-16, where the primer begins in Far Zelentsy, you can only get through it on a snowmobile. By car, as experience suggests, you will be able to get there after approximately June 10, and only if they use special equipment to break through the snowfields.

Turn at the hydroelectric station to Dalnie Zelentsy

IN Teriberka getting there is no problem. However, the Gazprom road and the road to the waterfall, of course, are not cleaned; if you want to visit these places, you will have to walk.

In the photo above, notice how the wind is blowing snow across the road. I won’t tire of repeating that in the north the question is: “Is it possible to get there and how comfortable?” It depends quite a lot on the weather. In the morning you can, in the evening you can’t. Or vice versa. Or what other options - it is not always possible to predict this.

Grader to Teriberka (47K-051)

Regarding graders, I would like to note one more point. In winter, the quality of the coating on them, due to compacted snow, seems better than in summer. If in the warm season you drive 60 kilometers per hour, then in winter on straight sections you can do at least a hundred - there will be no shaking. It’s possible, but still not worth it: unexpected snow changes, it’s slippery, and flying, for example, from the Teribersky grader will be high and unpleasant in some places.

The conclusion from all of the above is quite simple: having decent winter tires and a head on your shoulders, traveling around the Kola in winter is no more difficult than in summer! :)

On this trip, I definitely wanted to get to the village of Teriberka, which is located 130 km from Murmansk. This is the only road to the Arctic Ocean in Russia that can be reached without any checkpoints by car or public transport. At first I took these photos purely for myself, but during the trip I received several questions from readers about the quality of the surface and decided to devote a separate post to this road. But it’s really worth it, in general, look.

The road to Teriberka stretches east from Murmansk past the turn towards Severomorsk, a closed military city that is home to the Northern Fleet of the Navy, including nuclear submarines. There is an asphalt road for 90 km to the next fork in the village of Tumanny.

It’s worth warning right away that there are no shops or gas stations along the entire route from Murmansk to Teriberka, so when leaving the hero city, fill up your tank full

Gradually, the road begins to deteriorate and collapse in places, and our speed of movement decreases. In some places our Pradik was jumping up and down like on a springboard, I’m afraid to imagine how it would be possible to fly up here in a passenger car. Military Kamaz trucks constantly drove to the meeting, apparently coming from training exercises.

The bushes gradually disappeared, and vast expanses of rocky tundra opened up to our eyes. It looks amazing in the fall colors!

These fancy wooden structures are snow guards that were installed in places where snow drifts most often occurred. In the background is a power transmission tower structure that I saw for the first time. The places here are swampy, so they are installed on piles and pulled down with cables.

42 kilometers before Teriberka, the asphalt ends and the furious gravel road begins. A grader, even over such a short distance, can shake the soul out of you. The average speed even on Pradika was about 30-40 km per hour.

Reflective plastic posts are installed along the edges of the road, which make it easier to identify the road at night or in winter during a snowstorm.

It would be a sin not to take a photo of the team with the car against the backdrop of such nature and unusual places..

The air here is pristinely clean, and the endless wavy surface is covered with mosses of two colors and hundreds of lakes, which are located at different altitudes.

Around every turn there is a better view than before.

There are hundreds of cairns on one of the hills. We have already seen this near the border of the Arctic Circle. Most likely, another place of power.

Having not been repaired for many years, the snow retainers hardly help anymore, and in winter, during heavy snowfalls and winds, the road gets stuck, and Teriberka becomes cut off from civilization. Until the road is dug up again, food is brought to the village by helicopter.

A huge lake appeared ahead, stretching for tens of kilometers; at first there was a feeling that it was the Teriberk Bay of the Barents Sea, but it turned out that it was just a reservoir. On the Teriberka River there is a cascade of three hydroelectric power stations, which we also passed.

The last 5 km the road is fantastic and the most picturesque. And here are a couple more hills...

And the resorts of the Barents Sea are waiting for you :)

In the next post I will show Teriberka itself and tell you about it in detail.

December 19th, 2015

Do you know what the path to the End of the Earth is? And from polar Murmansk there is a bus that makes it possible to feel this. He goes to Teriberka - a fishing village on the Barents Sea, which became the finale and the most vivid (in every sense of the word) impression of my trip to the Kola Arctic at the end of June this year. I have already seen one of the northern seas - the White Sea - on this trip. But the White Sea is still inland, and the Barents Sea can already be considered part of the Arctic Ocean, although it does not freeze in winter. Teriberka (emphasis on the I!), where I am heading, stands among harsh rocks facing arctic winds. Half abandoned in our time and a very colorful village among the amazing northern nature. And there comes that same feeling that you are at the Edge of the World. The bus goes from Murmansk to Teriberka in the evening and back in the morning. So I have to spend the night there without sleep. And it’s even more interesting, because at the end of June at these latitudes there is a polar day, and the sun does not set around the clock, continuing to shine from the north, that is, just from the sea, creating an amazingly beautiful light. In the first part of the story about one night of the polar day, I will show the road from Murmansk to Teriberka, which only preceded my nighttime impressions.

