As I write this I am in Moscow waiting to head off to the airport to catch my plane home to London.

After spending time with in the cities during my first visit to Siberia, this time I visited the local Khanty people, indigenous people of the Ugra region of Siberia, located very far away from the cities accessible only via sled. 

It was cold. Last time I went it was mild. This time it got down to minus 11 at one point and that is mild for Siberia!

On this trip I took Simon Scott from my forum as my assistant. I had never met Simon before and it was great to meet him. Thanks for the help Simon. I will continue to use forum members as assistants as long as there are people still keen to do it!

Ksenia Jones was my producer/ reporter and in charge of the whole press trip and was a joy as always. Thanks Ksenia for looking after us and to the new friends below I made on the trip.

I shot using my EX3 using the Canon 20x lens 90% of the time on this trip, mainly due to time constraints, but I was very happy with the results. I used the Letus Ultimate for some shots of the city in the snow, a couple of shots of the Khanty village and for all the talking heads. 

The journey on the sled/ snowmobile was fun at first, until I almost fell off a few times, got very cold and it went on for longer than I expected. So I “volunteered” to go back in the 4×4 which could fit in 3 of us. It broke down. Ran out of water in the radiator. All the snow around and it was no use. I offered my services to replenish but it was declined strangely!

Luckily the snowmobiles were behind us and when they ran into us they sent one of the off to the lake to get more water, again luckily it wasn’t frozen completely over yet! I was slightly worried. It was cold, neither my iphone or my blackberry were working in the wilds of Siberia, how weird, and we had no sat phone so I was wondering how we were going to get back. How I was going to survive. Luckily my internal panicking didn’t need to manifest itself externally due to rescue. Phew. I don’t like the cold!

The stuff was filmed for Russian Hour’s Ugra Time and as usual I have made a little short film of the Khanty village which you can see here:

http://philipbloom.co.uk/films/35mm-films/return-to-siberia/

Thanks to Alexander Korobko as always, Ksenia Jones and to Simon.

The half hour I made will be on the net soon and on Sky. When I find out when I will let you know!

Here are a few more pictures from the trip, both outside and inside…