Time travel on foot: These islands just 4km apart let you walk into yesterday, but there is a catch
Imagine standing on a snow-covered rock in the middle of the ocean, staring at a neighboring island just four kilometers away. It looks close enough to swim to - or walk across in winter when the sea freezes over. This isn't a sci-fi film set or a magician's illusion. Welcome to the
Diomede Islands
- two rocky outcrops perched between
Alaska and Siberia
that defy the concept of time as we know it.
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Little Diomede
belongs to the
United States
, and
Big Diomede
belongs to Russia. These islands, visible to one another on a clear day, are the only place on Earth where, quite literally, today meets tomorrow — or yesterday, depending on your direction.
Walk Across Ice… and Into the Past
Here's the mind-boggling part: If you were to begin walking from Little
Diomede
at 9 a.m. on a Friday in winter — when a natural ice bridge sometimes forms — you could reach Big Diomede by 10 a.m. after a short trek. But your watch wouldn't show 10 a.m. Friday. It would flip back almost an entire day. You'd arrive in Russia on Thursday.
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This incredible temporal twist is thanks to the
International Date Line
, an invisible boundary that runs directly between the two islands. Though only 3.8 kilometers apart, the two islands operate on separate calendars, with Big Diomede being up to 21 hours ahead of its American neighbor.
The Yesterday-Tomorrow Paradox
Locals affectionately call Little Diomede 'Yesterday Island' and Big Diomede 'Tomorrow Island.' It's an eerie duality: a pair of lands that coexist in completely different
time zones
despite their geographic intimacy. The difference is not exactly 24 hours due to local time adjustments — it's closer to 21 hours (or 20 in summer) — but that doesn't make the phenomenon any less remarkable.
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For those who love the poetic and the peculiar, it's a real-life moment where stepping across the ice means stepping into the past. Or future.
— theepicmap (@theepicmap)
A Forbidden Crossing with Geopolitical Echoes
Though you could theoretically make the icy walk from one nation to the other in winter, doing so is strictly illegal. The border between Big and Little Diomede is an international one, dividing Russia and the United States — two global powers with a long and complex history. No visa, no checkpoint, no diplomatic clearance — just a frozen bridge that tempts the adventurous and curious.
Big Diomede is heavily guarded and has no civilian population, serving as a Russian border outpost. Little Diomede, in contrast, is home to a small Inupiat community in the village of Diomede. They are the sentinels of this incredible anomaly — the keepers of the world's most mysterious time zone trick.
Though you could theoretically make the icy walk from one nation to the other in winter, doing so is strictly illegal.
A Legacy Carved in Ice and History
Named by Danish-Russian explorer Vitus Bering on August 16, 1728 — the feast day of Saint Diomedes — the islands have captivated historians, scientists, and storytellers for centuries. They've been eyed as potential waypoints for a future
Bering Strait
bridge or tunnel that might someday connect Eurasia and North America.
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But for now, they remain icy time capsules — where time folds in on itself, where global divides are frozen into the sea, and where, if you dare, you could walk from Friday back into Thursday before lunch.
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