Interesting encounters: After 15 days of travel, we had covered nearly 450km. We happened across a series of remote huts, one of which was inhabited by a hardy couple who manned a weather station. Forgetting any notion of purism, Phil and I took up the offer of a night in a small wooden hut. The following day I started off early and waited for him to catch up. The catch came much later than usual, though. A brown bear had arisen early from hibernation and descended on the weather station. No big drama, though, as the sore-headed bear was chased off by a few warning shots from our weather station friends. The wildlife weren't the only interesting characters on our journey. There were the locals too. One day out of the haze, a pair of battered old Soviet vans came careering toward me on the ice road that lines part of the lake. "Oh Christ, what the hell do they want?" I thought. After screeching to a halt, a great big bear of a man stepped out. Chattering away for a moment, he realizes my blank face means I can't understand what on earth he's saying. He quickly switches to English and hurries his clients out of the van. Before long, I'm surrounded by tourists asking for photos, as if I were some kind of curiosity. I must have looked like a stereotypical "Polar Explorer" with a fur ruff on my hood and a weather-beaten face. After asking where I lived in the UK, an Austrian chap even managed to talk about my local soccer team who had just won the league. But soon enough, I was thanked for my photographic and conversational duties and treated to a shot of local samogon (moonshine). Not one, however, but three. I daren't decline their gesture, so as we went our separate ways, I tottered on, feeling bemused and a little worse for wear. What on earth had just happened?! The home strait: After a few weeks, life on the ice becomes ingrained. You forget what it was like before, and you don't want to imagine what it will be like when you reach the end. While striking camp in the morning may have taken several hours, it now took half the time. The disciplined routine of cold weather travel becomes second nature. The ice, wind, and snow become your entertainment. Their distinct moods lift or sully your own. To the indigenous Buryat people and those who spend a lot of time on the lake, Baikal is an extraordinary place. "I physically feel how the positive energy of Baikal recharges my batteries. For me, it's not just the biggest freshwater lake – it's part of my inner world," our fixer Eugene told me. Several times in his life, he had attractive job offers in other countries, and I could now see so well why, on each occasion, he had turned them down. The final few hundred kilometers were not easily won. The snow was deep in the latter half of the lake, and even with snowshoes, we struggled. Eventually, after 19 days and 634km, we reached the end. We trudged into Severobaikalsk, a slightly grim and rundown town built for workers of a new railway line in the mid-'70s. We dragged our sleds onto the main road into town, past abandoned lakeside summer houses as the odd mangy dog or local resident looked on curiously. I felt like a frontiersman riding into town during the expansion of the Wild West. Still, thankfully we weren't met by a gun-toting local sheriff. As we had found repeatedly throughout our trek, the people who live along the shoreline are warm, generous, and very hospitable. And just like that, our Siberian wander was at an end. We spent the next 36 hours chugging past endless taiga on the Trans-Siberian railway and other lesserknown lines. A dream safely fulfilled, our bodies could now relax. We ate, drank, laughed, and felt satisfied. Despite the warm toasty sanctuary of our carriage, I knew before too long we'd both want to be back out on the ice. Once you experience this winter pearl of Siberia, it becomes part of your inner world. 30//WHERE ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS/#<strong>234</strong>
Phil breaking trail on a hazy day "After a few weeks, life on the ice becomes ingrained. You forget what it was like before, and you don't want to imagine what it will be like when you reach the end."
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