I'm blown away.

By Lake Baikal, by its immensity and liveliness; its subtletness and tranquility. You get it all - monumental vistas with shorelines, islands and rocks, and tiny little details sculpted in the ice under your feet. Loud cracks of the ice plates and absolute silence, occasionally broken by blasts of the freezy wind forcing tears in to your eyes.

Barely seen through them, the ice fields become an infinite space from where you can take any direction and you somehow know it is right. As you walk the frozen surface of the lake, bitten by the deep frost, you become true and amorphous, your life turns into hopes, hopes into illusions and illusions into dreams.

And the dreams are easy to live (and even easier to photograph).

I don't recognize days and nights any more, waking up too early and getting to bed too late. I can't help myself - Baikal is like femme fatale; no matter how close you are, you never quite get her. But will you ever be tired enough not to try your fortune?

Enchanted, I keep returning in search for understanding and sangrail, knowing that no human being can find anything in the deepness of Baikal. But I can get these feelings of a sudden revelation that are fulfilling, yet ephemeral - hence forcing me to come again.

If you think one day prepares you for another, you're wrong. Every day here has been different. The video above was shot yesterday evening. The iphone shots below this morning. I was swept away from the glossy surface of the lake just half an hour ago.

Lost highway (really, shot through the windshield)

I have one more serenade left before I return next year. Let's see if I can dance as Baikal's music plays tomorrow morning.