Russia

Russia hit me harder than I expected. Moscow felt enormous in a way that Kathmandu never prepared me for — the Kremlin sitting there behind its red-brick walls like it had been waiting for centuries, the river sliding past it quietly, and the whole city humming at a frequency I couldn't quite name. Red Square was less a square and more a statement, and St. Basil's stood there in all those impossible colours looking like something out of a dream someone had once and decided to build anyway.

St. Petersburg was a different mood entirely. The city ran along canals lined with pastel facades, the light staying long into the evening during summer, that pale northern sky refusing to go dark. I walked across bridges where the ironwork was ornate enough to be art, wandered into the courtyard of the Hermitage and found someone casually kicking a football in front of one of the most elaborate buildings I'd ever seen. Inside St. Isaac's, the gold just went on and on — ceiling, columns, altarpiece — until I had to look away.

The trip happened during the 2018 World Cup and the whole country was buzzing with it. Luzhniki was electric in a way stadiums rarely are. Even the restaurants were in a good mood — I sat somewhere in St. Petersburg with a Bacardi mojito and a plate of sushi rolls while a mural of an Italian alley covered the wall behind me, which felt very Russian somehow: completely its own thing, unbothered by what it was supposed to be.