For the two months when it’s not cold, a real northern summer comes to the towns of Siberia. It doesn’t last long, but it’s hot, almost 30 degrees. The locals take kayaks onto the violent rapids of the Kharelakh river. They fill baskets with bittersweet orange cloudberries and sunbathe in their employer’s decrepit campsites. That is, of course, if they haven’t travelled to the “mainland” — which is how the people of Norilsk describe any town further south that you need an aeroplane to get to.

It’s the middle of November when I land in my childhood home. My timing is perfect. I have missed the early autumn mudslides when for several weeks the mix of dirty snow and rain on the streets ruins any new boots you’re foolhardy enough to wear. And Norilsk won’t be engulfed by the three-month Polar Night until the end of the month. Alykel airport is windy, but in the town itself the buildings shelter you from it. It is 40 degrees below freezing but the air is dry, so it is easier to bear than a damp -10C in Moscow. I cover my face with a glove and run to look for a taxi driver to haggle with.

While the engine warms up we exchange small talk, about the slow internet and exorbitant price of goods. I look out of the window, at the old train tracks (laid in the 1960s and now bent by the cold), and at the primitive snow barricades, designed by an engineer called Popov — a prisoner here in one of the northernmost labour camps in Stalinist Russia. In the 60 years since he invented them no-one has thought of a better way to keep snow off the roads.