prayer flags

PLATE 2: WE REACH THE FRONTIER OF THE BURYAT TERRITORY AND DISCOVER A PYRAMID OF PRAYER FLAGS. Well over a month since we parachuted onto the Siberian Steppe. Flat, featureless country still; it is impossible to judge scale and distance, havoc is wreaked with depth perception. Last week Bindon strode excitedly towards what he thought was a “bloody enormous oak, all the way out here, imagine that”, only to mysteriously lose sight of it and trip over a thorny shrub towering some three feet above the ground. Yesterday several hours were wasted stalking a tundra Grizzly that turned out to be a marmot.* I am reminded of accounts of fabulous Arctic mirages in the journals of early explorers, shimmering images of urban city skylines or distant mountain ranges caused by inversions in the lower atmosphere. So today, when we spot a pyramid of prayer flags on the distant horizon, Bindon insists on approaching it with abnormal caution, constantly reaching out to see if he can touch it. Our sense of awe, when we finally reach the object, is palpable - we appear to have arrived at the Buryat frontier.

*A Swedish explorer travelling in the Arctic in the late part of the 19th century recalled sketching in his journal a craggy headland with two unusually symmetrical glaciers, the whole of it being part of a large island, only to discover he was looking at a walrus. However, the most disorienting optical phenomenon in the Arctic regions is surely the white-out. It occurs most frequently during periods of blizzard or fog, when every perspective yields an unvarying, all-pervasive whiteness.