"Our day in the Kronotsky Reserve ends at a woodman's hut - a pitched-roof, log-walled affair where we eat Svetlana's rich salmon stew and the mosquitoes eat us. A pretty stream, fed by a hot spring, struggles past through thick beds of wild celery and cow parsley. If we can find the stream Roger thinks it would be very nice for me to be seen bathing in it. Eventually we locate a pool idyllically set with the log cabin in the background. I strip off only to find that the pool is little more than a sluggish reservoir of mud, stones and other nameless slimy objects, above which all the insects in Kamchatka have decided to hold their annual convention. The fact that the water is blood-warm only makes things worse. Despite the verdant beauty all around I shall remember this particular dip as the Jacuzzi from Hell."

Michael Palin, Full Circle.


I'm listening to the audio book, but you can get the full text, with clips from the documentary, at Palin's Travels.