Yamal Peninsula Travel

05/06/2021

This video was shot in May 2021, on one of our bespoke adventure tours to join the Nenets on their epic migrations. It shows the Nenets migrating near the shore of Sosyang-To lake, about 300 km north of Salekhard, the capital of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Region.

The Nenets reindeer herders of Arctic Siberia's Yamal Peninsula are the most nomadic people on the planet. Two to five times a week, they pack all their belongings, homes and family onto wooden, hand-carved reindeer sledges and migrate to new pastures.

May can be quite a tough time for the Nenets, but a very interesting time to visit them. May is the birthing season for calves. All the Nenets' effort is directed towards helping the calves survive. They do this in two main ways:

* They separate the male reindeer from the females, and keep them in two separate herds up to 30km apart from one another

* The men start spending almost 24 hours a day with the reindeer herd, sleeping on the snow in temperatures that can still drop to -35°C if unlucky. They of course take their warmest clothing with them: kisy reindeer fur boats, malitsa reindeer fur coat and gus reindeer fur coat, which is worn on top of the malitsa in extreme cold or when sleeping outside.

When a female reindeer is giving birth, the men help it find a patch of snow-free ground, which gives the calf a better chance of survival. They help with the birth itself and try to get the calf up on its legs and running as soon as possible, to minimise the chances of it freezing.

In cold years, when the snow has not started melting by May, females cannot find snow-free ground to give birth on. Huge numbers of calves do not survive. We witnessed this in May 2017, when we organised a 2-week film shoot for a crew from the BBC.

For more videos from all over Arctic Russia, you can visit our YouTube channel: Arctic Russia Travel .

13/05/2021

Nomadic Nenets reindeer herders migrating on Arctic Siberia's Yamal Peninsula. For more videos like this, clink the link below to join us on our YouTube channel!

We run extreme cultural immersion tours to Arctic Siberia's Yamal Peninsula. Our guests get to join the nomadic Nenets reindeer herders on their epic migrati...

18/01/2021

One of Yamal’s many well-preserved gulag camps. Prisoners were building a 1500km railway along the Arctic Circle, which was abandoned after Stalin’s death.

15/01/2021

Nenets kid on wooden skis, far south of Yamal near the border with the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Region. January 2021.

15/12/2020

Nenets men use lassos made of reindeer rawhide to catch reindeer for their sledges or for slaughter. It takes about one week to make a lasso.

15/12/2020

The chums (teepees) that the Nenets live in, and the clothes they wear, are made of reindeer furs sewn together by women using reindeer tendon (sinew) as thread. When a reindeer is slaughtered, the tendon is extracted and dried out. The woman of the chum keeps it in her sewing bag (pictured in the lower photo). When she needs to sew something she splits off one tendon and straightens it out, as shown in the upper photo. A man's malitsa fur jacket is made of 8 reindeer furs. A chum is made of 75.

14/12/2020

A few examples of toys the Nenets make for their children

14/12/2020

Nenets men wear two kinds of traditional fur coats. One, the malitsa, has the hair on the inside, a coloured bit of cloth on the outside and is worn with a belt. The man on the far right of the photo is wearing a malitsa. The second fur coat, a gus, is worn on top of the malitsa in extremely cold weather. Everyone else in this photo is wearing a gus. The Seyakha Nenets wear the gus almost every day, and the Yar-Sale Nenets less often. Around Salekhard and in the Polar Ural Mountains, most Nenets wear only a malitsa.

14/12/2020

Every nomadic Nenets family has several sacred reindeer, whose heads are often decorated with red ribbons. Each sacred reindeer represent one of their gods. The family will not slaughter its sacred reindeer until they are too old to migrate. They then choose a younger, similar-looking reindeer and smear the blood from the old one on its face. It becomes the new sacred reindeer. This is just one of many fascinating rituals that our guests may have the chance to witness on a trip to the Yamal Peninsula.

14/12/2020

The nomadic Nenets reindeer herders follow an ancient animistic-shamanistic religion. They keep various idols representing their gods in their chum (reindeer-fur teepee) and several more outdoors on their sacred reindeer sledge.

14/12/2020

Summer is a great time to visit the nomadic Nenets reindeer herders. They migrate 2 - 3 times a week, often crossing rivers as pictured above. Every daw they drive thousands of reindeer right up to their chums (reindeer-fur teepees) to lasso fresh animals for their sledges.