OUR STORY

The Mish­ka sto­ry starts with an ear­ly morn­ing phone call telling me that after a twen­ty-year career in Lon­don, I was being made redun­dant. At first I was under­stand­ably shocked and upset. But then, some­thing dawned on me. Although my job was well-paid and inter­est­ing, its heavy demands had made me stressed and unhap­py. So maybe, instead of being an end­ing, was that day actu­al­ly a whole new beginning?

To help me through a chal­leng­ing time, an old friend invit­ed me to stay with him in my home coun­try of Rus­sia. I hopped on a plane, then a train, then a bus that made its bumpy way over remote rur­al roads into the heart of the beau­ti­ful Altai region in Siberia. There I climbed a moun­tain car­pet­ed with blos­som, swam in a cold clear lake and tast­ed the most deli­cious hon­ey I’d ever expe­ri­enced. This break from rou­tine calmed me down and helped me to see things dif­fer­ent­ly. I became much more positive.