Just when I’m about to give up, I meet two young girls who say they can help. Their names are Julia and Natasha, they tell me, and they’re both 13 years old. They take me to see a stern, broad-hipped babushka who eyes me suspiciously. When I explain where I’m from, her frown softens, but only a fraction. Yes, there is somewhere we can stay.

“How much is it? ” I ask.

“A dollar,” she replies quickly. And then, almost apologetically: “Is that too much?” I follow her tottering heels and wrinkled tights along the village’s dusty dirt roads to a squat municipal building with a spectacularly unattractive mosaic at one end and a concrete portico at the other.

“This is the house of culture,” she says, without a hint of irony. Unlocking a fist-sized padlock on the building’s enormous wooden door, she heaves her way in. The inside is more impressive than the outside, boasting a vast lobby, a grand staircase and even a ballroom. It’s also dark, cold and empty, and doesn’t look like it’s been used for years.

Comrade Matron beckons me through the lobby to a small room with floor-to-ceiling tiles and a porcelain basin. The adjacent room is similarly tiled, but instead of a basin it features four beds piled high with blankets. This, it seems, is to be our home for the night. She hands me the keys, tells me she’ll return at nine the following morning, and then clacks her way back across the lobby and out through the front door.

Thrilled at the prospect of sleeping in a converted toilet block, I run back the way that I came, aware that I’ve now been gone for more than an hour. As I near the river, however, a big, oily tanker roars up beside me and two young lads lean out of the window. “Give us five dollars!” they demand. I pretend not to understand. “Give us five dollars,” they say again, this time with more venom. Under the circumstances, “nyet” is the best I can come up with. Clearly angry, they start to drive off, but then turn around, rev the tanker’s engine, and head straight towards me. I only avoid being hit by clambering up a nearby fence.

When I eventually reach Rich, I discover that he’s already had a run-in with the Tanker Twins; he only stopped them from driving over our boats by standing in front of them and refusing to move. He doesn’t seem too bothered by it all, but I feel quite agitated. The more I think about it, the worse it gets: this is, after all, only our first day in Siberia, and already it feels like one day too many.

That evening, we’re too tired to go in search of food, so Rich sets up the stove in our room and puts on some pasta, while I sit around feeling sorry for myself. Just when I’m about to call the whole trip off, I hear a knock at the door, and Julia appears clutching a brightly wrapped package. “A present,” she says shyly, before dashing off down the corridor. Inside is a Christmas card that plays a traditional Russian carol. It’s only June 1, but for me it’s not a moment too soon.

The next morning, Comrade Babushka arrives at nine on the dot. She’s much less guarded than before and insists on showing us to the village shop so that we can stock up on provisions. We talk while we walk. Her name is Aleva, she tells us, and she’s the director of the Dom Kulturi. The job pays about $30 a month, but she makes a little extra selling milk and cheese on the side.

The village shop is owned by one of Aleva’s friends. Before leaving the UK, I had visions of having to queue around the block to buy bread. Instead, we’re able to find everything we could have wished for, not to mention one or two things — such as rose-petal jam and cocoa-flavoured butter — that we could definitely have managed without. But perhaps the highlight of our first foray into the hinterland of Siberian shopping is a “mystery” tin, which features no descriptive labelling whatsoever. Several weeks later, the tin turns out to contain a cheerless meat loaf.

After our spree, Aleva gives us a tour of the Dom Kulturi and brings us a steaming samovar of tea to drink outside on the steps. She seems delighted to learn that I’ll be writing about Mangut when I get home, and is most insistent that I tell everyone how kind and friendly the locals are. I promise I will; she and Julia have restored my faith in human nature — thanks to them, I’ve gone from hating the place to not wanting to leave.

Alas, we have a deadline to meet: we’ve got four months to reach the end of the river before it freezes over for winter. Of course, we’ve no idea how long it will take us to get there, but if I were a betting man, I’d say four months. Well, give or take a month.

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