Alexandra Tolstoy | You Don’t Need Money to Have AMAZING Travel Experiences!

0:00You're listening to Travel Secrets with Tanya Rose, the podcast that shares wisdom for fellow and the holidays and adventures that surround them. I would just like to say thank you to Mason Rose, the sales and communication agency that represents some of the finest hotels around the world for partnering with Travel Secrets, the podcast. Today, my guest is the wonderful Countess Alexandra Tolstoy, a relation of Leo Tolstoy. Yeah. Anglo-Russian adventurer, author, TV presenter. she organizes the most amazing riding holidays in kyrgyzstan kyrgyzstan i knew i wouldn't say it quite presented the bbc series horse people which was incredible and you also have the tolstoy edit which you have interior design things from all over the world that you showcase and sell yeah kind of folk mostly you have and probably are the most adventurous person that i've ever interviewed on this podcast.

1:16I am so delighted to have you here. And before we start, your brother, Dimitri, was my son Jake's tutor. And he was a good one. And he was a brilliant and he literally taught him everything. Greek, Latin, history, English, everything. He was just fantastic. So huge shout out to him. If anyone's looking for a good tutor, I can highly recommend him. So before we go into your travel secrets, perhaps you can tell us a bit about yourself and how travel has impacted you. So I grew up very, despite having this Russian heritage, grew up very, very English childhood in rural Somerset. And I don't think I went abroad until I was 14.

2:02I think we went to France for a week and really never, ever travel. but, but, but, but, I was, my father introduced me to Victorian literature and I was just consumed with these, you know, with the Brontes, with Jane Austen, all these. And then I got into French, 19th century literature and Russian. And I think it sort of created this, you know, this imagination and these ideas of other people. And so although I didn't physically travel, I kind of did in my mind. The romance of travel. Yes, definitely the romance. and when I was 18 it was 1992 and the wall had just come down and my father said to me right it's your gap here you're going to go and live in Moscow for six months and I thought I didn't really have a choice because I didn't have any money what was I going to do all my friends were going to India and I had lovely holidays and Thailand and stuff and so but I went with it and it was life-changing so I did you speak Russian before you went not a word I literally you could say the word butter that's all I could say really and um but it was it set off then I changed to study Russian at Edinburgh and had to go abroad for my third year and it really so you went back to Russia yes and then back about Russia's been the big love affair of my life but obviously now since the war I haven't been and it's yeah devastating and so I really really obviously I want the war to end it's the worst thing that's happened but I hope my children will be able to visit and will be able to get back.

3:34Do they speak Russian? Yes, they do. Good. And I've really made a huge effort for them to feel, I mean, they're much more Russian than I am, to speak Russian. They grew up on Pushkin, on Tulsa, all these lovely fairy tales and the art and the music and everything. And at first, you know, like all children, they're quite reluctant to be any different from them. But now in their late teens or mid-teens, they're getting really into the idea. And how are you related to Leo Tolstoy? To Leo pretty distantly so my father is the head of the whole Tolstoy family like the oldest of the oldest branch and then Leo we have a kind of common thing we have a common ancestor in the 17th 18th century.

4:15And your father is Russian speaks Russian? No so in my family no one really speaks Russian I was just really went for it. Well I can't wait to hear because you've got so many travel extraordinary stories. So let's get into your travel secrets. What is the number one destination you think everyone should go to once in their lifetime? I'm going to have to say, you know what I'm going to say. I'm going to have to say Kyrgyzstan. And I know not everyone's going to go there, but I'm just going to say why. If they could, they absolutely should. Because I think that Kyrgyzstan is a nomadic country. So when people think about nomads, it's like every day changing that, but that doesn't happen at all.

4:57They actually live in a village in the winter, and then they spend the summers up, probably even in Switzerland, almost the same, up in the high alpine pastures. And Kyrgyzstan, of all the places I've been, has really, really kept this incredibly, incredibly rich, but yet simple life where they have everything they need, and they are the happiest people that I've seen. And I've spent a lot of time there. I've worked with the same shepherds for 25 years, seen them grow, you know, work with their children now. And they've really nailed something that in the West, I feel like we're losing more and more and more of what is happiness and what makes your daily life rewarding and not complicated.