Teriberka is located 85 kilometers northeast of Murmansk geographically, and 120 kilometers by road. Moreover, if Murmansk is located on the shores of the Kola Bay, which, although it is part of the Barents Sea, looks more like a wide river, then Teriberka is on the open sea. The northern coast of the Kola Peninsula is historically called the Murmansk coast or Murman - presumably, the Pomors named it so from the word “Normans,” that is, in honor of the Vikings. And it was not the Murmansk coast that received its name from the city of Murmansk, but on the contrary - the city was founded only in 1916 under the name Romanov-on-Murman. And it is Teriberka that is the most accessible place where you can see the open Murmansk coast, and therefore the open Barents Sea in general. Other settlements along the coast are mostly closed naval towns with nuclear submarine bases, and the average person cannot get there. There are, however, other places, for example, the Rybachy Peninsula, but not every car can drive there, and there are no populated areas nearby. Therefore, we are going to Teriberka.

The bus leaves Murmansk at six in the evening, and, according to the schedule, goes to Teriberka for four hours, but in fact it arrived there an hour and a half earlier. Return departure is at seven in the morning. This means that I will have the whole night to visit Teriberka and its surroundings.

2. Murmansk bus station. On this green bus, manufactured in the glorious city of Kurgan, I have to go to the End of the Earth... The person on the left, entering the bus, is, by the way, the driver.

Today is Monday, so the bus leaves a little earlier - at 17-40. Once a week he makes a stop at Kola.

3. So, boarding is finally over, let’s set off. Hooray! My epic overnight ride began. Murmansk is still outside the window. The sun is shining brightly, but it is clear that it was raining 15 minutes ago. The weather here, on the edge of the Arctic, is very changeable.

We pass places that are already familiar to me - the center of Murmansk, the entire Kola Avenue from beginning to end.

4. Then we enter the city of Kola - actually a suburb of Murmansk, where we come across some buildings that look like dachas. Yes, there are also dachas in the Arctic Circle! And even vegetable gardens.

5. And this is the city of Kola, which we caught a glimpse of from the bus window. I was impressed by the railway track that runs next to the bus station. It seems that this is the access road of some kind of plant, but in fact it is the protected railway line Kola - Nikel.

6. The city of Kola, as already mentioned, in current realities is a suburb of Murmansk. Therefore, leaving Kola, you can say goodbye to civilization until tomorrow morning - after returning from Teriberka, the landscape of Murmansk nine-story buildings and busy streets unusually hurt my eyes.

7. Road work is underway - the Kola-Murmansk bypass is being repaired, along which you can get from the P-21 "Kola" highway to Severomorsk.

8. But this road junction is left behind, and our bus leaves on an almost deserted and still asphalt road to the End of the Earth. Around the sides there is low-growing forest-tundra. But this is for now... The closer to Teriberka, the more the landscape will change.

There are quite a lot of passengers on the bus. Apparently, these are residents of Teriberka, working in Murmansk and Kola, returning home in the evening. I had already seen photographs of Teriberka on the Internet and had an idea of ​​the decline and ruin in which the village is now. It would seem that the people in such half-abandoned places should not be very pleasant. But this is absolutely not true, exactly the opposite. Residents of Teriberka leave the impression of pleasant and friendly people, completely different from the “residents of the outback”. And this is amazing in combination with the state of the village (I will show this in the following parts). What's the matter? And it's in the North! Life in the Far North is not the same as in the Middle Zone. Weak people cannot live here. Therefore, residents of the Far North, even its most depressing places, leave a very pleasant impression.

Among the passengers was a group of tourists—about five people, among whom was a guy with a broken leg. Having heard snippets of their conversations a couple of times, I realized that they were also from St. Petersburg. Then I met them once again in the middle of the night. Being, as already mentioned, the most accessible place on the open Barents Sea, Teriberka has become very popular among tourists in the last few years. Until 2009, not everyone could come there - Teriberka was located in the border zone. Now, in one night, in addition to the people traveling with me on the same bus, I saw cars in Teriberka several times with license plates from other regions. But still, Teriberka has not yet become a completely pop place. And this is good.

