I drove for 15 days through ice and snow with Sixt Mongolia to reach Khovsgol Lake—a freshwater lake, the second largest in the country and often considered the sister lake to Baikal. It extends 136 km (85 miles) long and 36 km (22 miles) wide, reaching depths of up to 262 meters. During the winter, it freezes over completely, and what is normally an eight-hour drive along its edge becomes an easy route across the ice.
 
When we reached the lake, I couldn’t believe the sound of cracking ice beneath our tires as we moved across the surface. When I stepped out of the car and looked down, it felt like I was standing on top of a frozen web—cracks extending well over 20 feet deep, crystal clear and aquamarine, like the Mediterranean Sea.
 
We stayed in our fanciest yurt hotel that night—a complete contrast to the teepee we had slept (and frozen) in the night before while staying with a reindeer tribe family in the Tsaatan Mountains. The following day, we headed back out onto the lake, following a couple thousand Priuses, of course, and eventually reached the Khovsgol Festival of Ice.
 
There, we were met by thousands of Mongolians adorned in colorful silk clothing and headdresses, playing games I had never heard of, performing music that gave me more goosebumps than the temperature, and drinking more vodka than I consumed in all four years of high school and college combined.
 
I sat on the ice, hoping my feet would stop aching from the cold, and found a scene I would never want to forget: the horse chariot races. I moved from moment to moment, finally deciding to spend my last battery capturing a panorama composed of 40 HDR images. I wanted to remember every detail—every pattern, everything.