5:45And it's being close to nature. It's having a really close community. And that's where you do your riding public dogs. So I run these riding trips in two different places now in Kyrgyzstan. So in 1999, that was my first really big adventure. I rode the Silk Road for nine months with three girlfriends. Incredible. And we did three months on horses and six months on camels, I think. And so we covered a lot. We covered 5 ,000 miles. But I just became fixated with Kyrgyzstan. It was just a sort of Garden of Eden. It has incredible wildflowers, very, very gentle people. It's also got this amazing history of the great game, which I got completely kind of swept up in reading all these stories of these amazing, you know, like Kipling, these amazing Englishmen who went out and spoke like five types of dialect, you know, some Turkic dialects, and then had the most amazing adventures.

6:50And also, it's where lots of Victorian botanists went and brought back lots of flowers. So actually, lots of it. Like, I have a little cottage, and I love my cottage garden. And so it also has kind of ties like that. Did you meet your first husband when you did that trek? He was a Cossack, wasn't he? So, well, they always call him a Cossack. No, he's not a Cossack. A Cossack is Russian. Well, he's Tata. He is Russian. But he was, yeah, he was a show jumper. and so he was one of our guides. I read a hilarious thing that for your wedding he came in on a horse without a top and the horse was slipping all over the place.

7:29I think he did have a top on, but it was pretty scary. Very scary. Yes, I made some rash decisions. And when I had Dominic West on the podcast, he was about to or is about to come on a trip with you to do that. Yes, so I'm so excited. It's something I've been working on for over a year because I've now become an official ambassador for Kyrgyzstan, for the government of Kyrgyzstan, or the country. And so this project I've been working on was to get... So Dominic, I think, is a fantastic person. He's interested in the history. He loves riding. Yeah. And he can obviously bring so much attention by doing a travelogue.

8:09So we are going to do this amazing two-week trip sort of crossing the country on horse. He doesn't know this yet, but he's got to play goat polo. which is the most hilarious vicious terrifying game well you've got to sit on a goat no you're sitting on a horse but you're playing with the body of a dead goat I was going to say you can't sit on a goat of no no and they're all stallions and you can have up to like 500 people playing and sort of all attacking and whipping each other and you've got to you have to bend right down to the ground like of course I can pick up the goat he doesn't know he's doing that so if he's listening that's going to be on one of your adventures, Dominic.

