Adventures in the frozen wilderness: a Hong Kong man’s trek across icy Lake Baikal gives him a new perspective on life
- Anson Lui, 30, says he used to think of himself as a quitter but tackling ambitious expeditions overseas has made him a lot more resilient
Waking up trembling in the freezing dark, Anson Lui Ching-fan notices a hole in his sleeping bag, out of which down feathers are escaping, fluttering like snowflakes in his tent he shares with three fellow explorers.
It is Lui’s fourth night on the icebound Lake Baikal, where in February temperatures drop to below minus 40 degrees Celsius. Hastily shuffling into all the layers of clothes he has to hand, the 30-year-old adventurer can’t help but think: “I don’t want to die here.”
“I stay awake the whole night, until the sun finally rises and I can light a fire to dry my shoes,” he says. “It’s the kind of experience that makes you feel alive.”
A cyclist and social entrepreneur, Lui trekked across the South Siberian rift lake two months ago, the first Hongkonger to do so. The Unesco world heritage site, covering 31,722 sq km, is the oldest and deepest lake on Earth.
Accompanied by three locals, Lui completed a 90km journey across the ice that took four days. His team was forced to change route halfway due to cold currents, before they succeeded in crossing the lake from east to west.
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“I used to think of myself as a bit of a quitter, who made too many plans but took little action. But when I go out to explore the world, I become a different person, with courage and perseverance,” Lui says, explaining why he went on the expedition.
Lui’s last trip was in 2014, when he left his office job and cycled all the way from South Africa back to Hong Kong, a journey that took him two years.
On the journey across Lake Baikal, Lui hiked from 9am to 4pm every day, dragging 50kg of luggage on a sleigh. While travelling in daylight was perilous enough as cracks and thin ice were hard to spot at a distance, Lui found the long evenings in the tent worse.
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“Sandwiched in between your teammates, you can’t really move or do anything. All you can do is listen to the cracking noises from beneath the ice, and the gusts sweeping overhead. Sometimes there’s nothing, and you just lie there with this absolute quiet in the air.
“Once you’ve been through that, you understand how puny you are, and how trivial the troubles you face in everyday life are too,” he says.
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The mighty power of nature is something to be respected and preserved, Lui says, and he hopes to use his adventure to raise awareness of environmental protection. “The way global warming is going, very soon we might not be able to walk on this frozen lake.”
Lui remembers that when he parted ways with the team, the muscular Russians praised him as “a champion”, adding that “the real strength is strength of heart”.
“They said: we might see each other next time on Mount Everest,” Lui says.
