Dima parked our vehicle outside a large public building opposite a standard tenement block, one entire wall of which featured a giant coloured mural of Lenin with his fist raised, possibly in protest against the existence of religiously motivated walrus clubs. It was odd to think he might actually have been on my side.
Almost immediately a small group of people dressed in colossal topcoats and huge fur hats appeared through a heavily padded door in a building on my side of the road and walked towards us. Greetings were exchanged and a young woman whose name was Natasha looked at me sorrowfully. ‘We regret to say that today it is too cold for us to go swimming,’ she said in heavily accented English. I could have hugged her. Instead I opened my mouth to voice my disappointment, but before I could utter a word she continued. ‘However, my father has found some volunteers who are prepared to swim.’ My heart did a pretty good impression of a palpitation. Natasha was still talking. ‘Some members of our club have dug the hole in the river yesterday, the ice is 1 metre thick.’
Groaning inwardly, I said ‘Oh good,’ with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, and thanked her and her father for going to so much trouble. In the circumstances it would be churlish for me to back out now. Their kindness had sealed my fate. I was going to be a walrus for the day. We all piled into an array of motley vehicles lined up at the roadside and drove off to find the hole in the ice in the frozen Kitoy River.
As we neared the fateful spot, a perfect Christmassy scene with spruce trees on the riverbank wreathed in thick snow, I turned to Dima and asked if he would be going in for a dip. Dima looked at me with a perplexed smile on his face that said he wasn’t mad. I took that as a ‘no’.
The Kitoy River was about 50 metres wide at this point and its frozen surface was covered in a fine layer of snow. The walrus club stalwarts, led by Natasha’s father and two walrus lookalikes – identical middle-aged brothers with large moustaches who between them carried a shovel with holes in its business-end like a sieve and long poles with serious spikes on – showed me where to descend the steep bank. The hole, shaped like a mini swimming pool about 4 metres long and 2 metres wide, was right in the middle and surrounded by piles of ice that had been excavated the day before. Two neat steps had been carved in one end of the pool. I peered down into it and saw not flowing water but more ice. The moustachioed brothers immediately set to with their spiked poles, smashing at the newly formed layer with glee. ‘Yes, it was cold last night,’ Natasha said from over my shoulder. ‘This new ice is very thick.’
It took the moustache brothers a good three-quarters of an hour of determined hacking to break the new ice layer into giant pieces that were scooped out with the sieved shovel. By this time their moustaches had completely frozen, leaving them looking exactly like a couple of walruses in their woolly hats and army camouflage combat jackets. The fact that these two completed the entire procedure without gloves just added to my feeling of trepidation. These people were made of different stuff. Through the sparkling water now revealed, I could see down to the pebbles on the riverbed but it was impossible to say how deep it was. One of the walrus twins looked at me with a broad grin beneath his frozen moustache. He pointed a gnarled finger down into the shimmering depths and then put the finger on me. ‘Kamikaze!’ he yelled, bursting into a fit of laughter and slapping me on the back with such force that I nearly went in with all my clothes on. The walrus twins at least were going to enjoy this.
The small assembled crowd retired back up the bank to a position among the spruce trees where they set about building a bonfire to warm the swimmers after the event. I retired to my vehicle in a vain attempt to warm myself before the event. To add to my worries, one of the small toggles that hold my spectacles to my nose had broken. It was made of plastic and had simply snapped in the cold. It was definitely a bad sign. I sat hunched over the heater trying to bind my glasses with sticking plaster and rationalize my present predicament. Just standing out there watching the walrus twins hack away at the ice had left me feeling numb, not just mentally, but physically too in my hands and chin and cheeks. In what seemed like no time at all I had encountered difficulty in talking to Natasha because my jaw was freezing up. It felt as if I’d had a marathon session at the dentist.
