Werner Herzog called them happy. Not in the sentimental way the word gets used in comfortable societies, but in the way a man describes people who have solved the fundamental problem of living: they know exactly who they are and what each day requires. The village of Bakhta sits at the confluence of the Yenisei and Bakhta rivers in the eastern Siberian taiga, home to roughly 300 people who live almost entirely beyond the reach of modern infrastructure. When Russian filmmaker Dmitry Vasyukov spent years documenting their lives for a 2007 television series, the footage caught Herzog's attention. He edited it into the 2010 documentary "Happy People: A Year in the Taiga," adding his own narration to what he recognized as something rare on film: people who are genuinely free.
Bakhta occupies one of the more improbable addresses on Earth. Located at 62 degrees north latitude, roughly 600 kilometers from the nearest city, it can only be reached by boat during the brief summer or by helicopter when the rivers freeze. The Yenisei, one of the world's great rivers, flows past the village on its 3,500-kilometer journey to the Arctic Ocean, and the smaller Bakhta River joins it here in a confluence that has sustained human settlement for centuries. The surrounding taiga is the largest forest biome on the planet, a vast belt of larch, spruce, and pine stretching across Siberia. In winter, temperatures plunge below minus 50 degrees Celsius. In summer, mosquitoes arrive in swarms dense enough to drive caribou to madness. Between those extremes, the trappers of Bakhta find their purpose.
Among Bakhta's residents is Mikhail Tarkovsky, nephew of the legendary film director Andrei Tarkovsky. Mikhail left Moscow in 1981 to live and work in the taiga, a decision that baffled his literary and artistic circles but that he has never reversed. Over the decades, he became both trapper and chronicler, publishing short stories about the village and its people. His writing eventually inspired the film itself. Alongside Gennady Soloviev, the community's most experienced woodsman and Mikhail's mentor, he helped conceive the original television series and served as one of its cinematographers. The irony is rich: the nephew of cinema's great metaphysician ended up behind the camera in one of the most unmetaphysical places on Earth, documenting people who build their own skis, carve their own canoes, and trap sable through methods unchanged for generations.
The documentary follows the rhythm of a full year, and in Bakhta that rhythm is absolute. Autumn means preparation: trappers build or repair wooden cabins deep in the forest, carve hand-hewn skis, and train their dogs. Winter is trapping season, when men venture alone into the taiga for weeks at a time, moving between remote cabins along trap lines that can stretch for dozens of kilometers. They hunt sable, whose fur remains one of the most valuable in the world. Spring brings the ice breakup on the Yenisei, a dramatic and dangerous annual event that isolates the village until the river clears. Summer is brief and frantic, the season for fishing, boat-building, and the arrival of supply boats that bring the few manufactured goods the village needs. The film also touches on the indigenous Ket people, one of Siberia's smallest ethnic groups, whose language and traditions persist in Bakhta alongside the Russian trappers.
Herzog has spent a career finding people in extreme landscapes, from the Amazon to Antarctica. What drew him to Vasyukov's footage was not exoticism but recognition. He saw in Bakhta's trappers the same self-reliance and unsentimentalized relationship with nature that has fascinated him throughout his filmmaking life. His narration avoids romanticizing: he notes the hardship, the isolation, the physical danger. But he keeps returning to the word "happy," using it as a provocation. These are people without running water, reliable electricity, or medical care. They answer to no employer and follow no schedule but the seasons. Herzog's argument is not that their life is easy but that its difficulty is part of what makes it coherent. Since the series aired, Bakhta has drawn curious visitors who arrive by riverboat in summer months. Tarkovsky opened a museum there, featuring exhibits on trapping, boat-building, and traditional craftsmanship, along with a workshop teaching young people to live off the land.
From the air, the taiga around Bakhta is an unbroken carpet of dark green larch and spruce, cut only by the silver threads of rivers. The Yenisei is unmistakable, wide enough at this latitude to be visible from cruising altitude as it winds northward toward the Kara Sea. The Bakhta River joins from the east, and at their meeting point, the tiny cluster of wooden buildings that makes up the village is just barely distinguishable against the forest. In winter, the landscape turns white and featureless, the rivers becoming frozen highways. In every season, the overwhelming impression from above is of scale: the sheer enormity of this forest, the audacity of people who choose to live in it, and the stubbornness with which a few hundred souls have made a home where most of us would see only wilderness.
Located at 62.47°N, 89.00°E at the confluence of the Yenisei and Bakhta rivers. The village is visible as a small clearing on the riverbank. The Yenisei River provides a clear navigation reference flowing north-south. Best viewed at 5,000-10,000 ft AGL. Nearest significant airfield is Krasnoyarsk (UNKL), approximately 600 km to the south. Igarka Airport (UOII) lies roughly 400 km to the north. Expect subarctic conditions with limited visibility in winter and continuous daylight in summer.