Gerhard Hampel narrates:

– I bought my own dogs six years ago. Now I have thirty dogs. Every winter I carry out three – four short training expeditions on my dog sled. When I plan my expedition I try to choose a route which would be also interesting for my dogs. The dogs are like children and they want to have fun. When they have fun they also give me pleasure by their fast speed en route.

My dogs are Siberian huskies. The age of this breed is about 100 years. Originally these dogs were bred at Alaska, but their ancestors were brought from Chukotka. I like these dogs more than the Inuit huskies, which are bigger and can run with sleds for a day without any food. But they can not run so fast as my dogs.

The objective of my expedition was to see Siberia. I have never before been in the inner lands of Russia. I had a lot of prejudices, which are popular in Europe. I was afraid that there were many contaminated areas in Siberia and wild nature had completely vanished. I would also try to raise awareness in Germany about the actual state of things in Russia and to facilitate a process of giving up all existing prejudices.

I am more than satisfied with my expedition. All my expectations came true. The route we took was changing very much in landscape so we had many different aspects of a country we were travelling through. We covered 1800 kilometres. This sounds a lot but compared to the size of Yukutia it is very little. We started near the sea, then followed along the ice of the Yana River, crossed the mountains and travelled over the Lena River. We had seen very many very impressive views.

– I have only one disappointment – I did not experience my -50°C. The lowest temperature, indicated by our thermometer was -38°C. I experienced such temperature in the course of my previous expeditions.

My dogs did not have any difficulty in adjusting to the new conditions. I think they liked this trip. They like snow and running in snow. For running such long distances they need temperatures around -20 degrees. A change of a landscape is very important not only for people but for dogs too. We had some very long stretch on the river Yana, which was easy going but that does not change very much. So the dogs sometimes got a bit bored. You could feel it as soon as they smelt animals like horses or reindeers they would triple their speed all of a sudden. I had some young dogs in my team. When the daily distance covered more than seventy or eighty kilometres especially the young dogs got tired, they start to move slower and to complain. In order to give them some rest I was hauling them in the sleds. Some stage we had to carry up three dogs on the sled.

The problems started when we left the smooth ice of rivers and had to follow winter roads, that were made by trucks. The sleds constantly get stuck in snow and we had to take out all load to allow the dogs to run further. Sometimes we could cover only 13 km per day.

– We in Germany have very little information about Russia and Russian people. Especially my generation brought up during the Cold War. We had a lot of negative information about your country. What I saw in Russia was much more than I had expected. I did not expect that in small villages we would see so many local citizens. These meetings were always extremely interesting. I could feel warm hospitality and their basic interest in somebody who came from far away. No matter what small villages we visited, the local citizens greeted us warmly and did their best to make us feel quite comfortable. And what really surprised me that people leaving under harsh conditions are so easy going and so friendly to anybody coming to their house and asking to stay for a night. This really was very impressive. And I think this is something very important to take home.

I found out that in small Yakutian villages children study German at schools. Which I am sure nobody would know in Germany. I spoke to one teacher and she said: "Well this is because we have at school only German text books of old times". I promised that I send her books and videos for teaching.

I definitely want to come back. I do not know in what part of Russia I would like to come because this is a very large and interesting country. But I am sure that I come back.