Siberian landscapes

 Irtysh River - Khanty Mansiysk is built on a set of low sandy hills - this is the view of one of the main rivers - it's navigable by relatively large ships, but only because they work at it constantly with dredgers, otherwise flat bottomed barges and rafts would be the norm.

 Large expanses of fir woodland cover most of the areas with any topography.

 An artists impression of the local wildlife c. 10,000 years ago.

 Wooded sandy hills, only open areas are man made or the cut banks of rivers.

 Birch forest - these are really tall, but spindly.

 Really nice Eastern Orthodox church on the edge of town

 Even big monuments like this prospect tower are lost in the trees more than a 100m or so.

The town itself - the old part by the docks and river wharfs.

Unfortunately, I couldn't photograph much on the lowlands (i.e. everything the other side of the river).  When we flew over it it comprised roughly circular lakes up to a few kilometers across surrounded by marshes with standing pools, crossed by anastomosing stream/small river channels, lined by small trees and scrub.  Any road or rail lines crossing the area were ruler straight and most looked to have been embanked or piled to raise them above the marsh.

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=khanty+mansiysk&hl=en&ll=60.915749,69.049072&spn=0.712954,2.705383&safe=off&client=firefox-a&channel=np&hnear=Khanty-Mansiysk,+Khanty-Mansiysky+District,+Khanty-Mansi+Autonomous+Okrug,+Russia&t=h&z=9

If the link works it takes you to a googlemaps image of the area which gives a good impression.


Just to give you some idea of what the Siberian landscape is like.  Of course, a couple of weeks after these pictures were taken the temperature was -20C on average, dropping to -49C in extremes.

Soviet T34 and Great Patriotic War Memorial - Siberia

In the spirit of sharing, begun with modern vehicles, here's some photos of a salvaged WW2 era T34 that we found in Victory Park, Khanty Mansisk, Siberia.  The park is a Great Patriotic War (WW2) memorial to the fallen.  The plaque suggests this was an early production T34/76 produced in 1942 from a factory hastily evacuated east of the Urals.  In winter they drove the tanks to a railhead across a frozen lake but this one went across in the thaw and broke through.

The T34 through birch forest - typical of huge tracts of northern Russia.

 The tank on its plinth

 I don't think I'd like to be a German soldier viewing the thing from this angle!

Avenue of Heroes of the Soviet Union.  All these guys were locals from this region of Siberia who made the ultimate sacrifice doing heroic deeds.  The memorial is treated with considerably more respect than our war memorials - no dregs stealing the plaques for scrap here!

Mother Russia weeping for the fallen.

 

  Last view of the T34.

There were some other bits of equipment on display including what looked like a WW1 era field gun and a lend lease British (or Canadian?) made 4.2" mortar - if we could deceipher the Russian plaques correctly.

Soviet era vehicles in Siberia

Well, new projects continue to beckon.  I'm now setting out on a USMC brigade group for a cold war turned hot in 1985 - thinking the unthinkable.  This would have been my peak time for call up had things gone a different route, although I might have been tempted to preempt call up at the time by volunteering for the RAF - it's the path my dad followed at 18 in WW2!

Anyway, having developed an interest in more modern equipment, I thought I'd share some photos that I took when I was working on a project in Siberia back in 2010.  We were visiting Nyagan and stumbled across these vehicles forming a war memorial - we thought to Soviet casualties of the Afghan conflict of the 80's, but my Russian is scant to say the least.

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong with the vehicle ID.

I think this is a BMP-1

 BTR-60

BMP-1  again

 BTR-60

 And again

 ZSU23/4 Shilka

 and again

All 3 in the memorial

 The image quality isn't the best but we were visiting in late September and only had a brief chance to look around the town so the sun was very low in the sky.  The week after we left temperatures were -10C and falling!

The cammo pattern on the Shilka is a base of bright green with olive green sploges outlined in black or very dark green.  The BTR-60 is similar although the edges of the spots are less well defined and the BMP seems to be just in bright green with olive green splodges.

Thanks to Richard (cardophillips) for correcting my ID on the BTR-60.