Where would you go?
To the grass-covered grave, a lovely bump in the ground, where Tolstoy is buried in the woods of his old family estate at Yasnaya Polyana, in Russia. We would drink toasts of vodka, read, recite, lay flowers and sit around discussing his influence on the world, including his letters to the young Gandhi.
Would you make any special stops?
It is a dream pilgrimage, so no maps have yet been spread or train timetables consulted, but we might also aspire to follow his footsteps in 1881, when he went on his own pilgrimage to consult the starets – peasant mystics – in their hermitages scattered around the Orthodox monastery of Optina Pustyn. If this is too difficult, we would follow his last journey, running away from the discord of his home to die at Astapovo railway station.