I had asked her why the walrus club had been formed. It was to strengthen the immune system, she explained. ‘Walrus club members hardly ever suffer from colds,’ she said. ‘They are always feeling strong and healthy thanks to their swimming. It is also good for the soul.’ ‘And how do you think I will fare?’ I asked her. Natasha looked at me seriously from beneath her fur hat. ‘It is important to have the right mental attitude to enjoy this healthy experience,’ she said.
So I sat there wrapping sticky tape round my spectacles, with hands that were not properly responding to central command because they were too cold, trying desperately to achieve the right mental attitude. Then a tap came at the window and there was Natasha pointing towards a short procession of men and women who were making their way down the slope of the riverbank carrying towels. The time had come.
A number of women went first. One by one, each undressed a few metres from the hole while standing on a small plastic mat that had been brought for the purpose. Before walking the short distance in their swimwear to the mini pool, each made a worshipful gesture to the sun that sat in a cobalt sky providing brilliant light but apparently no warmth. The motion involved waving the arms above the head in a manner similar to that of gymnasts at the end of a performance. The swimmer was helped down into the pool by the walrus twins who stood on either side of the ice steps and held the swimmer’s hands as she descended into the icy depths. Some simply dunked themselves up to their necks in the water and immediately climbed out while others swam the short length of the pool and back before scrambling out to towel down and dress quickly.
I studied the women taking their dips to see if there were any special techniques that I should mimic. The only tip I picked up was that none of them put their head under the water, presumably because their hair would freeze immediately on exit. Otherwise the only solace I took from the ritual was the fact that nobody screamed with pain. Neither did anyone spend longer than about 15 seconds actually in the water.
My time had come. I sat down on the small plastic mat and struggled to remove my boots. Next came two pairs of thermal trousers as a few in the assembled crowd cracked what were pretty clearly jokes about the number of clothes the Englishman was wearing. Putting my disabled glasses to one side, I pulled off my four top layers and stood up. A ripple of amusement went through the crowd when they saw my boxer shorts sporting coloured maps of Europe. I pointed out the small sliver of Russia that was shown and received a minor roar of appreciation.
Facing the sun, I closed my eyes and raised my arms in salute before turning to walk the short distance to the pool. The walrus twins grabbed my outstretched hands as I put my foot on the top step, which was incredibly slippery. They let me go as I sank into the icy water.
It wasn’t actually cold, I don’t think. In my near panic at the thought of taking part in this foolhardy exercise I had completely forgotten the obvious fact that the water itself would not be particularly cold. If it was water it had to be above freezing, and relative to an air temperature of -38°C (-36ºF) it could have almost been described as warm. I struck out with a couple of breaststrokes and touched the opposite end of the pool, turned and swam back. It felt good. After all the anxiety over the build-up, it felt very good indeed. ‘I’m a walrus,’ I cried. ‘I’m a walrus.’
Now I had to get out. I hadn’t fully realized that this would be the dangerous bit. Feeling both elated and relieved I padded across the snow to the mat to dry myself. I lost the plot very quickly along with all feeling in my toes. Sitting on the mat I became obsessed with rubbing my left forearm to get it dry. I couldn’t feel the arm. It was as if it belonged to someone else. I just knew that it should be perfectly dry before putting on any clothes because any residual moisture would inst
antly turn to ice.
People were all around me shouting. Someone pulled my two woolly hats on over my head. One of the walrus twins had grabbed me under the armpits and was trying to make me stand. I didn’t particularly want to stand, but the shouts were becoming more insistent. Natasha was nowhere near to translate so I had no idea what it was they were urging me to do. Besides, I wasn’t entirely sure that the shouts were aimed at me. They sounded as if they were far off. Perhaps there was some other event going on that I was unaware of. I was far too busy getting this forearm dry to be too concerned.
Then I was on my feet and one of the walrus twins was gesturing that I remove my boxer shorts. Briefly, my brain kicked back in. My God, of course, I had to take off my boxer shorts because they were wet. I couldn’t get dressed with them on. They disappeared to be replaced with my thermal leggings and I could sit down again to concentrate on that forearm. Someone was rubbing my back with another towel. It was my back, but at the same time it wasn’t. The vigorous rubbing made it difficult for me to sit upright, but I couldn’t actually feel the towel on my back.
