Over the past few years, Nikolai has seen the ups and downs of the funeral trade in his native Ufa, a Russian city in the plains west of the Ural mountains.
The coronavirus pandemic, which hit Russia with devastating force, brought an unexpected boom to his family-run business, forcing him to hire extra staff almost overnight to cope with the rise in funeral demand.
“But after Covid, there was a real dip; people just stopped dying in such numbers,” Nikolai said.
