Sensodyne's rendezvous to Yakutsk – the coldest city on Earth!

Team Sensodyne went to visit the city of Yakutsk, Russia – the coldest city on Earth where temperatures go down to as low as -72 degrees Celsius.

Team Sensodyne recently travelled to a city that was approximately seven thousand miles away from their starting point. The city in question is Yakutsk, Russia, which is the coldest inhabited city that is known to man. In this extreme and unbelievably scenic place, the team had set out to figure out the challenges that the locals face in terms of tooth sensitivity, which is more of a daily hazard to the residents of Yakutsk, given that the average temperatures on a given day could go down to as low as -72 degrees Celsius.

The city, which is also known as the Republic of Sakha, Yakutsk is located on the far-east extremity of Russia. The city is a home to a total of 269,000 brave harts.

To give an idea of what is it like to live in a city that cold, trees are often known to burst from the cold. It’s so cold that birds can freeze mid-flight and fall from the sky, water can turn immediately to ice when thrown in the air, and it’s often required to hold a flame under a car engine to warm it sufficiently until it gets started. Water freezes instantly as soon as it’s splashed in the air. But, should you need to hydrate yourself, all you have to do is take a block of ice home and heat it! Contrary to the cold that the city lives with, the people of Yakutsk are warm, hospitable and friendly.

As per the locals, 'a nice day' is when the average temperatures of a day are around -40 degrees Celcius, but, these extremities are something that are warmly embraced by the people of the city. Somewhere around mid-January this year, the temperatures were observed to fall to -50 degrees Celsius, which even cause the eyelashes to turn into frost.

Given the kind of temperatures that the locals face, maintaining an optimistic attitude is no less than a challenge. Team Sensodyne was easily able to conclude this as time and again, their hands froze and became susceptible to frost bite if they were left exposed for longer than 20 seconds and eyelashes frosted over. To make things worse, even a floor of ice got developed inside their production vehicle over the course of the trip. To ensure that the cameras did not face the wrath of the cold, they were kept in special casings.

But, surprisingly, in a city as cold as this, the untimely weather-driven traffic does not exist at all, thanks to the soft and cushy tires of the four-wheelers that provide a good grip on the terrain. As far as residential or commercial establishments are concerned, there are three entrance doors to all of them with each one positioned diagonally to prevent the cold air from finding its way inside.

To understand the pervasiveness of the issue at hand in the city, team Sensodyne conversed with people from all walks of life in the city: From a school teacher who keeps the school open even when the cold gets tough to the local musician who specializes in Khumous, an instrument that is predominantly used only in the confines of the Russian border, to the ice sculptor who cannot be stopped by the gueling cold on any given day, to the meteorologist who was incredibly knowledgeable about the weather in the city. Most of them suffered from tooth sensitivity, made worse by the extreme cold they lived in. Their stories about how they coped with the environment, and its effect on their sensitivity were eye-opening, all captured in Sensodyne’s documentary to the Coldest City on Earth.