8:47Oh, how hilarious. That's brilliant. But yeah, so that's, I'm just thrilled because I've worked so long with Kyrgyzstan and now it's really exciting I've got into a position where I'm advising them on how to develop tourism because nowadays in the world, that I would say is the really, really, really thorny, you know, bad side of tourism is how it often is developed in a very wrong way. Yeah, absolutely. And I love the fact that you say you're off-grid, basically. Totally off-grid. Like they had a project, they said, oh we're going to get every single bit of kirkus on with phone reception i'm like no you're not no you're not and actually they did the then the ministry they really got it like that's actually why people come yeah and where do you stay when you're doing that you stay in tents yes so i have a whole team who i've worked with for ages the most amazing cooks like backup team and they move the entire camp and we're in tents and then we have a big mess tent and we have tables and chairs and like pretty so they do that when you're riding through so it's nice and civilized and how good a rider do you need to be um not very good but proficient proficient like my children have done it and they haven't ridden very much it's more about the adventure the camping you know being seeing this just extraordinary scenery but I feel there are lots of places in the world you can see extraordinary scenery but it's a combination of the people and there's this point at the end of our ride where we ride past this incredible waterfall and this little bridge and so many people have turned to me exactly that point and say oh my god what do we get wrong in our lives you know because they've spent a week riding with these six amazing guys who are just the most kind and full of joy you know they're very very joyful happy people and I hope people go away having learnt and re-evaluated and well I'm sure they do because a lot of your business is word of mouth and people saying how wonderful it is and recommending their friends so yeah i'm absolutely sure that that is the case what is your most unexpected travel experience well probably going back to my gap here actually that if you said to someone in 1992 are you dreaming of going to moscow the answer would be no it was so gray it had one restaurant in the entire city one restaurant and it was only for officials it well it stank of cabbage like the moment you landed it just stank and you know ostensibly everything was wrong i landed in january it was minus 30 it you know and like but i absolutely i was i don't when you're young you kind of don't really worry too much do you about we'll have big x but i did think i'm not gonna my friends were saying poor you this is awful um but it was a bit of a punishment I hadn't done very well in my a-level so I had to retake them so I think I didn't have you know I didn't have a leg to stand on but I got there and I lived with this amazing family very famous actor and he was very famous playing Sherlock Holmes in Russia and that it was incredible and yeah so for me travel the really important thing is the human interaction and that's what makes travel yeah so I lived with this family constantly you had all these like artists and poets and actors coming in and out and it just felt I felt really really fortunate because it was a sort of sunset of the you know the Soviet Union was a terrible terrible thing but it did have this amazing intelligentsia of very very cultured creative people and so I really witnessed that oh amazing and did they speak english when you arrived or not no so you literally were thrown at the deep end and every day i would go across moscow and have these russian lessons and i was really not very diligent and i think now i do speak fluent russian now but i do think then like why didn't i anyway because you've got other things that you're thinking about and experiencing and now you do speak it and actually do you know the best was there was no phone obviously no mobile phones and there weren't even landlines so to speak to my parents you had to order a call through the operator but i didn't speak russian so i couldn't order the call and so you couldn't phone and say please let me come home no so my parents never really contacted me and so i'd walk i remember walking once to a hotel and sending a fax and that was the good get me out of here no you didn't i'm sure i think i just accepted like that's it i was there and i did love it what is your most overrated travel experience overrated i'm afraid i'm very opinionated on that because i my life took a very dramatic and different turn uh when i was i think i was in my early 30s and i met the father of my children who is a russian oligarch so he was obviously living in a world of unimaginable wealth i mean just crazy but it was very passionate I felt very very in love with him um this is Putin's banker well they called him that yeah and he had two private jets we had the most amazing yacht we had two other yachts we had the best house on St.

13:55Bart's you know this chateau on the south coast of France and I can honestly say that when I walked away from that I don't miss one one single element of luxury travel because it's so isolating you know and I remember like the first time I went on a Ryanair flight after that I was just so thrilled to be in the airport with people it's fun it's like a nice and you bought your own ticket I bought my own ticket and it's very very it's a very very lonely life I find I'm very anonymous and you don't really get all the stuff that I love about travel is meeting people having very real experiences you know in a real village and remote and um to me there's nothing charming or interesting so it's actually the antithesis yes it really is it's just a gilded cage of and actually i think it's it's the worst of travel because you know you're creating a lot of pollution and you're not contributing anything or I suppose jobs but yeah I would that so I feel I do feel very lucky in a way that I have that experience because I know there's nothing I aspire to and I don't think you need money to have great travel experiences you can I mean I've seen your Netflix documentary about your life then and it is quite extraordinary and you were so brave to get out and to escape well yes and take your children and have this new life and I really take my hat off to you because you've done an amazing job and you have got this wonderful wonderful new business and and this real life well i was very lucky that i had i'd started the business before so i could come back to it and yes i just feel you know and i never know is life luck or is it i feel like it's very important to take every opportunity and i the way my travel business started i was giving a talk at the rgs on the Silk Road trip and a guy came up to me at the end and said, would you take a group of us riding?

15:59And I was just like, yeah, sure. And I didn't know where to get the horse and didn't know anything, but I did it and that's how my business started. So you had done it yourself personally. Yes. But you had never taken a group of people. But I'd never done it. No, I hadn't done all those logistics of like organising it all myself and it's quite a thing. But I've now built this amazing team. So how long have you been doing that? So the first commercial one I did was in 2002. But then I had this, like, decade of having children and being shot in the gilder cage. And I came back to it in, well, then COVID, so probably 2022.

16:33And how many trips a year do you do? So this year I've gone a bit bananas and I'm doing, I think I'm doing five. Do you escort them all? Well, no, I have one wonderful friend who is the other person who's obsessed with Kyrgyzstan, as I am. And Malika, my wonderful friend, and she leads one. She did Russian at Oxford and speaks some Turkish, so she's perfect. And then I lead three. I'm doing Iraqi in a very, very wild part of the country where I haven't been, which I'm really excited about. And it's out of seasons. It'll be very cold, but it's wild and just galloping all day long. And then, so it's a lot of travel and physically quite exhausting.