10. Let's move on. Outside the windows of the bus there is still forest-tundra, hills and lakes. The usual landscape of the northern part of the Kola Peninsula. The weather, meanwhile, has become more stable - no rain, no clouds visible. So maybe it will be sunny all night?

11. Picturesque expanses of Kola Lapland. One hill gives way to another, one lake to another - and they are all at different heights. On the ground there are swamps, low fir trees and crooked birch forests.

12. Here and there on the hills there are the remains of military installations from Soviet times. The Murmansk region is not just a border region, but borders on Finland and Norway - “capitalist” countries, one of which, moreover, is a NATO member. Therefore, in Soviet times there was a particularly high concentration of military bases and units of various branches of the military. And even now there are a lot of them (what is the Northern Fleet worth with nuclear submarines) - if you take a train going to Murmansk, then there will definitely be recruits in at least one carriage, and in the opposite direction, accordingly, demobilization.

13. The road winds through the passes, from one hill to another, going further and further. Do you see the white five-story buildings on the right side of this frame?

This, as they say in everyday life, is Troika - the closed military town of Severomorsk-3, which is part of the urban district of the ZATO Severomorsk. What is especially interesting is that despite the closed location of the settlement, a transit bus to Teriberka enters it and reaches the center! At the entrance to the village, everything is serious - there is a checkpoint with a barrier and a guard in camouflage with a machine gun. But the barrier opens, and no one is checked - since the bus is transit, it will simply enter the town and go back. What is interesting here is the unique opportunity to travel on a passenger bus and see the inside of a city that is closed to the public. Even if he is not particularly remarkable in his appearance. Two and a half thousand people now live in Severomorsk-3 (not to be confused with just Severomorsk) (the vast majority are military personnel with their families). This is also one of the bases of the Northern Fleet. But since the city is not located by the sea, nuclear submarines are based, which is quite unusual, in tundra lakes.

Just kidding:) In fact, there is a military airfield here. That is, this is a town of pilots.

14. This is what this small town looks like (by the way, this is my only picture of it). Just a few blocks of five-story buildings, but the impressive thing is that you look at the closed city from the bus, although you have no right to get off.

Interestingly, there were no residents of Troika among the passengers on my bus, and no one got off here. The bus just stood for a couple of minutes at the bus station, turned around and drove back to the road to Teriberka. By the way, I didn’t even understand how the control system for those getting off the bus was organized in Severomorsk-3 - there were no inspectors in sight.

15. We pass through the checkpoint again and return to the Path to the End of the Earth. While our road still goes east, as can be seen on the map, only after the fork with the road to the village of Tumanny we turn left - to the north.

16. This seems to be Lake Kitenyavr - as in the Khibiny Mountains, in the north of the Kola region the toponymy is mainly Sami.

17. A high-voltage power line constantly stretches along the road, supplying energy to remote settlements of the Kola district of the Murmansk region. In general, the places along the road look less and less lived-in. The atmosphere of the wilderness is intensifying, but it is felt here somehow completely differently than in the middle zone. Including, as already mentioned, thanks to the special northern people.

Somewhere here on the road I came across the word Teriberka for the first time - the road crosses a river with that name, flowing into the Barents Sea, which gave the name to the village.

18. Unusually bright polar sun and unusually blue sky. All this never ceases to amaze me...

19. We make a short stop along the way. For about ten minutes. You can go out and stretch a little. The time on the clock is already approaching eight in the evening. In the polar summer, the fresh air is cool - like in Murmansk, it’s about +12 degrees here, and there are also mosquitoes flying around.

20. Forest-tundra crooked forest. This is not yet a dwarf birch, but an ordinary one. We will see the dwarf one in the vicinity of Teriberka.

22. ...and the real tundra begins! White-greenish moss, mosses, and now dwarf trees, no higher than the knee.

23. In some places small trees are still growing. Mainly closer to lakes and in lowlands. But in general, the natural zone of the tundra is already finally coming into its own.

24. The sun, while still high, sinks lower and lower towards the horizon by night. But it won’t go in completely; it will go around in a circle from the north side. Of course, seeing this over the sea will be especially interesting.

Soon we pass a fork in the road, marked with a bow cross. The road goes to the right to the villages of Tumanny and Dalnie Zelentsy (the latter, by the way, is also on the coast - I hope to visit there someday), and we turn left and head straight north - towards the Barents Sea. There are forty kilometers left to Teriberka. The asphalt ends here, and now the bus rustles among the tundra on dusty gravel.

