Somewhere in Mongolia. Three weeks crossing Eurasia, seven full days on trains. I'm back now. Every single one of those 165 hours on the Trans-Siberian felt meaningful—watching the slow crawl of Siberian taiga, endless steppe rolling past the window...
"Leaving means coming alive again. Everything starts over, I don't know what I'll encounter. The sun rises, red like it set yesterday. Frost glitters suspended in the air and I walk forward into a reality more beautiful than any fairy tale." —Ella Maillard
In 1932, Ella Maillart stood in Moscow with a press card and a burning desire to explore Turkestan—that wild region at the edge of the Soviet Union and China. She wanted to see the Tien Shan, those famous celestial mountains forming the spine of Central Asia...
Like all serious readers, Erik Orsenna worships paper—the material that carried stories for over two thousand years, the only medium writers and readers had. Now, as digital constantly threatens (but never quite kills) paper, he decided to trace its origins...
There's this spot in Paris perfect for Sunday morning wandering: the Jardin des Tuileries. Always reminds me I live in one of the world's most beautiful cities. On one side, the Louvre's imposing silhouette. On the other, the Champs-Élysées stretching toward the Arc de Triomphe...