Siberian Dreams

By Andy Home

Subjects: Social conditions, Travel, Description and travel, Siberia (Russia) -- Description and travel, Noril'sk (Russia), Essays & Travelogues, Siberia (Russia), Norilʹsk (Russia) -- Description and travel, Andy Home, TRAVEL, Home, Andy -- Travel -- Russia (Federation), General

Description: Every year thousands compete to win the RGS/BBC Journey of a Lifetime award and fulfill their travel dreams. However, Andy Home's dream would be most people's nightmare. Andy went to Siberia, to the Russian industrial mining city of Norilsk where temperatures drop to minus 50, half the year is spent in perpetual darkness, and the pollution has destroyed all natural life. Once a prison camp, then a secret Soviet military city, Norilsk teetered on the edge of financial and social meltdown in the early 1990s. Now, it is owned by one of Russia's new breed.