Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
were several abandoned villages. It struck me that in Russia lay a chance to live out
childhood fantasies of exploration. I had always dreamed about going back in time
to experience the virgin landscape of Australia and its Indigenous peoples. I des-
perately wanted to know how it felt without the presence of white settlers. Maybe
in Russia I would experience genuine wilderness and the authentic culture that I
craved.
On return to Finland I began to study the Russian language. Later that year,
on my twentieth birthday, I found myself embarking on one of three expeditions
to Arctic Lapland. Everything I saw and experienced in the following two weeks,
from reindeer running stiff legged across the snow, to the northern lights, felt as
vivid and biting as the cold. It left me overwhelmed and intoxicated in a pure, ma-
gical way.
I had expected to tire of the north once the novelty wore off. As my year in Fin-
land progressed though, the exact opposite happened.
With each visit into the forest, I became aware of yet another level of subtlety.
Sometimes it could be just a bird, the way sunlight slanted through the canopy, the
feeling of brushing by the pine bark, or even just a slightly different aroma. It in-
trigued me that the forest the Russians called the taiga stretched almost unbroken
from Scandinavia to the Pacific. When considered as one large tract of forest, it is
the largest in the world, constituting 22 percent of the world's forests and covering
an aggregate area the size of Australia; it contains some of the greatest tracts of
wilderness left on earth today.
Upon returning to civilisation, I reflected with disappointment that I had only
just begun to tune into the forest environment. I always felt like the chance to deep-
en the experience was being cut short and craved a longer, drawnout journey.
Throughout this time Chris and I kept in contact by e-mail. In January of 1999,
his idea of taking horses from London to Beijing evolved to riding recumbent bi-
cycles instead. He planned to start from London in May and cycle through Europe
over summer. After completing my course in September, I planned to meet him in
Russia. From then on we envisaged cycling together across Russia and Mongolia
to Beijing.
Early on, even before we had settled on the idea, I knew what kind of experience
I wanted. I had learnt that it wasn't the spectacular moments that made journeys
special for me - they were always transient and rare. It was finding enjoyment and
a deep satisfaction from the ordinary and routine that was most important. And the
only way to do that, I thought, was to get to know a place deeply. To do that would