A red plastic cup was thrust under my nose and I took a gulp of what looked like water, although having a drink was really the last thing on my list of priorities. I filled my mouth with the liquid before realizing that it was vodka. Swallowing hard, the fiery liquid disappeared, much to the delight of the walrus twins, and a brief flash of warmth rippled down inside me.
Someone was drying my feet and offered me a sock. I bent to pull it on, but for some strange reason I couldn’t get my foot beyond the sock’s heel. I pulled and pulled. My foot was stuck. I couldn’t understand why. Perhaps I had been passed the wrong sock? Or maybe someone had put glue in it or something? My mind just couldn’t work it out. My arms were pulled back and up as another layer of clothing went over my head. I had forgotten about that forearm. The sock challenge was much more interesting. My foot was permanently stuck in the heel. It was baffling. To me it was clear I needed assistance but no one was bothering about getting that sock on properly. It was all very disturbing.
The other sock went on, followed by another layer on my top half. Like a rag doll I was lifted to my feet again. One of the walrus twins grabbed my wrist and proffered me a stiff, frost covered version of my geographical boxer shorts. They had frozen rigid almost instantly. Natasha appeared, ‘Go to the car now,’ she said, ‘and get warm.’ Her words were just what I needed, clear instructions in the English language. I took off at a run, the sock still only half on my foot.
It was only later that evening that I realized I must still be in shock. Two other things also dawned on me. One was that if the walrus twins hadn’t been there to dry and dress me I would probably still be sitting there now, frozen to death. The other was that my foot had still been wet when I’d tried to pull on that sock. The water had turned to ice and had stuck the sock to my heel. It felt good to have resolved that conundrum.
T W O
Irkutsk has taken on several roles during its long history, including expedition base for explorations of Siberia and gold-rush town. In the early nineteenth century it also became a dumping ground for political exiles. Perhaps the most important group in this vein was the Decembrists, whose failed coup d’état in 1825 earned the lucky ones a one-way trip to oblivion (the others were sentenced to death). The Decembrists were followed by numerous other groups of unfortunates deemed undesirable in Moscow, and by the late nineteenth century it was said that up to a third of the city’s population was comprised of deportees. In the early twentieth century, Irkutsk’s exile population was further swelled at various times by some of the most notable protagonists of Marxism. These included Joseph Stalin himself, Felix Dzerzhinsky (first head of the Soviet secret police, later to become known as the KGB), Vyacheslav Molotov (a future secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the inspiration behind the world’s first undrinkable cocktail) and Sergei Kirov (later to be assassinated, probably on Stalin’s orders, while boss of the Leningrad Communist Party).
Walking the streets of Irkutsk I got a taste of the shock that those exiles who had arrived in winter must have felt. I didn’t actually see a great deal of the city on foot because I could only stay outside for maybe 20 minutes before everything started to hurt. My toes would go numb, as would my nose, followed closely by my chin. My hands were OK just so long as I kept them firmly in the pockets of my overcoat, but every time I pulled out my camera to take a photograph my fingers began to throb with the cold. I had taken the precaution of wrapping zinc oxide tape around that part of the camera that might come in contact with my face as I composed a shot, for fear that my skin would stick to the metal body, but this did little to protect my hands. I had brought two pairs of gloves, a silk inner pair and some heavier outer ones, but I had to remove the heavier pair to operate the camera and consequently I only managed a couple of photos at a time before I was forced to shove the camera back inside my coat in order to pull on my gloves again. This was probably just as well for the camera too, since batteries have a notoriously short lifespan when the temperature drops below about -20°C (-4°F).
All in all, it was a pretty miserable introduction to Siberia. The only solace I found was in seeing numerous residents of Irkutsk scurrying along the snowbound streets holding their noses. Perhaps not everyone was completely immune to the weather after all.
