Going with the flow

The cabin was bathed in blue light and I was awake. Before dawn we had been going through mountainous area. Now there was nothing but blue sand dunes as far as the eye can see underneath an enormous moon. I was awe struck and I wondered which desert this was. Did our path really cross the Goby? I had no idea. I wondered if I should wake up my two roommates and show this to them but that thought was soon lost in the total tranquility of the moment. I laid back but kept staring out and at some point I must have fallen asleep.

I look at the watch and I see it is morning in Beijing. Keeping time is impossible when you cross a time zone every day and you’re also heading north towards longer days. The sunlight lids up the cabin and outside the window you can see that we’re in a thick forest. Nothing but trees. My mates were already up but just minding their own business.

I’ve been travelling with them for a year. We’ve been each other perfect company, lived together, eaten together and talked about anything. Always something to talk about. This train ride that started in Vietnam and was slowly bringing us back to Europe, marked the end of our travels and we could all feel it. And suddenly there wasn’t so much to talk about anymore.

Between good friends no words are needed. I don’t remember being bored; I had books. I read 100 Years of Solitude and Great Expectations, both very fitting. Most of the time you are just thinking and time becomes like a viscous liquid you slowly swim through, one stroke at the time. I had a pocket watch hanging in the net above my bunk that I used to measure time. Minutes and hours didn’t matter, but every 12 hours I moved it from one node to another. 14 nodes across makes for 7 days.

I move the watch one more node. Hoarsely I ask if we’ve been in forest for long. Since they woke up, they said. It seemed that after leaving the Mongolian highlands we must have entered the Tundra. I tell them what I saw last night. The endless desert we went through. They look at me strangely. A desert seems very out of place for them. I’m not saying that you were dreaming, my friend said skeptically, but are you sure you weren’t though?

I can’t be sure but I am.

Later I read a story by Neil Gaiman about Marco Polo as a boy becoming lost in the Goby desert; he enters one of the Soft Places, a place where the boundary between reality and the Dreaming is not so clear as it is in most places. I recognized it.