17:16And what happens when you go? Do you take your children with you or they're at school? So they're at school, but I take them, in the summer, I especially do a family trip where this year I've got two or three families and the brother. The brother? The brother's coming. And that is really, really fun because I feel a bit off duty. I'm not really hosting so much. And you can see new things. Yeah, and it's just wonderful to be with your children with no phone reception. It's heaven. I have never been to Kyrgyzstan. However, I did do a riding holiday and I cannot ride in Switzerland because we lived in Switzerland.

17:51So one summer our father said, right, we're going on a riding holiday. And actually it was magical. It was probably pre-mobile phones anyway, but we didn't have any contact with the outside world. Every night we sat around a campfire with a guitar, sang, cooked. It was absolutely wonderful. It really, really was very special. I remember it as one of the best holidays I've ever had. Oh, well, I hope my children will say that. Yeah, they will, and I cannot ride, so the fact that I even say that is quite extraordinary. Let's go on to the next travel secret. Food and drink is so important in travel.

18:25What do you like eating? Where do you like eating? What's your best meal, your cocktail? Let's just talk about food and travel. Food, I love food. Yes, and I feel like I love all food. But on my travels, I particularly love Georgian food. I don't know if you've come across Georgian food. It's absolutely delicious. And so it's lots of vegetables and a lot of, like, aubergines. I love aubergines. And this amazing kind of cheesy bread pizza type thing. But I also really like English food as well. And I've always made cakes, so I love cakes. But I have to say, because I think food, really memorable experiences often come you know it's about where you are isn't it it's about how hungry you are yes and I remember I did once go on the most amazing when I was in my third year abroad living in Moscow I thought right this is I've got to travel much more and be more adventurous so I went with a friend we got a 17-hour train journey to um the Caucasus to Mount Elbrus which is like if it was there's a debate is it in Europe or not but it would be the highest amount in Europe and we arrived with nowhere to stay and all these women just standing with little boards saying, rent a room, rent a room.

19:45So we went and rented a room and we skied with this historic equipment. I think it was like fifth hand from probably Switzerland or something. Tying on your legs. We weren't very good at skiing, endless accidents. And it said things like, beware of the bears as we were skiing home. But I do remember we somehow befriended the guides. like they had a little mountain ski school. And they let us stay. They had this amazing hut on the top of the mountain. It was so amazing. We stayed there. And I just remember so distinctly, for some reason there was a German girl staying there and she cooked this spaghetti with melted cheese.

20:22And it was somehow just the most, I can remember it so well now, the most delicious thing. Probably because you were starving as well. I think you were starving. And it all felt really exciting. Yeah, but delicious. And also at that point, Russian food was absolutely revolting. So it was a bit of a contrast. Actually, when I had Simon Seabag Montefiore on the podcast, he was talking about Georgia a lot. He loves Georgia. Yes, he and Seabag and I used to eat at a Georgian restaurant in Moscow the whole time. Really? Tiflis, did you? Yes, yes. He was talking about going to a funeral once and them having this huge banquet.

20:51And then he said, where are the bodies of the people that we are mourning? And they said, oh, underneath the table. And they had eaten this feast with the bodies under the table before they buried them. But he loves Georgia. Georgia is incredible, everything about it. They really save a life. And there are direct flights now with BA. What is your top insider travel tip or secret? So I would say, I was thinking about this, I think it's really important to read around wherever you're going. I think you just gain so, so much more out of it. So, like, when I first went on the Silk Road, I was reading all these great game and these different travellers, in the 19th century who travelled and it added a lot to the experience.

