ARKHANGELSK, April 14. /TASS/. A group of eight travelers will embark on a record-breaking 10,000-km expedition on Friday to cross the entire territory of the Russian Arctic - from the northeastern city of Arkhangelsk to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Far East.
The expedition plans to set the world record for a longest terrestrial voyage in the Polar Circle without the use of public roads.
The travelers will use four Russian-made Sherp all-terrain vehicles (ATVs). One of the expedition’s members, Alexei Garagashyan, is the designer of Sherp.
The journey, expected to last several months and end on November 4, aims at studying transport accessibility of the country’s northern territories in the conditions of the polar summer. Some stretches of the route have never been accessed by vehicles. The participants are also expected to cross the Yenisei, Ob and Lena rivers in Siberia that have never been crossed by a vehicle before.
The expedition will also study radiation levels and conduct ecological monitoring along the route to hand over the information to various Russian environmental bodies.
"We will check radiation background along the entire route, we are taking special equipment with us. There is also an ecological aspect - we will look whether local nature suffered from any man-made activities," Garagashyan told TASS.