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Jon Turk
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Village of Talovka
- Older in Siberia 2004: ski-based kite towing - Jump to oldest entry: food
We'll we've made it to civilization of a sort. Talovka is a tiny Koryak village where a few people manage a hardscrabble existence. It's pretty amazing that they get by, no roads, boats, or airplanes to connect them to the rest of the world. An occasional helicopter stops by but that's become very rare since the fall of the USSR. The mayor insists that we stay at his house. All the people are warning us that we in for a super-early break up which means that we will run out of ice and snow much earlier than usual. Our high-tech kites and skis won't make very good boats for crossing all of the big rivers that we planned to use as highways. This trip seems to get stranger and stranger. Maybe there really was a bad spell that the baleen didn't fix. Both Misha and I are wondering about making it to the Arctic Ocean. Our five miles a day average isn't really cutting it. All the villagers keep telling me about a guy named Dimitri who vanished for good while traveling under similar conditions. So tomorrow we will head for another reindeer camp 80 kilometers away. The reindeer birthing starts soon, so we can hang out with the herders who stay with the herd 24 hours a day to keep the wolves away. This will give us time to consider our situation from all angles. I don't really know who is driving this journey, it doesn't seem to be me. I guess I'll just see where the force leads me.
Dated: 04/05/2004
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