I never expected to be crouched in the back of a dirty van, surrounded by three men, (two of which I didn’t know and who didn’t speak English, and one I had known only 24 hours) all watching intently as I counted tens of thousands of Rubles onto the stained and tattered seat cushions. I imagine all kinds of things all the time. I never imagined anything like that.

Moscow is a blur of jet lag and sleep deprivation. A car takes us to a nice hotel near Red Square. After showers and email updates it’s dark and Sheila and I set out on foot for some food. You cant be shy in foreign countries and after asking enough people where to eat we find ourselves in a nice steakhouse and seated next to two other American’s. Circus performers no less. This seems all too perfect as I consider much of what I do a horse and pony show anyways.

Much later and I need sleep but it will not come so I wander downstairs to the Hotel bar for a liter of beer. Before long I am approached by an attractive woman in a red and orange cocktail dress. She speaks good enough English and makes small talk. After a few minutes of this she moves on to business. Would you like me to come to your room? Why? To read you the newspaper. You want to read me the paper? Yes. Does this cost Money? Yes. How much? Five hundred. Rubles? No, Dollars.

I decline and soon she is gone and so is my beer so I wander back upstairs and pass out. The sun wakes me and far too soon.

The morning is crisp and sharp and I weave in and out of narrow cobblestone streets around the hotel, careful to keep my bearings. We are leaving tonight and I want to see as much as possible. I find a place we can buy Russian cell phones and then head back to the Hotel. I meet Sheila, we pick up the phones and then walk to Red Square and see as much as possible. We stop for lunch and when we are done its raining hard. Too hard for the 20 minute walk back to the hotel. We decide to brave the Moscow Subway. Nothing is in English and the characters are different. It may as well be Mandarin. We only need to go one stop but its impossible to figure out. We are jostled too and fro by thousands of commuters. Finally someone spots our struggle and directs us down a level to the correct train.

Back at the Hotel I get about two hours sleep. The last for the next day or so. A six hour flight to Yakutsk. I blink in the bright, late morning sun and snap a photo at the top of the step exiting the airplane. A man in a fur hat yells at me in Russian and waves his arms. Fine, no more photos. For now.

We are met by Slava, our local guide and fixer. he is holding a white card with my name. Wish I had photographed that. He drives us to our hotel, helps us get local Sim cards for the phones. sleeping bags for the road and shows us around the city. For the next 48 hours we research, photograph, buy supplies and prepare. It’s cold here but not as cold as I expected. Its all white and black and grey. Color seems rare. Everything is dirty and old. Smoke everywhere. No one makes eye contact or even looks at you. Few people can speak English or understand you, even in restaurants.

But I find it fascinating.

It’s finally time to leave. Slava and Petr our driver, arrive with Petrs Van. Petr is also bringing his wife Moscha for company on the way back. She never turns around to greet us as we enter the van and will sit in the front seat for the next five days, smoking and barely speaking a word. We discover mid way through the trip that she speaks decent English.

On the way out of Yakutsk we stop at a convenience store for snacks and I buy beer, pulled from a line of taps and into plastic liter bottles. I embarrass my Siberian companions by taking too many photos. This will be an ongoing issue.

Next we stop for gas and finally hit the road which takes us across a frozen river for forty kilometers or so to a village on the far bank where we stop for lunch. I have strange little raviolis with meat inside and bobbing in a tasty broth. It’s delicious.

We pass more villages and lots of grazing horses, thick and furry like a Clydesdale but much smaller. The local people raise them like cattle for meat. I make it my goal to have a horse steak while I’m here but it never happens. The road is rough and winding. We pass graves. Lots of graves. It’s long since dark when we reach our first destination, a hostel in the village of Khandyga. Slava shows us in to a tiny apartment like location and then he and Petr disappear to store the van in a garage. Its too cold to leave in the open as it may not start in the morning. I have a few sips of beer and pass out.

I aim to be up before the sun but light through the window wakes me. I stagger into the common area of the hostel and find an elderly Yakutian man in his underpants, a t-shirt and dress socks. He is standing in the center of the small room, legs spread wide and rubbing his belly furiously. He avoids eye contact which is hard in the small space. I maneuver around him, gathering my equipment and trying not to make to much noise as the rest of my party are still sleeping.

