“Why can’t you visit London, again, for example?”. I remember the look in my parents’ eyes. Fierce, but disillusioned. They knew nothing could change my mind when in April 2010 I announced that I would cover nearly 8000 kms from Saint…
Санкт-Петербург, Piter, Saint Petersburg, Leningrado?
Russia had remained in my heart, and in memory. August 2004 marked my first trip to the Great Mother. Maybe this permanence was due to those eyes, as sharp as the Steppe wind, of those policemen stopping you, requesting to check…
Москва́ – Moscow
One night. The only rare interruption is given by train wheels lulling me across the 750 kilometers that took me from Saint Petersburg to Moscow. A few grumbled Russian words get spoken in the darkness. It’s going to be Moscow soon. Twice, here, in 2004 and in…
Life on a train
Tickets can be purchased at local train stations, or you can get them sent to you by numerous travel agencies that organise this kind of epic journeys. It’s cheaper to buy your tickets locally, when you are already in the…
Siberia
I didn’t want to sleep in hostels or in small hotels. I wanted to see what Siberian houses looked like. I wanted to see their walls, their toilets, their chairs. Although it took me nearly 4 months to find them, I finally…
Lake Baikal
636 kilometers from north to south, 60 kilometers wide. 1637 meters deep on its Western shores. It’s the present given by rotating drunken tectonic plates that formed the deepest lake in the world and the fifth ocean of the globe,…
Mongolia part 1
It feels like some kind of end is near. Initially you think you can stop all those intangible kilometers that run outside your window, then you realize that faces, instants and those winding roads cannot be fully seized. Russia, Siberia and their…
Mongolia part 2 ● The Absurdity of Violence
Gun Galuut is behind me now, but I have often wondered if I have really left that place behind. Some memories last forever within us and they improve us and they develop our inner world. They show us that life can be…
Beijing
Here and now. Mongolia is now behind me, but I have often wondered would I see this landscape again one day. I spent nearly 8 hours on the border with China with my European fellow travellers. We waited there while…
