Ella Manzheeva

Aldar hadn't been at homeplace for ten years. He is living in a big city now, being a voice of its countless streets. When his mother disappears in the steppe, he rushes back to find her. They will have to get to know each other again and go through the path that they did not have time to go through while she was still alive.

Elza lives in a small town in the Republic of Kalmykia on the Caspian Sea. Another year comes to an end, it’s cold and the steppe is covered in a thin layer of snow. When her husband, who makes a living from illegal fishing, asks her one night what she did during the day, she lies. She wasn’t at her mother’s, but at the bus stop. She thought of leaving – to find out what it might be to escape the infinite expanse of her dreary small world. But she didn’t dare; instead she stays and withdraws into herself, unconcerned by who might see. One day, her husband doesn’t return from a dangerous boat trip. It is said that a fisherman only returns if he has a woman waiting for him and that seagulls are the souls of the missing. At the start of a somewhat unplanned pregnancy, widowed and alone, Elza wanders ever further through the city, plotting a path between tradition and the contemporary until she’s no longer on familiar ground.

This is a dramatic story about the incredible earthly and spiritual journey of a Buddhist monk from Russia, who became one of the first preachers of Tibetan Buddhism in the United States. In 1923, as a young man, he left his home and spent over 30 years in Tibet and India, attaining the Buddhist degree of Geshe. He was a friend of the Dalai Lama and taught at Columbia University, dedicated his life to putting the Buddha's teachings into practice, and trained many talented students, increasing interest in Buddhism in the West.