A CYCLING enthusiast from Zaragoza has described to reporters how he was rescued in the nick of time after suffering frostbite in Siberia.
José Andrés Abián, 48, a caretaker by profession and always hungry for adventure and challenge by nature, decided to cycle the 4,000 kilometres across Russia's sparsely-populated eastern wilderness.
He attempted to complete his route between Magadan and Lake Baikal, grappling with temperatures as low as -50ºC, when he started to feel very weak and fatigued.
The explorer said he took off one of his mittens to be able to erect his tent more quickly, and the exposed hand immediately froze up.
By the time he was rescued, the hand was still a block of ice and frostbite was also starting to set into his legs.
José Andrés is now fully recovered and has described his narrow escape to reporters on the Spanish daily broadsheet El Mundo.
Russian media sources, from the newspaper Весьма – which translates as 'Very' - say nobody had been unable to identify him at first, and described a video taken by a local cycling group of 'a man in winter clothes travelling by bicycle along a snow-covered road' from Magadan along the Kolyma highway.
Весьма said local residents woke him up when he was asleep in his tent and asked if he wanted a lift to the nearest town, Susuman, but that he 'did not speak Russian'.
Initially, they asked anyone who might 'know something about the foreigner' to contact them.
It seems he was then rescued when it appeared his legs were starting to freeze over and he appeared disoriented and listless.
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