Siberia. Magadan to Novosibirsk via the Road of Bones. Picking up from Mammoths and Ice Carvings: A Few Days in Yakutsk. The series starts here: We Needed an Expedition, Not a Holiday.

A major snowstorm descended on the A360 Lena Highway. The trucks stopped running. We had a schedule to stick to, so we didn’t — one more small way this trip kept insisting we do things the truck drivers had already decided against.

The ferry was empty as we headed south, snow dropping heavily outside while the Land Cruiser stayed warm inside. I was, for what it’s worth, thrilled to be driving in the worst snow I’d personally ever seen — the kind of thing that sounds unwise written down and felt like exactly the point at the time. We stopped at a café for morning tea, and while warming up on coffee, noticed a police officer standing out in the snow at the café’s exit, red-and-white stick in hand. We felt for him. We did not, however, rush the coffee. As we left, we passed the police check without incident and drove straight back into the storm.

By mid-afternoon the snow stopped and gave way to mud. We arrived in Aldan, a small town with a special feel to it under fresh snow on steep-pitched roofs. Once we’d settled into the hotel I went for a walk around town. For me it was something close to novel — the park under snow, in a way Auckland never gets to be. The required statue of Lenin kept an eye on proceedings, as it does everywhere.

It snowed again overnight, leaving a fresh covering over everything. The storm itself had passed, and the day sat still and cold, the roads gone to ice. Grit had been left roadside for exactly this — self-service, apparently, since you shovelled it on yourself.

Going up one hill, trucks had pulled over to fit chains. Halfway up, one was sliding backwards down it.

He wasn’t going anywhere.

At the brow of another hill we stopped to admire the view — trees under snow as far as I could see in any direction. I got out and nearly went over myself, the road far more slippery than the moment I’d planned for. It was minus three, and the t-shirt held up fine. My feet were the ones that noticed.

Further down the road we stopped for a man standing at the roadside in the middle of nowhere. He’d been out building a bridge nearby, his shift had ended, and he was waiting on a lift home. We took him as far as the next village — an ex-soldier, it turned out, who’d fought in the Chechen war. An extra passenger made finding the right tree for Janine’s toilet stops a little more complicated than usual.

In Tynda I stretched my legs with a walk around town, glad to be out of the Land Cruiser after a day of ice and detours. Dinner at the hotel got interesting when one of the other guests started hassling Olga. I was getting worked up about it, running through what exactly I planned to say.

Janine sorted it before I got the chance.