On the occasion of her 40th birthday, Sophie Hope is to give a lecture on women travellers of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries. The lecture will take place on a glass bottomed boat on Lake Baikal in Siberia during a stop-off on her journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway in the summer of 2017. Sophie will introduce stories of women that have explored the globe while guests lie on their fronts on specially designed loungers, enabling them to peer down into 40meters of clear water beneath them. We will float over fish and flora only found in these waters whilst hearing about the inspiring and challenging experiences of women such as Annette Meakin, Gertrude Bell and Jeanne Baret. We will imagine their adventures over land and sea as the lake we gaze into gradually grows deeper. The shifting tectonic plates that created the Lake and that are slowly splitting the continent in two will provide the backdrop to tales of female odysseys into the abyss.
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Sophie Hope is a teacher, writer and researcher based in London.
*Image courtesy Sophie Hope