Kayak Adventure in Siberia: The first solo circumnavigation of Lake Baikal

After Detlev's legendary 2,500-kilometre solo kayak expedition across the Baltic Sea from Flensburg (Germany) to the Arctic Circle, where he largely survived on ‘bush tucker’, this time the seasoned adventurer, best-selling author and Doctor of Science set off on a thrilling adventure around the deepest lake in the world (a mile!) in Siberia (eastern Russia): Lake Baikal. It turned out to be an intrepid voyage full surprises and ‘Russian improvisation’: encounters with the Russian mafia, unique nature, a host of hungry bears, storms, forest fires stretching for hundreds of kilometres, people who looked as if they were straight out of Once Upon a Time in the West and a chance meeting with a kayaking couple from America. Despite the poor odds the Russians on the Baikal gave him of making it back in one piece, Detlev embarked on the 2,000-kilometre circumnavigation of the ‘Fountain of the Earth’, as Siberians call their sacred lake, solo in a kayak. On this for the most part solitary expedition ‘at water level’, he got closer to the soul of the lake and the people around it than anyone before him.