Deep Freeze

Day 11: Balyezino (RUS) – Yekaterinburg (RUS). Karen flung her arms around me, “That's one continent done, on to the next!” she exclaimed excitedly. Our fellow passengers in carriage 8 had started to congregate in the corridor long before we reached the white stone obelisk in that marked the continental division. Behind us now, the continent of Europe and our home of Steeple Morden some three and a half thousand miles to the west. Ahead of us, the continent of Asia, which as part of our travelling adventure, we also intended to cover end to end.

The train pushed on, huge plumes of diesel smoke were visible from our carriage window as the locomotive struggled with the changes of elevation as we crossed the low mountains of the Urals. The snow lay deep and crisp and as we advanced towards Yekaterinburg we caught a glimpse of the rudimentary ski-lifts that formed the basis of this town's winter sports activities. “It looks a bit cold for that”, Karen said with a shudder. She was absolutely right – since crossing the Ural's the temperature had plummeted and we were now trying to come to terms with life in the deep freeze.

In common with the rest of our travelling experience we had lessons to learn – and fast! Foolishly, I had disembarked the train with my jacket open and only my inner gloves for warmth. After just 10 minutes of exposure to these temperatures, I started to experience pins-and-needles in my fingers. We made for the warmth of the Metro station; my hands burning and painful. I realised with horror that in just a few minutes, I was starting to suffer from frost bite. My body's natural reaction to the intense cold was to withdraw all of the blood from my extremities in order to maintain the functioning of my vital organs.

After stopping for a hot drink and checking that we were fully layered up we ventured outside again – incredibly cold but this time bearable. Ahead of us an advertising hoarding broadcast the outside temperature: -20 degrees centigrade: colder than the inside of a three star chest freezer – no wonder we were cold!

As with everything in life, there was an upside however to the incredible cold that we were experiencing. In need of warming we stopped by a local bar and ordered a couple of vodka's. Out here they store the Vodka outside, so that it turns syrupy in the extreme cold. And it went down beautifully; smooth, cold, viscous. So well in fact that we had to have another. And another. And...

Zazdorovje! (Cheers!)