90 degrees north. The top of the world, remote, beautiful and the proverbial home to Santa Claus.

We start in Moscow and head via aeroflot "plane" to Khatanga, arriving in the middle of the night and settling into a hotel there.

Waiting for fair weather we hung around Khatanga, eating a diet of beer, vodka, salted fish and reindeer sausages. For special occasions the local resturant would prepare reindeer liver - a local delicacy, I however struggled with bambi offal. A fair weather break and we loaded up our plane - an Antonov 12 military transport. It didnt look like it should fly, and with the not so reassuring comments from Rich - an airframe mechanic we all boarded.

Four hours north we listened to the engines drone, cooped into the tiny pressurised cabin, the cargo bay filled with aviation fuel and during loading cigarette smoking russian loaders - it seemed a dangerous combo. We arrived at our destination, Ice station Borneo at 89 degrees. We held on tight as we came into land, on a runway bulldozed on the ice shelf.

-30 outside and our first taste of the arctic. White, cold, and stunning. This is the craziest place on earth. Broken ice between here and the pole necessitated a chopper drop off, and loading a MI8 helicopter we flew to our drop off point 89.3 degrees north. We felt like commandos on a mission. Setting up camp, we spent our first night on ice. The trip to the pole had begun, seven days of cross country skiing lay in front of us.

Cold. It is incredibly cold. Crawling out a warm sleeping bag every morning and putting on clothes cardboard like with ice was an exercise in mental strenth.

Sweat is the enemy. While moving the body generates warmth, and sweat stays warm. The moment we stopped for a break it turns to ice. Sweat sodden gloves freeze into icy claws, and thermal underlayers begin to frost over. Ice forms with every breath, and icicles surround your face mask. You know its cold when the icy frozen nosepiece of the facemask sticks to your nose - and it feels warm. Eyelashes slowly get a crust of ice on them, before they start to freeze shut. This is gouged away with frozen fingers before the process cycles and starts again.

Wind makes it even worse.

There is a beauty here - unlike any other. It is vast and alien. Broken shards of ice tower in frozen aqua blue, where great ice sheets have collided. Where they separate new ice grows, with delicate ice flowers forming on the surface. Snowdrifts are formed and carved by the wind, freezing into a myriad of patterns. With every step the snow sparkles, it is so cold and dry here that the snow squeaks underfoot, when broken falling snow chunks sound like styrene blocks hitting each other.

Seven hours a day, spent walking on this alien planet, staring at the ground infront, mesmerised by the ever changing textures and colors. Pulling behind a 100 pound sled, over ridges, leads and icy flats was hard work, and on foot after breaking my skis on the second day very challenging. Footbound I discovered every snow filled crevace, sinking to my thighs, and on occasion my chest regularly.

Every 'night' (its sunlight 24 hours a day) we would set up camp, tent, stove, sleeping mats and bag. Removing our frozen gloves and face masks we would set them to dry, feast chat and sleep. As we slept the ice shelf drifted, and never towards the pole. We lost between 1 and 5 kilometers a night to drift. Mornings we dressed, packed and moved on.

Seven days on ice. And on the seventh day we hit the pole. The ice shelf drifts constantly, so its a running came chasing the pole. GPS in hand we hunted it down, and found it. Celebration time. There was of course the flag posers, from england, and surprisingly - an American. Cameras, video, cigars and celebration. I pulled from my bag a bottle of Russian Vodka, chilled to a cool -30 degrees took a cold syrupy slug. Cheers! To the top of the world.

We set up camp, our last night on ice. Our chopper arrived at noon the next day. Circling in before coming into land. The pilots tap the chopper three times on the ice, testing it for stability. It would have been incredibly demoralising to watch the chopper sink. We loaded our gear, and picking up another two expeditions enroute to Borneo.

Unloading the chopper we loaded up our plane, 27 people crammed into a tiny cargo hold, cold and covered in our equipment. The plane took off, and did a huge circle before coming in for what appeared to be a landing. An apprehension filled us, before the pilot blasted back into the air after a low altitude buzz of the base. We landed at Svretny, a tiny military base in the middle of the arctic ocean. We changed to our first transport. Holding onto straps in the cargo hold for takeoff, we got airborne, before reaching 1500 metres we squeezed 27 people into the pressurised cabin area - 2.5 x 3.5 metres big. Cosy is quite the understatement.

Aftermath. Loads of vodka, sake and celebration. Of our expedition 10 out of 14 suffered some kind of frostbite. From the Japanese expedition three out of four suffered frostbite, one very severe case with one dude having both hands completely bitten and bandaged. A couple of days in Khatanga before a 'flight' to Moscow, my luggage heading to St Petersburg. I had to go to St Petersburg to get it back.

Back to London, and lugging around with me a thermos of ice chipped from the top of the world. It will be a great cause to celebrate over some fine beverages.

Toilet Humour

The most dangerous aspect of the entire expedition was crapping. Once a day I would brave the elements, exposing bare skin to the elements for the call of nature. On a still day at -30 this wasn't so bad, digging a small hole, dropping ones waterproof pants, fleece, thermal and under layers, and doing the business. The pain came with the wind. Add a little 10 km an hour wind, a wind-chill of around -50 and things started to get nasty. Dropping of the strides then became a matter of pure will power, trying to use toilet paper with gloves is like trying to pick your nose with a fist, it just doesn«t work, not in any sanitary fashion anyway. There is nothing else to do but take ones hand out of the glove to use it. In seconds, no micro seconds in the wind you can no longer feel your fingers; you hope for a clean wipe, two rounds is literally a frostbite sentence. Mission accomplished hand into glove and shaken violently to get the blood back I wonder just how many explorers got frostbite or worse perished this way.

Urinating was much easier. Digging around with a frozen glove navigating through layers of clothing you knew when you hit pay dirt, everything went suddenly cold, and if you faced the wrong direction the wind-chill caused a pain like no other.

The midnight toilet runs were taken care of with a little pre preparation - a pee bottle, the midnight bladder mission involved a tilt to the side, before screwing on the lid and snuggling up to a nice hot water bottle. Others in the expedition didn't quite have the same calibre bottle, and suffered accordingly - a leak, or if too paranoid to keep it in bed with them waking up to a bottle of frozen piss. Something I wouldn't want to have to melt in my kettle!

It seems so dreamlike now, conditions so intense that it challenges normal perception. Cold, white beauty and solitude soon give way to urban life. I will miss this place.