KIMCHI KIWIS

There is the sound of something heavy moving outside the tent, followed by a pause and what might be a snuffling noise. Gareth’s skin feels as though it’s suddenly a couple of sizes too small. He dares not move, hardly dares to breathe. There is a brief silence, and then a rending, tearing noise and the starlight gleams in the eyes and on the flashing teeth of a bear.

He wakes with a shout. Bathed in sweat and panting, he looks about himself wildly. The dream has been so vivid that it takes several minutes before he can convince himself that he is in a hotel room with a noisily buzzing air-conditioner rather than in a shredded tent, wreathed in the carnivorous stink of the breath of a bear. He sinks back and lies there, eyes wide, heart pounding.

It’s strange the way things seem in the night. Gareth isn’t generally prone to anxiety dreams, and while he prides himself on his cold‒blooded rationalism, he can’t help but wonder as he lies there in the deep of the night: was this a premonition?

Ever since we began studying our route in detail and it became plain that we would, sooner or later, have to camp out under the stars at some point — perhaps at more than one point — bears have stalked Gareth’s subconscious. He has nothing in particular against the beasts and would, if pressed, say that he actually likes them. He’s admired them from relatively close range in the wilds of Alaska, but in each of those encounters he enjoyed a natural competitive advantage, being astride a motorcycle with the engine running at the time. Only once has he had what he felt was a close shave: when we camped in Yosemite National Park in 2006, we awoke to find that a bear had deftly broken and entered a Mustang convertible, in search of the burger that its unwary driver had left on the back seat. It was a cool operator, as we noted queasily at the time: this happened less than 100 metres from where we were snoring peacefully in our sleeping bags. For Gareth, camping has never quite been the same again.

In the planning stages for the Russian leg of this trip, it was clear that the distance