Two days after my initiation with the Angarsk walrus club, Dima arrived at the hotel having made arrangements for a trip to Lake Baikal. The lake usually freezes over in January and the ice does not break until May, so I was keen to see it in its frozen state. I had also asked Dima to see if he could arrange a meeting with anyone who worked in the nearby Pribaikalsky National Park because I wanted to talk to someone who spent long periods working outside in the winter. I thought I might be able to pick up some tips in advance of my journey to Oymyakon.
Early the following morning we left Irkutsk shrouded in thick, grey, freezing fog. Siberian cities are renowned for their heavy winter smogs, created by a blend of vehicle exhaust and industrial emissions, which tend to sit over urban areas unmoved by the light or non-existent winds. The theory was confirmed once we had reached the outskirts of the city, because the fog had virtually disappeared and a pallid sun was doing its best to shine in a watery kind of way. As on the Kitoy River a few days previously, the best the sun could manage was to give some light to the proceedings. Providing warmth seemed to be beyond its capabilities in the depths of a Siberian winter.
What had been a sealed road soon gave way to a rough icy track as we drove south-east through the spruce trees towards Baikal. Small villages with steep, snow-capped roofs nestled in wide valleys, wisps of smoke from their chimneys one of the few signs of human habitation. Another was the relentless march of telegraph poles that followed the track. As in Britain, each pole was a spruce tree trunk, but here the pole itself was not driven into the ground. Each one was strapped to a half-buried concrete post because concrete is better able to withstand the seasonal freeze and thaw that characterizes the soil in these latitudes.
As the trail began to climb, it cut through thick coniferous woodland, a tiny part of a broad swathe of forest known as taiga that stretches the entire width of Russia from the Siberian Far East through northern Finland to the Atlantic coast of Norway. The trees of the taiga are supposed to be evergreen, with needles that lose less water and shed snow more easily than broad leaves. But I wouldn’t have known this by looking at the spruce that whipped past our windscreen. Here the trees were heavily laden with snow and the only colours to break up the ethereal landscape were browns and greys. Green didn’t enter into it.
At the top of a pass, Dima pulled over to the side of the track. ‘Time for a toast,’ he said, putting his fur hat on his head and grabbing a bottle of pepper vodka from the glove compartment in the dashboard before jumping out. This threw me somewhat. It was still only 9.30 in the morning and I hadn’t put Dima down as a drinker. He was a fresh-faced guy
with rosy cheeks and an air of innocence about him that reminded me of Tintin. As he was rummaging in the back of the van I opened my door to see lots of empty vodka bottles by the roadside. Dima emerged from his excavation clutching a couple of tin mugs, a loaf of bread and a thick liver sausage. He produced a lengthy knife from his boot and sliced the sausage along with thick hunks of bread.
‘Now we toast the spirit of the mountain,’ he declared as he poured generous measures of pepper vodka into the mugs. ‘No, Nick,’ he cried as I raised the mug ready for a toast. ‘First we do like this.’ Dima dipped the third finger of his left hand into the alcohol, touched the finger to the vehicle and then flicked it twice into the air. ‘For a good journey,’ he said, downing the vodka in one and immediately tucking into a liver sausage open sandwich.
I was surprised, not by the toasting procedure but because I had come across it before. The three finger flicks are common practice as a tribute to the spirits in Mongolia, and although an area round Lake Baikal is home to Buryat Mongolians, I had not expected to be reintroduced to the custom by a Russian.
An hour later we stopped at the top of another pass and toasted the spirits again, only this pass was the highest of our journey so we had to do it three times. As before, the drinking was punctuated with bread and liver sausage that tasted very good, but within half a minute the bread had frozen so it was quite challenging to eat. Another drawback to the triple session was that I had to remove my left-hand glove for the duration in order to do the flicking and by the end my fingers had turned a waxy white colour. Even in my inebriated state I remembered that this was the first sign of frostbite, so I was more than grateful when Dima announced that we should get going again.
Going to Extremes Page 2
