It’s illegal to drive across Russia’s largest lake, unless you have a permit from the authorities. And to get that, you need to prove you have a plan to avoid the unthinkable — namely slipping through the ice and descending to the bottom of the world’s most voluminous body of fresh water, which is a mile deep in places. So we are to follow expert guides — great Russian men who speak only in shouts and look mean enough to scare off any of the local bears — as they lead the way in a Trakol, an amphibious vehicle used by the Russian army and designed for terrain as dangerous as this. Our task sounds simple enough: drive across the frozen surface of Lake Baikal,…

Source: The Times May 05, 2018 23:06 UTC