25. And even the atmosphere of the surrounding landscapes somehow changes as a whole. There is a feeling that I am really approaching the End of the Earth.

26. Lake Kiyavr. Since the bus has turned, the sun is now shining from the west, that is, directly on my left side of the bus. Even though it was +12 outside (and maybe even colder), but sitting by the window in the sun was so hot for me that it seemed as if it was at least +23 outside. Apparently, this is again because the sun in the Far North is brighter than in more southern latitudes - due to more transparent air.

27. And this transparency of the air, combined with the unusualness of the tundra landscape for me, gives rise to an amazing feeling. The sense of the eye is greatly impaired here. Looking at the bare tundra (even hilly), it is unusually difficult for me to determine by eye the distance to this or that object, for example, a hill or a lake. It's not very clear in the photo, but when you look at it with your own eyes it's impressive.

28. Before you even reach Teriberka, you already begin to understand that everything is really different here...

29. Pay attention to the sticks stuck in the ground. This is a fence (though already pretty broken) to protect the road from snow drifts. Winter on the Kola Peninsula is not very cold for the Arctic (due to the Gulf Stream in the Barents Sea), but it is very snowy. This is especially felt in this part of the region. There are no high mountains and no forests - the tundra along the Murmansk coast is open to all Arctic winds. And in winter, a blizzard here can suddenly begin and rage for several days - it happens that Teriberka becomes cut off from the mainland for this time.

What a blizzard is, people in the middle zone do not always know. More precisely, ordinary heavy snowfall with gusts of wind is called a blizzard. But here everything is different. The winds in the tundra near the Arctic Ocean blow in a way that is sometimes difficult for a resident of the Middle Zone to imagine. I myself felt this in Teriberka, but if heavy snowfall is added to this in winter, then a real snowstorm begins. Imagine a snowstorm lasting several days with a wind of 30 m/s in the middle of the remote tundra, and even on a polar night. Imagine this, and you understand why people in the North are more open and reliable...

30. Here comes the snow! It's the end of June, and its remains still lie among the tundra. Firstly, the already cool summer here has just begun, and secondly, there is so much snow here during the long winter that it can then melt until the fall.

31. After eight in the evening, the rocky hills become higher and higher, and the bus goes along the shore of a large lake, in which the wind blowing from the nearby sea drives the wave.

In fact, this is the Teriber reservoir. In the 1980s, a cascade of two hydroelectric power stations was built on the already mentioned Teriberka River. The bus drove over one of the dams over a bridge; there was a noticeable large difference in the water level between the riverbed and the reservoir. But I didn’t have time to capture it.

32. The rocks around the road become higher and more inaccessible. There are only the last kilometers left to Teriberka. Probably, when you look outside, you can smell the sea.

33. Then the road enters a harsh-looking gorge. Weathered, bizarre-looking and reddish-colored rocks look like someone's face...

And after the gorge the sea appears ahead! That's it - you can come to the sea not only to the south, but also to the north! Houses are visible along the shore of a secluded bay - this is Teriberka. The village consists of two parts - Teriberka itself (which is closer) and the village of Lodeynoye two kilometers north, closer to the open seashore, now this is the main part of the village. The road goes straight to Lodeynoye, but the bus first stops at Staraya Teriberka, where I decided to get off (so that I could get to Lodeynoye closer to the middle of the night, and then go back from there in the morning). Turn, a bridge over the Teriberka River - now at its very mouth, then the bus passes several rural houses and stops. Most of the passengers (including the mentioned group of tourists) go to Lodeynoye. Here, in Staraya Teriberka, besides me, there are four people coming out. Among them, for example, is a man who is met by a family with a little girl. I must say that people here have no less happy faces than in big cities...

34. People dispersed, the bus left for Lodeynoye. And in front of me is Old Teriberka. For the first few minutes I was just trying to figure out where I was and get used to the incredible landscape that surrounded me. Gloomy treeless rocks, the Barents Sea with a salty and icy wind, a dazzlingly bright polar sun, and among all this - seemingly ordinary rural houses and even vegetable gardens. Somewhere on the fishing line, laundry is drying; at the neighboring house, a grandmother is weeding the garden beds. Does such a combination really exist? Still, how diverse our country is!

The bus was running significantly ahead of schedule, and the clock hands still showed half past eight in the evening. I have the whole night at my disposal - however, at this time of year, night here is only on the clock. The bus will leave back at seven in the morning.

Overall, I found myself in an amazing place. And I will tell you about how I spent one night of the polar day on the shores of the Barents Sea in the following parts.