Two overnight flights in a row: over the Atlantic, over Russia. Eagerness overrode any exhaustion—at first—but then it all began to drag into a tunnel of grey, vibrating time when Siberia Airlines’ idea of a veggie wrap was served in the form of a blob of mayonnaise garnished with cole slaw, tucked away inside of a tortilla. And that was in fact, the most edible vegetarian airplane food from then on. But no matter, shaking away hunger and, more pressingly, thirst, cloaked in a sheer veneer of tiredness, which I at times had to swat away from in front of my face but mostly ignored, we landed at the small Irkutsk airport and walked into the arms of friends—at this point, my friend’s friends.…