21:39Before you went. Yeah, and while I was there. And then now, yeah, and I send my clients a big reading list and even Flashman is brilliant for Central Asia. And then my clients I find have read more than me which is really embarrassing. But then things like I take, because I do this sort of crazy travel, I also love to do very repetitive sweet you know sort of more localized things that my children love like every year we go to wales and every year we go to corfu and we absolutely love it we found this like very simple lovely house which could be from the durrells and i've read them the durrells and it's just you know in this olive grove i remember sitting there reading and my son said but mommy i've seen that tunnel spider and he went to the tree and showed me you know they build these amazing tunnel webs and it I just think it adds so much more and in fact I feel like I'm saying all the same books that Dominic said because I'm also obsessed with the time of gifts um which you know to travel like that is just such a different experience isn't it from just dropping into somewhere without knowing well I can also imagine being with children in Corfu in a home like that and reading the Dorrells I mean he's such a great writer unbelievable yeah and you can see his childhood can't you yes totally and that's the thing that even obviously it's become more touristy coffee but you can you can find always beauty and unspoilt where do you go in wales uh to the gower which is not probably not fashionable at all um but we went there as children from i was thinking the first time i was 10 and it is protected by the national trust so it's very lucky it's like hasn't been touched um but i love that it's not fashionable because we rent the really simplest houses we sleep like sardines my there's usually not rooms and my son has to sleep in a tent um but we walk you know for six hours a day do they have lovely beaches there wonderful beaches that you can't get to with a car so it's great because there's no one on there um and we have picnics and we play stupid games my husband grew up in wales and he's desperate to go back to wales he loves it he grew up on Pendine Sands so in Carmarthenshire and it's where they did the speed race you know the bluebird and all of those things so it's an amazing beach but he said there was hardly anyone on those beaches and he absolutely loved it and it's so unpretentious the only thing about Wales is they have terrible pubs yeah they don't have good food and it's not you can't really find a cosy so you have to just focus on the family thing family picnic beach yeah and then we play a lot of card games yeah and a lot of As long as it's not raining there.

24:23Only we had sorrential rain last time. But we still managed to have fun. I forced them to walk. And they went surfing. Yes, good. Again, a nice holiday. Not perhaps as adventurous as going to Kyrgyzstan, but still lovely. Yeah. Enjoyed. What is your most poignant travel memory? I think because I've lived a lot in Russia, lots of memories from there are very poignant because I'm so devastated about this war and we now can't, well, not selfishly that we can't go, but just that I can't believe these wonderful people who are just so amazing that this has happened. And, you know, I spent one time, I rode from Turkmenistan to Moscow on a horse.

25:07In fact, that was the photo that I've given you, I think. Oh, great. I ended up on Red Square on a stallion. Oh, great. Well, you can tell us about that. And riding through these really, really remote Siberian villages where it's like you're just stuck in the 19th century. They're wooden. They don't have running water in their houses. They don't have an indoor loo. They just have like a village banyo where you go and have, you know, like a sauna. And these, but, you know, these people are the ones who all the men are being sent and killed at the front. And this I find very poignant and sad. And then another element is we used to have these incredible family gatherings at Leo Tolstoy's house.

25:48where is that yes it's to the south west of moscow near tula um and amazing all the tolstois from all around the world so there are probably like 50 of us or something um and it was wonderful because it you know because during the revolution everyone had most had had to flee and a few stayed and somehow kind of kept their way going there but it was such a unifying and it's sort of such a lovely cross. Do you do that every year or just this once? No, we did do it every two years. And now we can't obviously find it. No, well, of course you can't at the moment. So that, I was looking at photos of that.

26:25That's also very poignant, really. Very sad. And actually that takes us nicely into the photo. So you sent a photo, which we'll show. Tell us about that photograph and how that came about. So after I'd ridden the Silk Road, I just went bananas about, I've got to do more and more adventures. So first of all, I went and rode six months through Mongolia and Siberia. Just crazy adventures. And then I thought, right, that's not enough. So then I decided to recreate this other journey, which I'd read about, where I think it's in the 30s, a group of Turkmen. There's a very famous horse called the Akhal-Takir, this beautiful stallion.

