Basket.

Brother's off to England again, and won't be back until September this time. Says he wants to use his vacations to go on holiday instead of coming home. Wants to tour Central Asia and the Russian Far East, apparently, via the Trans-Siberian Railway. Of course, this is only known to me; parents innocently think he is merely taking a little trip down to far less exotic and more boring Europe.

All this, while I am stuck back down here. I want to look around Central Asia and the Russian-Chinese border too. Rich with history, the region is. From the ruined cities of the old Silk Road to thetraditional customs and way of life of the ethnic minorities that have literally not changed, for some, for millenia, it would certainly be a most interesting journey. To visit some of the places that bear a few of the most famous names in history, to tread where the Mongols of Genghis Khan and his successors did with such ferocity over eight hundred years before and to see and imagine the glory of the old Silk Road, when traders came from as far as the Rome of Emperor Tiberius to trade with the glorious Western Han empire. Not to mention being where the monolithic Soviet Empire momentously and unexpectedly disintegrated nearly one and a half decades before. It is a fantastic place to visit, to experience and to learn about; alas quite dangerous. Compared to it, the history of Europe, though far wider studied, seems almost boring.

In addition, travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway is one of the most famous and undeniably historic journeys one can ever take. Russia is a vast and old land and the railway itself has a chequered past, being constructed at the turbulent turn of the last century. With stops along the way including the historic Russian cities of Yekaterinberg (where the last Tsar of Imperial Russia was shot by the Bolsheviks in 1917), Yaroslavl (one of Russia's oldest cities), Krasnoyansk, Irkutsk (both among Siberia's oldest cities and founded at the outset of Russia's eastward expansion under Peter the Great) and of course Russia's far eastern port of Vladivostok. The less historically-inclined visitor may also stop by to admire the natural wonders of Lake Baikal along the way.

One just has to love that place. I am so dying of envy. One day, one day... I just don't get out enough, I say. I need to tour a battlefield (no, NOT BUKIT TIMAH.). I need to see an ancient and glorious city (Turkey's Istanbul is one common place). I need to stop just reading history and go out and experience it, bloody hell.