….in my own bed, in my rocking chair, in my jeans – heaven after 7 weeks of wearing the same 2 pairs of travelling trousers…………and this trip, unlike any other, has found me equally snug as a bug staying in gers in the desert, with strangers, with my family – and in train compartments all across asia……………

What was it about the trains? How could sitting in a compartment on a train for days on end crammed in with people with whom I shared only one word of their language, eating biscuits and processed cheese triangles and drinking only boiled water, offline, no radio……. how COULD that be so magical?

The landscape was magical. The forests, the huge open steppes, the wild flowers, empty Siberia with its open spaces in the forest and its swamps and rivers. The stations – we would get out at the stops, sometimes to massive, beautifully proportioned stations, sometimes ornate and gorgeous with fountains and statues and frescoes and chandiliers, sometimes to a strip of concrete in a clearing in the forest with local people selling delicious warm home made pies from little barrows. Crossing timezones, sometimes twice in one day as we travelled further and further…………. Going east was excitement and adventure, coming back west was Russia, somehow, just Russia – no tourists, no English even…..

But most of all it was a time just to be. To live in the present. When you walk around, as you live your life, there is a subliminal accumulation of facts and evidence about where you are and what is going on as you read signs, hear snatches of conversation, see or hear snippets of news on screens or through open doors, and in your head is a story or a fantasy or a plan, whatever, as you map and organise your life. When there is nothing of this, I found that rather than living aloof from my surroundings and constantly analysing what I saw, I became of my surroundings, just observing  things as they appeared, without assimilating them into my story, with no past and no future, just the now.

What has changed? I will start wearing a watch again and leave my mobile at home, or if with me, firmly on silent and not check it every few minutes to see what the time is and oh goodness there’s an email………………… I will make sure I spend time just being.

Thank you for coming with me, it has been wonderful sharing this amazing time with you. If you’d like to see more pictures I’ll post a link in a few days, it was virtually impossible to present them in any meaningful way on the journey.

My brother captured a moment of my stay with them……………

 

 

do look up his pictures they are brilliant………… this should find them https://www.instagram.com/p/BmScGckB-9f/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=lqaerju0koii