Today’s guest is British travel journalist and author Sophy Roberts.

It takes a special kind of person to hear the sentence ‘the lost pianos of Siberia’ uttered in casual conversation and have those words ignite an obsession that eventuates in a three-year odyssey across the vast, white wilderness of Siberia in search of a piano.

Sophy’s self-described ‘oddball quest’ is documented in her debut book The Lost Pianos of Siberia, which has been received with critical acclaim.

Sophy Roberts is one of the finest travel writers of our time, having carved out an exceptional career as an editor-at-large for titles such as Condé Nast Traveller and Departures magazine, and a columnist for the Financial Times' How to Spend it.

In recent years she’s felt a call to the wild, trading the glitzy hotels and glamorous getaways for a chance to tell untold stories from remote parts of the world, reporting on wildlife conservation, threats to eco-systems and fragile cultures.

SOPHY ROBERTS’ CULTURE GUIDE

The Road to Oxiana (book) by Robert Byron

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (book) by Laurie Lee

In Patagonia (book) by Bruce Chatwin

The Magic Faraway Tree (book) by Enid Blyton

The Story of Doctor Dolittle (book) by Hugh Lofting

The Secret Garden (book) by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Sakhalin Island (book) by Anton Chekhov

The Princess of Siberia (book) by Christine Sutherland

DESTINATION INSPIRATION

West Dorset, England

Andalucía, Spain

Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland

Varanasi, India

Ladakh, India

Dal Lake, Kashmir

Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo

Pamir Mountains, Tajikistan

The Ennedi Desert, Chad

The Happy House, Nepal (See Sophy's review for CNT here)

The Orkhon valley, Mongolia

Siberia (using Anton Chekhov's description: 'The plain of Siberia begins, I think, from Ekaterinburg, and ends goodness knows where’)

Kamchatka, Russia

The Altai Mountains, Mongolia

Lake Baikal, Russia

The Kuril Islands

Taiga, Russia

The Trans-Siberian Railway

Socotra Island, Yemen

Curious to know if Sophy finds the piano she’s been searching for? Visit thelostpianosofsiberia.com or you can buy the book here.  

Please support your local bookshop if you can! Independent bookstores are really struggling at the moment, let's keep them in business this Christmas!!

You might also like to follow sophy_roberts on Instagram, she takes spellbinding photographs on her travels.

If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe, rate and review so others can discover this podcast as well. If you’re looking for some more travel inspiration, you can find me on Instagram @escape.artist.podcast or visit www.escapeartistpodcast.com

Join me next week for the final episode of The Escape Artist Season 1!

Xx Edwina

(Music by the talented Giselle Rosselli) 

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