In such a remote place­—Siberia is accessible on a regular tourist visa, even if my satellite phone hasn’t been cleared for use by Russian authorities—it seems remarkable that each aspect of my adventure is linked in a perfect chain to the next event, with mushers, drivers, and Siberian guides coming out of the white expanse as if by accident, during a journey that runs as smoothly as a Swiss train timetable. Only in coming here do I start to understand why so many of Russia’s exiles—including the early-nineteenth-century aristocratic revolutionaries called the Decembrists, who rebelled against the autocracy of the czar—didn’t race home to Moscow when their sentence was up. Siberia in winter is overwhelmingly soulful, the snowflakes the size of leaves.

Is it wrong to have this response when Siberia—for 400 years a brutal penal colony, later used by Stalin for his gulag labor camps—gobbled up the lives of millions? Times change. Reputations also shift. Siberia is far larger than just its prison populations, past and present; it is bigger than its nickel deposits, factory chimneys, and gas reserves.

The view from a traditional troika Photo by Michael Turek

It is also more comfortable than one might expect. We sleep in small hotels serving pickled fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with overheated bedrooms that are so immaculate, the only fault I can find is in their aesthetic sterility. Yet the romance of Siberia is infectious—the sense of infinity in the vast landscapes, the warmth of the wooden cabin where we lunch as the snow falls soundlessly outside, the grandeur of Ulan-Ude’s opera house and its gilded swags announcing immense Soviet pride. I find it arresting—the enduring belief in the former USSR, which seems to linger in Siberia more than elsewhere I have traveled in Russia. It’s a nostalgia that somehow softens the scowl of the grumpy cabin attendant on another part of my Siberian adventure, when I ride the Trans-Siberian Express between Ulan-Ude and Khabarovsk, 1,230 miles to the west. Maybe the attendant doesn’t believe in the capitalist idea of first class, with its two beds (rather than the sardine can of bunks in third class) and crisp, pressed sheets. She certainly doesn’t care for a foreigner and her pot of black Baikal caviar, which I pick at with chips while I watch the taiga’s silver trees, as fragile as a million matchsticks, move swiftly past.

I could have taken the Golden Eagle, the fancy Trans-Siberian passenger train, along this same route. But what would be the point? To me, the ultimate luxury is having the freedom to travel widely in the first place, to parts of the world where one encounters no other tourists, where the feeling of otherness is as intense as the bite of a Siberian wind in March.

Travel specialists Mir Corporation list itineraries at mircorp.com.

More Adventures on Ice

Antarctica

Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions has operated in the continent’s interior for 29 years. They look after scientists, explorers, and billionaires spending $50,000 on a seven-day trip. The luxuries are sparse (simple tents, basic wines), but the polar expertise is impeccable.

Greenland

Wyoming-based glaciologist Sarah Aciego of Big Chill Adventures leads guests into the wilderness she’s scouted for 15 years. Her 12-night tour of west Greenland is the best I’ve found, taking in the Ilulissat Icefjord by foot, boat, and dogsled.

Svalbard

I first bumped into expedition fixer Henry Cookson in Namibia, though his experience is focused on snow, not sand. His outfit specializes in remote logistics, including snow-machine journeys into Norway’s far Svalbard island chain to see polar bears. Highlights include ice caves and diving under the ice.