It’s all around us

Maybe it started when I was reading Jules Verne’s books (The Mysterious island – my all time fav!), when I was learning by heart the capitals of the countries going through an old soviet world atlas, or when I was studying the political map of the world that had been on the wall next to my bed since 1999.
What were my parents even thinking when they got it? I bet they thought it was a good decoration. I took it seriously however, and as I liked to read (I was either reading or playing outside if it wasn’t -40 or school days haha), I was trying to find all the information about faraway places in the books at home – no proper Internet at that time in Kazakhstan!

And being in the town where I’d spent a big part of my childhood, literally everything seemed so far away. I remember taking a train for 4 days and nights to reach Saint-Petersburg or the Black sea. My family didn’t have a car, so trains and sometimes buses were only options to move around, and every trip was very well-planned in advance – usually it would be one trip per year for 2 weeks or so. These were special events.

The grey monotonous palette of our town, especially in wintertime, was adding to the equation. When you as a child with wild imagination are reading about all these colorful birds and flowers in South America, the lush jungle of Indonesia or the Mayan temples in Mexico, and then you look out of the window to face whites and greys, with occasional browns and blues, you start questioning reality. 😅

However, as I was reading or hearing more and more about people like

Elspeth Beard who was the first woman to ride her motorbike around the world https://www.madornomad.com/the-first-british-woman-to-motorcycle-round-the-world/

And of course the family of Roerichs (who I love dearly) with their spiritual journey across Altay, Kashgar, Tibet and to India in the 1920s https://louiswolf.com/english/2023/6/22/the-mystical-adventures-of-nicholas-roerich-in-the-mountains-of-asia

I was realising that here we GO. That’s it. That’s what is attracting me and igniting my heart. To move forward, to explore the expanses of this planet, to meet people, to live fully every day, to smile to adversity, to share joy of discovery with others, to learn and to teach. To make it extraordinary and let the spirit soar.

One day when I was 14 I heard about some program which allowed you to study at school in the USA for a year. I went to pass the test and interviews just for fun and to skip school. Little did I know that I would be actually chosen as a candidate to go. Just as I turned 15, not without my mum having a huge crisis, I left the country to go to Tennessee to live there for a year in a host family (actually, two, as I’ve changed towns and schools in the middle of the year). It was refreshing to be “alone”, 10000 kms away from my immediate family, classmates and habitual things. The exchange program covered all the flight costs and all the basic needs and I even received 125$ per month, that would go to my savings for a little laptop. That was the best school year of my life when I met amazing people and with several of which I still keep in touch.

This unexpected year showed me that there is indeed a whole world out there, that if you get lost (as I did in several airports on the way to the US) you can always ask people and they will show you the way, and it has validated my only desire to leave the steppes as soon as possible and live live live.

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Attaching here a link to Roerich’s paintings from different periods – he was also painting and writing during the big expedition. https://www.roerich.org/roerich-paintings-selected.php

And here is my favorite one “Drops of life” from Sikkim series, 1924.

In the next post I will tell about my first long-distance “hike” in the steppes.

Have a good day,

Lots of love,

Lucy