I'm from Pune. If you've been to Pune, you know the coldest it gets is maybe 10°C in January and that's considered "brrr" weather. People wear jackets to chai tapris at 15°C. So when my family told me I was going to study in a city that hits −18°C in January, I genuinely didn't understand what that meant.
I'm writing this from my hostel room in Smolensk, halfway through my second year. My first winter here — from October 2023 to March 2024 — was the most physically and mentally disorienting experience of my life. And I want to write about it honestly, because everything I read before coming here was either "Russia is so cold haha" or "don't worry it's fine." Neither was useful.
I landed in September. It was 14°C and beautiful — golden leaves everywhere, the university campus looked like something from a movie, and I thought to myself: this is absolutely fine, what was everyone worried about?
September in Smolensk is genuinely lovely. The city has wide roads lined with birch trees that turn yellow and orange in autumn. The air is clean and crisp. Indian students who arrive in September often spend the first few weeks thinking the winter worry is exaggerated.
It is not exaggerated.
By mid-October, the temperature dropped to 5–8°C. Still manageable — I'd brought a Fabindia shawl and a light jacket from India, and I was fine. Then came the first frost, around the last week of October. I woke up one morning, looked out the hostel window, and the ground was white.
Not snow — just frost. But it was the first moment I realized this was going to be different.
November was the month that broke my confidence. It happened gradually then all at once — just like that Hemingway quote about going bankrupt. One day it was 4°C and raining. The next it was −2°C and the rain had frozen overnight. The footpaths became ice sheets.
I slipped and fell on my way to a morning lecture. My hands were bare because I'd forgotten my gloves. I sat in the lecture hall with numb fingers trying to write notes, and I genuinely sat there thinking: am I going to be okay?
The short days hit me harder than I expected. In India, evening at 6 PM means golden-hour light, chai time, people out. In Smolensk in November, 5 PM is pitch dark and feels like 10 PM. My sleep schedule collapsed. I was sleeping at 8 PM and waking at 3 AM for a week straight.
December was the hardest month. Not because of the cold — I had better clothes by then — but because of the combination of factors hitting simultaneously:
I remember one specific Thursday in December — I don't know why I remember it's a Thursday — when I sat in my room at 6 PM in the dark, it was −10°C outside, I had a biochemistry practical the next morning I didn't feel ready for, and I genuinely questioned whether I'd made the right decision.
I didn't call home that night. I knew if I called, my mom would hear it in my voice and worry, and there was nothing anyone in India could actually do. Instead I knocked on my roommate Rahul's door — he's from Chennai, so arguably even less prepared for this than I was — and we made maggi on our portable gas stove and watched KGF 2 on his laptop. That was it. That was the thing that helped.
A friend on the same floor who was going through the same thing. That's it. Not a motivational video, not a call to family, not a self-help tip. Just someone to watch a movie with at 8 PM when the walls felt like they were closing in. Find your Rahul early.
January was colder than December in actual temperature — we hit −17°C one night and −14°C was normal for most of the month. But something had shifted.
By January I had proper winter boots. I had a Russia-bought winter jacket rated to −25°C that I'd bought from a market near the university for 4,500 rubles (roughly ₹4,000 at the time). I had thermal inners as my daily uniform. I knew which paths were less icy. I knew to leave 5 extra minutes for every walk because the ice made it slower. I had a routine.
The cold was still real — I'm not going to pretend −17°C feels fine. But I had adapted my behavior around it. I stopped fighting the environment and started working with it.
By February, the Indian student group in our hostel had a group chat called "Days Until Spring" with a countdown. We were all in it together by this point — the shared misery had become a shared joke. When someone walked in from outside looking like a frozen mannequin, it was funny. When the power went out for 45 minutes one February evening and we sat in the dark common room together eating biscuits, it was funny.
February is still cold but the days are getting longer. By late February, sunset is at 5:30 PM instead of 4:00 PM. That hour and a half of extra light feels enormous.
I cannot describe adequately what March felt like when the temperature crossed 0°C for the first time in months. The snow started melting. Actual mud appeared. People were walking without covering their faces. Someone spotted a pigeon and we treated it like a national event.
By the end of March, Smolensk is genuinely beautiful again — the same way it was in September, but now with a completely different emotional weight. You've earned the spring. You've been through something and you're still here.
If I could go back to the bright-eyed September version of me who thought the winter worry was overblown, here's what I'd say:
That's the question my parents ask every time I come home and they're bundled up in their Pune winter sweaters at 14°C. Yes. It was worth it. Not because the winter was fun — it wasn't — but because getting through it taught me something about myself that I genuinely don't think I would have learned any other way.
I'm in Year 2 now. The second winter has started. It's November as I write this, −3°C outside, and I'm in thermals and a sweater and I'm fine. My boots are ready. My jacket is hanging by the door. I know what's coming and I've made my peace with it.
If you're about to go to Smolensk, or if you're in your first winter and it's December and you're sitting in the dark at 6 PM questioning everything — it gets better. Not because the cold changes, but because you do.
Arjun is currently in Year 2 MBBS at Smolensk State Medical University. His family runs SmolenskMBBS.in to help other Indian families make this decision with accurate information. Questions? WhatsApp him directly.
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