«True people» (Nenei nenecha) – self-name of Nenets, the indigenous people of the Yamal peninsula, and the name of the complex 2015–2016 ethnographic expedition. Project participants and the visitors of the resource will be the part of the reindeer herders's family during the whole year just to «dive» in the casual life of the modern XXI century nomads.
On May 25th we reached our 14th stop since the beginning of this nomadic trip: N 69º45'25,1'' E 069º18'42,4''. Moved for 2 kilometers. This day we decided to cross over the river, and started to pack things and get ready for kaslanie later than usual. Everybody was was quite nervous, and we both especially.
Crossing the river is not for "weak-nerved". At the place we've chosen for crossing Limbya-Yaha, the river was 29 meters width and about 1,5 meters deep. There are less deep places and we could cross there, but there was another important factor - the bank's relief - because fully loaded argish (karavan of 6-7 nartas) must be transported to the water and then from the water to the bank.
We started to prepare the crossing by carefully packing and preparing all nartas. When argish reached water range, the person who's leading the argish, sat in the gumboot. Yaroslav was under oars, and literally rope the argish and reindeers into the water. It was crutial that reindeers all swan across the river not tiying themselves and whithout any of nartas got turned upside down. Loading of the nartas didn't got wet.
Crossing the river. Yaroslav is under oars, his wife Maya is holding the rope and giving direction for swimming reindeers.
Argish is crossing the river. Kostya'nisya is helping on other river bank.
After crossing the river we stopped on the other bank near the place, where summer nartas of our neighbors were placed. The temperature dropped a lot, and the damp weather reminds us Russian Saint-Petersburg in late Autumn days...