Escape with travel writer and author Sophy Roberts The Escape Artist Travel Podcast

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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