27:06And they wanted to draw attention to it because it wasn't really being preserved enough. So they decided to ride to Moscow. and it's desert, then it's the Kazakh steppe and then it's, but actually that was all, it was tough and it was very, very bureaucratic because they now have borders which they didn't in the Soviet Union. But the most difficult part was when we got about 100 miles from Moscow because it was so urban. And so I've got weird, crazy situations of like riding through petrol stations but we did end up on Red Square which was, it really felt like a massive achievement. and the photo is you in front of some bazzles yeah on this horse that you spent six months yeah that's i mean you are so adventurous it's extraordinary i feel like now my life's a bit more no no i tell you you are so adventurous there's no maldives and lying on a beach for you it's riding the silk route on camels and on horses it's fantastic well it's important to do both yeah but i think but i don't like one without the other it's true no exactly and actually when you were saying about your life when you were married with the oligarch and how, what a cage it was and what a prison it was and actually how soulless it was, that you have really brought true life back to yourself.

28:22Yes, and it's true. I wouldn't just go online and be in the Maldives. I'd like to do it where, like I love it in Corfu because we always take a guide around Corfu town and learn so much about the history. We went, last time I took them to the Museum of Icons and, you know, they were freaking out. But then when they got there, it was so interesting and they learnt so much. Do you speak Greek? No, sadly not. Turkish? No. No, I do. My daughter tried to learn Turkish and I realised my brain's too old now, I think. Well, you speak Russian and English. Do you speak French? Well, my children speak French and I can understand, but not so.

28:59I know a good tutor. No, I'm tutoring him in Russian. I do. Quid pro quo. Quid pro quo. So before we finish, what is next for you? Where are you going next and what's next in your life plan? So next, my year is really, really, like I feel like I'm quite a spontaneous person, but it's actually very planned because travel is my business. But I'm really excited. I'm going on a quick skiing trip. Is that just a normal skiing trip? Yeah, it's just normal. But it's with the girl that I rode around Mongolia with. And I haven't really, crazily, I haven't seen her probably for 20 years. So it's really nice to catch up.

29:36and then I am doing a lovely I'm walking a pilgrimage in Yorkshire oh yeah I love walking you've done the Camino de Santiago did you do the whole thing yes I did yeah it was amazing and I love walking to holidays I adore them so it's just three or four days but in Yorkshire yeah and then I'm doing a walking thing in Wales so I love local travel as well and I've also So I do a lot now of these, even in London, architectural walks where I go and they have a guide and I learn about it. Is there a company that you can do that through? So walks.com. Oh, really? Is that what they're called? It's absolutely brilliant.

30:18You pay 10 quid and I have learned so much. And they have amazing guides around different things. That's interesting. Rick is the best guide. Oh, fantastic. So it all started, I did one on the wasteland, which is embarrassing. I hadn't even read it. Where is the? So a lot of the wastelands set in the city. Right. And I thought before, God, this is awful, I haven't even read it. And I tried to read it, but obviously you can't read it in one night. But he was so amazing because he quoted it, he brought it to life, he explained the whole thing, and it's just wonderful sitting context. And I love Dickens, so my next one is I'm going to do Dickens.

30:50Have you done the London Dickens? No, I haven't yet. I bet that would be fascinating. Yes. You've probably read so many Dickens books that you'll be able to really... Well, I love Dickens, yeah. so you're a prolific reader as well yes but now I like reading old favourites it's a bit like do you listen to audible books yes I love them yes and I listen to a lot of the rest is history oh yeah like going to visit Paris and obviously if you know about you know the history of the revolution obviously I took my children to see the conciergerie you know where Marie Antoinette was in prison in her last days and just so obviously so much more interesting if you know what's going on.

31:32And when is your trip with Dominic and the TV programme? So Dominic and I are filming in June. Fantastic. And I just found out today it's very nice that Kyrgyz have got a film festival in Bishkek. Oh, wonderful. So we're going to dip into that in between our... And when will we see that? Will it be 2026? No, I hope Christmas. Oh, wonderful. 25. And how many parts will that be? Two one-hour parts. Oh, wonderful. So I think it's BBC first and then goes out. Well, I cannot wait to watch that. I can't wait to see Dominic doing goat polo, which is wonderful. And I am so delighted to meet you and to have heard all your amazing, amazing travel secrets.

32:13Thank you so much for coming. No, thank you for having me. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Travel Secrets. I'm loving making this podcast and want it to reach as many people as possible to build this community of fellow travellers. So please do subscribe on your favourite podcast app and share with a friend. I'll be back next week. And remember, this podcast might not change your life, but it might just change your plans.

32:55Thank you.