Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
about my surroundings. Slowly, I had come to appreciate the subtle beauty of the
northern forest. My subconscious no longer compared it to the Australian bush and
I found myself looking forward to nights spent by glowing fires of resinous pine
stumps. More than anything, though, I began to appreciate the sheer size of this an-
cient wild forest. I found it sobering to look out the tent door and realise that the
trees, the fallen branches and the rolling, needle-strewn ground continued north,
unbroken by road, track or any other mark of humankind, for thousands of kilo-
metres.
We followed the highway north and east, away from the flat grassy steppe of the
south, and back into the taiga forest of what I'd come to consider the 'real' Siberia.
The full heat of summer had arrived during our stay in Novosibirsk. With the heat
came the first real armies of Siberian mosquitoes. These were not your normal,
slap, slap, backyard-barbecue, repellent-fearing bugs stupid enough to melt them-
selves on a zapper when there was good fresh flesh around. These were serious
mozzie mercenaries and although not quite as terrifying as the fist-sized, blood-
sucking 'mosquitobirds' about which we'd been warned, we figured that they must
be juveniles. To escape from the hordes, we were forced to wear full-length cloth-
ing, mosquito-net hats and stay out of the shade.
We took back roads for several days, heading east. The baking sun had dried the
road to a fine, powdery dust, which managed to find its way into all our gear and
every crevice of skin. Each car or truck that passed threw up a billowing cloud that
first left us coughing and spluttering, then settled down on our sweating limbs to
form a thin coating of muddy grime. Tim was philosophical about this extra dirt.
He thought that having an additional coating on our exposed skin might deter the
mosquitoes but I wasn't so sure. I found it hard to cope with the constant feeling of
having abrasive, grimy skin. My dirt tolerance had naturally gone up since starting
the trip, but seeing beads of sweat turn to mud the instant they oozed from my skin
was starting to drive me insane.
We crossed hundreds of creeks and rivers as we rode up and over undulating
hills, from one valley to the next, and we stripped off to swim in most of them. The
heat of the midday sun made riding almost too much to bear, and we'd have long,
extended breaks at lunchtime. Before climbing back on my bike to pedal off again,
I'd drench my shirt in the cool water and for a while I'd enjoy the sensation of cold
shivers under the blasting sun as icy droplets trickled down my spine.
I pulled off the road one evening to find a camp along a little sidetrack. The
mosquitoes were particularly bad for some reason, and every minute I waited for
