That I'm on my way home. On the train.
It's going to go like this: WH to BJ to Ulan Batar (Mongolia) to Irkutsk (Russia) to Moscow (Russia) to Warsaw (Poland) to Berlin (Germany) to Paris (France) to London (England) all by train. We took the Chinese train to Beijing, then the Trans-Mongolian and are now on the Trans-Siberian. Then we'll get on the Eurorail system. Then fly home.
We left WH June 28th, and we'll leave London July 17. I'll land in Philly at about 4pm on the 17th.
Yesterday, we went to the largest freshwater lake in the world, Lake Baikal. It's about an hour and a half east of Irkutsk. The thing that I found myself most affected by during my time in Big Red was the lack of open spaces and the lack of places to go to be alone. That lake was like a release for me for me after all that time. (I remember once in Thailand I got up in the middle of the night to go to the roof of our hotel to sit and be alone. But I was still in the middle of a great big city, the view of the mountains in the distance blocked by smog.)
The sky was a clear blue and the ridge of the mountain was a sharp outline against the sky. Where the mountains ended there was a "range" of big, billowy clouds white like fresh milk or clean teeth or bleached sheets... The water was a deep blue, except where it lapped up on the rocky beach where it was clear as glass.
We sat on the rocks for a good hour, playing with the rocks and talking, enjoying the sun. It was nice to not be serious, to laugh and play like children completely worry free. It was safe and happy and uninterrupted in a way that I haven't experienced in a long time. If ever.
When we were in Beijing, we stopped in a small park outside the Forbidden City. We laid in the grass a while, but then a guard came and clapped at us and very sternly said, "No."
There were no such incidents at Lake Baikal.
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