So, if you are a pictures person rather than a words person, here you are….

click here

….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

Last night. It’s been a magic week of family time here in the forest in the stunningly beautiful Polish countryside.

Rucksack packed. Of course I’m looking forward to getting home, I love my life in Ludlow. But it’s been simply wonderful and part of me is looking back and reluctant to let go of this wonderful time.

Have just had the best of jaunts – to Krakow! All organised by my amazing sister-in-law, what a city! What a fabulous finale to my trip!

Its funny, this trip has been planned, almost to the minute, since January – totally out of keeping with my usual mode of travel which is to arrive somewhere then open the guidebook and decide where to go and probably change my mind on the way. But even with all the planning there has been unexpected delights at every turn and the odd unplanned adventure and the fun and the interesting along the way. I expected it to be difficult, challenging, grim at times, exhausting….all sorts of things…..and the 2 things that linger in my mind above all others are the landscapes and the people. All those lovely people who I have shared time with in train compartments or during my stops, where are they now? What are they doing, as they live their lives so different from mine, and yet at the same time so much the same….

Are you interested in the planning?

I used the main in seat 61 for the initial planning : https://www.seat61.com/

and Real Russia to book the train tickets and organise the visas : http://realrussia.co.uk

both brilliant. Being me, I planned it all on a spreadsheet and it’s all worked like a dream!

My outward journey, all in kilometres, was :

260 Ludlow to London; 344 London to Paris; 3,480 Paris to Moscow; 9,289 Moscow to Vladivostok and add in 666 for the side trip to Mongolia, making a total of 14,039.

And of course back again, slightly longer on the way back with the diversion to south Poland – making a total of well over 28,000 kilometres or 17,500 miles, every inch by train with the exception of Katowice (south Poland) to Berlin which is 530 kilometres and which I will do by bus as its quicker, easier and cheaper.

This is what I wake up to, here in the bosom of my family. The perfect place to readjust.

It’s fun living in a wooden house deep in the forest instead of trundling past on the train.

And happiness is………

everything I have with me drying in the sun. Even my moneybelt and my PJs and my dirty clothes bag. (I’m wearing my sister-in-law’s clothes so everything can get washed!). Wonderful! It’s not much of a wardrobe for nearly 7 weeks but it all comes down to keeping my rucksack as light as possible.

(Only read on if you’re interested in logistical type stuff – what I’ve got with me and so on)

So, what did I bring that was superfluous? Most of my medical kit, which is good, and a hard drive stuffed with films to while away the hours on the train – it didn’t work with my tablet (of which more later) and in any case there were no hours to while away as I was perfectly content on the train.

Usually when I travel I take the Lonely Planet guide book, there’s a better book for the trans Siberian train journey but the Lonely Planet one was much more up to date and what’s more available as a kindle so I opted for that – not such a good decision – a kindle doesn’t work for a guidebook and lonely planet isn’t nearly as good since being taken over by Radio Times – so that one was a learning experience.

I did buy a mini folding Bluetooth keyboard to go with the hated tablet – which made the hated tablet almost bearable……I hated the tablet because it works like a phone and insists on doing what it thinks you want it to do instead of doing what you tell it – and makes it extremely difficult to tell it what you want it to do anyway. But it’s half the weight of my mini laptop (which I love) and works as a kindle too so that was probably the right decision – insanity versus physical struggle??????…..hmmmm……..possibly physical struggle preferable to near insanity!!!!! (I needed something for working on the magazine I edit)

I carried everything in my much loved red rucksack which has been all over the world with me over many years. Including a litre of water, coat, some food, everything, it weighed 12 kilos and was not full. Inside, things are packed into stuffsacks – wardrobe, office, bathroom, etc, with a cloth bag for dirty washing. I took one of those tiny packaway rucksacks to use as a daysack and a simple cotton cloth bag – the type you hang over your shoulder – which was brilliant for nipping to the shop and for those many trips to the loos on the trains – perfect for those oh-so-necessary wet wipes, toothbrush etc, etc. I wore my old lightweight wonderfully comfortable walking boots (they’re more or less in pieces now!) and took flipflops.

As well as treading across the steppes of Russia and Mongolia, these lovely boots have walked me in the foothills of the Himalayas and the Atlas mountains, across the west of the Sahara as well as the Gobi desert, and in the forest in Poland with my lovely neices and on gorgeous beaches in the Orkney islands…………..the mountains of Wales and the green rolling hills around Ludlow…………..

Poland. Still lots of trees but nice neat farmed countryside. Missing the ramshackle overgrown wooden Russian villages that seem to grow out of the forest and remain of the forest – and which to my English eyes look unkempt but is how a Russian likes to live – in among the green of the forest, he will plant things to grow over his house and around his entrance. Very much looking forward to spending a week here in the bosom of my family and it will be lovely to get home next week. A little bit of my heart left behind……….

On the train. Leaving Russia……don’t feel ready……but it’s done, time to go……… Still in the subhurbs of Moscow and even here is that feel of – you’re really just in the forest but there are some houses and stuff, even tower blocks, but really its all about the trees. I think every Russian at heart is a forest dweller.

My last couple of days have been spent with a lovely Russian woman who lives in a town on the outskirts of Moscow. Her town is in 2 halves – one is the usual big city tower blocks and huge roads, her half is all trees and undergrowth with wooden houses – and brick ones too – among the trees, with tiny roads, some not even made up. Its green and cool in the heat. Her garden is all apple trees and she has a fabulous upstairs living space which opens onto a balcony which has an apple tree spilling over on to it, you can lounge on the sofa and reach out and pick an apple! Her house is completely wooden inside and out – ceilings, walls, floors, stairs, everything, and its fascinating to see the construction – walls of horizontal logs with planks laid over to give a flat surface and look smart. Wooden door and window frames neatly incorporated. Tin roof – all the houses have tin roofs.

I’ve loved my time with her, she met me off the train from Kazan, and Moscow and the metro was a BIG shock to my system. No way was I ready for that. So it was great to escape to her lovely peaceful house among the apple trees, the perfect place to gather myself ready to face leaving Russia, and meet her friends – one of whom is South African, came to Russia for a work project and loved it and stayed. And stayed! We’ve ambled round huge parks that might be ex big estates but are really no more than accessible bits of forest with the odd mansion thrown in.

My last afternoon in Kazan was amazing – a friend of a friend, with typical Russian hospitality, very kindly offered to show me round. She asked what I would like to see and I said “Show me your Kazan, show me what it is, not the touristy stuff”. She took me to a bit of the old Kazan, secreted among the tower blocks – a little village that has somehow stuck in there, beautiful old wooden houses with the lace carved windows – again, all trees and undergrowth and people have planted flowers and bushes alongside the street. Again, its little unmade roads. These houses are a bit of Russian history but are privately owned and there are no grants for their preservation or restoration so people extend, some with wood, some with blocks, all higgledy piggledy. There’s a pump handle in the middle of the village – we saw a man filling some big plastic containers, he said he has no water in his house.

Its a beautiful evening outside my train window, the sun setting over the trees. My last few hours in Russia. Goodbye Russia. And thank you. Thank you thank you thank you………….