A little more than 40 hours after leaving Moscow’s Yaroslavsky station, the Vorkuta Express pulled into its terminus after a 2,000-kilometer journey through the taiga forests and tundra of Russia’s far north. The city lies 150 kilometers inside the Arctic Circle, seemingly at the edge of human habitation.
Its monochrome extremes overwhelm the senses: vast Arctic ice fields punctured with the scars of creaking coal mines.
