Thinking Aloud: Happy Endings (New Beginnings)

Not really about Tajikistan. Just sayin'...

I've just woken up, disoriented and lost, for about the 350^th morning in a row.

Slowly I fix myself, grasping at constants. The sound of a great volume of water rushing down rocks to my left. Futons and felt carpets beneath my head and hands. Unvarnished beams of poplar and willow, the faint scent of incense trapped in their grain. Dawn's light softly filtered through thin curtains, reflecting dully off whitewashed mud-brick walls. Much of that light is blocked by an enormous pyramidal shadow – one of many mountain heads closing the walls of this valley.

I am in Tajikistan. The range forming the gorge of Bartang Suu and the roaring of the cascades confirm it.

Noone is awake so I have a rare opportunity to write. Usually the women of the families we stay with are awake long before I am, though I rise just after the sun. Doug sleeps soundly, a sheet over his head to keep off the flies. Outside the window there is a lovely big garden, beyond it an orchard, rare in the Pamir region. We've been fed entirely on grease, wheat and dairy for the last few weeks, but here I can look forward to a breakfast that includes some of the locally grown food we sampled yesterday – melon, dried apricots, fried chickpeas, almonds and cherry juice.

Next week we will have been gone from our homeland a year. We have visited 18 countries and will (briefly) see one more new one, and relax in a familiar one before going home. We now have a set date for our return, a little early for weary travelers – the 13th of September – just less than six weeks away.

You might think that after a year of traipsing around the world doing as we please that something as terribly solid as a date to return home would be a somewhat frightening prospect - after all, we have no "home" as such to return to. We don't have jobs. We've become accustomed to exotica and the costs of an industrialising world. We've been having such an amazing time, drinking in the incredible natural beauty and the cultural and historical treasures of some of the most gorgeous and fascinating places on the planet.

Truthfully, I'm as thrilled and excited about going home as I was about beginning this fabulous adventure.

I wouldn't give up even a tiny fraction of what we've experienced, but I'll admit it's been pretty arduous as well. I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't looking forward to conveniences like running water and flushing toilets, electricity, supermarkets, smooth roads, washing machines, TECHNOLOGY and all the mundanity I wasn't sorry to leave in the first place.

Doug has just woken up, padding across an uneven wooden floor to the door, thence on a long walk up a muddy path to find a place to go to the toilet. "Toilets" as such don't exist here. There are all sorts of local customs and responsible tourism rules to worry about when deciding where and how you should do your business in this kind of locality. So many feet from a water course. So many centimetres to bury (locals just pile up stones). What to do with the paper. How far from a house. Or a path. Or curious peepers. Whether the spot has been overused already. Then there's prickly bushes and cutty grass and hidden ditches. It's a lot to think about when you're still blinking sleep from your eyes. I know right at this moment, he'd agree with me 100% about the comforts of home.

All the little things I thought I'd be dreading about starting over at home sound like fun now. Tiresome things if you haven't been an exile for a year. Finding an apartment and the first awkward night sleeping in it before the furniture arrives and the services are connected. Unpacking, remembering all the stuff I'd forgotten I own. The first grocery shop. Sending off a resume, or putting on a suit and getting "dressed up" for an interview for the first time in practically forever.

Maybe it will feel different when I actually get there, but for now, with cloth being laid out on the floor, trying to remember to hold my left hand on my heart and take tea with my right, not to sit inappropriately for a young lady or let my toes touch the cloth, pulling my scarf forward on my head so my fringe doesn't show as it slips, that the water carries typhoid, to take my malaria prophylactic with the cherry juice and say "tashakkur" not "thank you", I'm feeling ready for anything the Western world has to throw at me.

Then again, it's a beautiful day and I'll probably spend much of it stretched out on a dais by a mountain stream staring at the blue sky and the drooping leaves of the overhead willow while patting a fat cat and feeding myself marzipan and chocolates.

In general, the future is looking good :)