This TikTok Shows That You Can Actually Walk From The US To Russia, Just As Long As It’s Winter
Despite all your assumptions based on sitting in your high school classroom bored out of your brain (or was that just me?) geography can be fun. Like, for example, the fact you could plausibly walk from the USA to Russia across the Bering Strait — just as long as you were willing to do so in the dead of winter.
This fun fact has been brought to you by TikTok user, @laubandrew, who points out that two islands — Big Diomede Island off the coast of Russia and Little Diomede Island off the coast of Alaska — “are only two-and-a-half miles [just over four kilometres] apart, which means that in the winter when the water freezes, you can walk from the United States in only 20 minutes,” explains the TikTok video.
Yep, they’re technically ‘owned’ by the different countries, and therefore you’re literally walking cross country.
What’s more, these two islands are also in different time zones, so technically you can time travel while you walk over the ice.
“Big Diomede Island is 21 hours ahead of Little Diomede Island,” continues @laubandrew. “Which means that if you were to walk from the United States to Russia, you’d literally be walking into the next day. This is why they call Little Diomede ‘Yesterdayland’ and Big Diomede ‘Tomorrowland'”.
Don’t believe it? A follow up TikTok video by the same user talks about the British explorer, Karl Bushby, who in 1998 decided it sounded like a fun and dandy idea to walk almost 58 000 kilometres all the way around the globe.
Joined by Dimetri Kieffer, the pair became the first explorers to ever walk across the entire 83 (ish) kilometres across the Bering Strait — yup, not even just between the two Diomede islands. I mean, sure they had to swim a little bit, but it still counts.
Honestly, as fun as this fact is I’m perfectly happy to let Bushby and Kieffer be the ones to prove it. I’ll stay where it’s not warm enough to literally freeze the ocean, thanks.
(Lead image: TikTok /@laubandrew)