Hunting the Kola Super Deep Borehole

This is an excerpt from Driving Down Russia's Spine, a book about three journalists' (one American, two Russian) 6000-km trip down the full length of Russia, from the border with Norway to the Black Sea. The trip took place in October 2015, and this is one of the first episodes. The trip also produced a hardcover photo book with essays, The Spine of Russia. All of the photos in this post were taken by Mikhail Mordasov.

WE ARE IN Nikel to meet the deputy head of the regional administration for economic development, Alexander Molodtsov, who has what the reality-based among us might call a wild dream. He wants to transform an obscure, Soviet era scientific facility into a tourist attraction.