DUDINKA

Dudinka – in translation from Nenets – a place where ammunition is stored, and local residents affectionately call Dudinka "a city where hearts moor" because it has the largest port in Siberia. There is a stunning ethno-complex "Taimyr Mou" in Dudinka, dedicated to the peoples of the North.

Once the centre of the former Taymyr Autonomous district, this major regional port with cargo ships arriving from all over Russia and beyond is now located in Krasnoyarsk Krai. Founded in 1667, Dudinka was granted city status as recently as 1951. Winter rages here for nine, long months and the polar night lasts for 45 days.

Here you will visit the Taimyr-Mou, a project which promotes the culture of the area’s indigenous small-numbered peoples. Enjoy exhibitions of national costume and go inside an authentic ‘chum’ – a living space for typically one family made of reindeer skins laid over a framework of long wooden poles. Afterwards, you will be privileged to see Zhenya – a well-preserved woolly mammoth, which is named for the 11-year-old boy who discovered it. When the frozen prehistoric animal was found on the banks on the Yenisei nearly 20 years ago, scientists described it as the best discovery in the field since 1901. See “the mammoth of the century” for yourself.