Its growing light outside but the sun has not broken the horizon. I run through the empty streets, cutting left and right and trying to still retain my bearings, searching for a good location to place my time-lap’s camera to catch the sunrise. The air smells of coal smoke and there is black residue and garbage everywhere. The street are icy and slick. I see not a soul.

I find a spot for my camera and place it where it wont be noticed. I don’t want to babysit it and the time-laps will take more than an hour. I leave the camera and begin to explore Khangyga more. Gradually people begin to appear in the streets. Large coal furnaces switch on and off as needed through the village. This place feels at once very familiar and entirely foreign.

Once the sun is well up I head back to the hostel, a brightly colored apartment like building with a billboard on the side showing the hammer and sickle. Everyone is up and preparing. Slava asks if I would like to go with him and Petr to get the van. A taxi arrives and we climb in. Its just a small Nissan car with a young man driving. He’s wearing a Levi jacket and a bandana with the logo of a heavy metal band. “cool driver” says Slava. I point to my camera but the driver just shakes his head so I don’t take his picture. We arrive at a sagging wooden warehouse and enter through a door into pitch dark. Dark as coal. I cant even see Slava or Petr in front of me but they seem to know where to go. I walk slowly through the darkness until finally I can see light coming through cracks in the wall. And there is the van, parked in the middle of the big warehouse space. Someone opens a garage door and Petr drives the van outside, we all climb in and head back to the Hostel and load up and hit the highway again.

The road takes us into more mountainous terrain. Less villages and steeper winding sections. We are now on The Road of Bones, built by prisoners of Stalin’s Gulags. Thousands of men died from exposure and malnourishment in this roads construction. Slava tells us that its estimated that a man died for every 12 meters of road. We stop often to take photos and video.

Late that night we reach the village of Ust Nera. We arrive at a building where we pick up a woman and then drive to another building. She leads us up several flights of dark dingy stairs to a small apartment with two bedrooms where we will spend the night. We dine on bread and Red Fish Roe washed down with Vodka. The Roe must be an acquired taste but I have seconds to be polite. The Vodka helps.

I sleep well and rise before the sun and everyone else for more photos and video.

It’s difficult to say why but Ust Nera will remain the most memorable village of the journey. The day is crisp and cool and we are slow to leave as Petr must have a tire repaired on the bus

We head higher into the mountains and the most remote country yet. Later in the day we stop to talk to some truck drivers and they invite me into their truck to drink. They are both quite drunk, one man will introduce himself to me over a dozen times. I keep changing my name from Bob to George and finally Jose but he doesn’t notice. Neither men speak a word of English so Slava translates. They ask if we have women with us and I lie. One of them tells me that if we weren’t friends he would crush me. It occurs to me that perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to climb in the truck. I keep a hand near my knife at all times. They generously share fresh bottles of beer and Vodka and cold dumplings from a frying pan on the dashboard. It takes about 30 minutes to escape the truck and resume our own journey.

Its early the next morning when we reach the next village and there are no accommodations. We have a quick meal of cheese, sausage and bread and then bed down in the van. I doubt anyone sleeps well.

For the next two days we drive long hours. We stop often for Petr to shoot his shotgun or me to shoot video. Or both. We meet fishermen and nomads and truck drivers. We rotate ipods and memory sticks with music. We stop for food when we can find it and dine on diced moose-meat wrapped in thin crepe like pancakes and whatever else is available. The van grows smaller and smaller as the kilometers pass underneath. We cross rivers and creeks and lakes.

Finally we reach our final destination, Srednekolymsk in darkness. We are all beat.

We spend 2 nights in Sred doing research and taking photos. Sleeping and drinking. On the third day Slava, Sheila and I fly back to Yakutsk and Petr and his wife begin the long drive back. He will not stop driving on the return and expects to do the journey in half the time. The day after that we fly out of Yakutsk, utterly spent. Jet lag will take a week to recover from.

Many people will ask about the trip but these things are hard to put into words. Difficult as trying to describe the exact color the mountains turn when the sun disappears behind them. Because the color never stays, it changes moment to moment like any experience and continues to change for all of your life, even as a memory as the number of days between the now and the moment that has passed grow longer.