Boyd Norton's blog

In the summer of 1990, on my second visit to Lake Baikal, I spent time at the northern tip of the lake. While there I became intrigued by a name I found on a map—a village called Holodnia, located about 20 kilometers north of Baikal’s northern shores. Now holodnia, in Russian, means “cold.” I asked myself, “What on earth is it like to live in a place called Cold, Siberia?” I had to find out.