Silences:

Sideways glances, bodies moving in the distance, furtive silhouettes coming out of the forest with heads furrowed by alcohol, the local drug of choice.  Silences and thinness, empty looks.  This is how the inhabitants appeared to me, even as they avoided me most of the time.

Birch and spruce share the terrain with flies, mosquitoes, and other unidentified flying specimens that pursue me in clouds.  This intensity that the taiga gives off is so palpable and so contradictory to the inhabitants of this region of the world.  The south of Siberia seems to be in the process of decomposition like a fungus in slow motion.  Cubic concrete carcasses of all sorts from the Soviet era are still here, naked as skeletons.
 
End and new beginning:
Sitting on the edge of this dirt track, I take off my gloves, I take out my thermos which is carefully stowed in a lateral pocket of my backpack--and raise my head to a noise that catches my attention.  Innate protective reaction, I jump back just in time, as a dozen army tanks come hurtling past.

I'm not more than a few kilometers from the Mongolian border, and military vehicles of all shapes and sizes track over the earth like ants.  At the top of a steep slope where the forest reaches all the way to the edge of the asphalt road, Kyarta suddenly appears.  Frontier town of about 10,000 inhabitants, it was rich and opulent in the time when Siberian furs moved south and the tea arrived by caravan from China.  I'm curious to see what remains in our time.  

I feel elated from the inside, a euphoric sensation.  As I move through this small community, I let the little wooden houses surrounded by decrepit fences roll out before me.  Sheet metal and rust act as decoration.  I meet closed faces; I direct myself towards the town's center.  I have arrived.

Kyarta (Siberian/Mongolian border:
I find myself drinking an instant coffee, elbows on a mini-counter.  The passers-by look at me quizzically but without interest.  Exactly that:  without interest.

Here, nothing different, and yet I see the caravans, the dust rising at their passage, the accompanying sounds, the strong odors of animal excrement, the laughter of the merchants, the shouting at the street corners, the comings and goings.  The rhythm of the old life intense and lively. 

I raise my head; in that instant I was lost in the steaming vapors of my coffee.  I am leaning on the little wooden counter, in the middle of town.  The cold wind chills my bones.

Mission accomplished: Siberia is behind me.

ExplorAsia the sequel:
I'm going back to Irkuskt where an airplane will take me to Bangkok to resupply; I have to pass through anyway on my way to Laos.  Four months have slipped by since the last time I switched out my gear.  I'll have 6 days to do everything: visa, new wilderness gear, and rest a little.  My body needs fresh fruit and food with energy.  Then it's on to the China-Laos border, south:  Laos, Thailand, Borneo, Australia,New Zealand.

I've been walking for over a year... one step after the other, I become closer to myself.  I walk, but more than that I tame time, scents, my safety, my sleep at night and the new day.  

Alone, I look to myself for survival.  My environment is Alice's Wonderland; everything has the taste of the extraordinary.

Sarah