Russia Incognito

In September 2015, Russia celebrates the 70th anniversary of the WWII victory. It happens to be the 41st year since construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline, north of the Trans-Siberian. Author of My Desert Odyssey heads east, traversing half the world via BAM, onto the Sakhalin and Hokkaido, half of Japan to Nagoya by the four seas. Why? A traffic accident. Amur leopards and communism. Now or Never. Keep moving. All Russian, stressed between rain, train, single-sex milieu and military precision, allied to children and tea-loving comrades, she merges oddly. In the northern backwater of Japan where soulmates write by hand, talk, listen, and live with no internet, she stands out. A neuter from the past century, will she fare along physical hardships, isolation and contrasts en voyage? What unfolds, back in London? An ultimate travel memoir. With a Grenfell Tower inferno eyewitness account.