At My Table: Agafia Lykova

The 79-year-old woman who lives alone in the Siberian wilderness

You’ve probably been asked before: “if you could sit around a table with five humans, alive or not, who would you invite?” At My Table, a series on extraordinary women, is a response to this question. You’ll find links to other At My Table essays at the end of this piece. Please look here for other travel-focussed stories.

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The image is above is a screenshot taken from this Vice video.

Dear NE-One

Have you ever known true isolation? I don’t mean Covid-era hotel-quarantine isolation; I mean the in-the-middle-of-nowhere, completely-alone, absolutely-cut-off-from-the-entire-world kind of isolation.

The closest I’ve come are the multi-day walking trails I’ve done in areas where there is no phone reception – exhilarating, liberating experiences that have fuelled my soul – which is why I would love to share a meal (at her house, deep in the subarctic forests) with Agafia Lykova. I might not be welcome, however.  Agafia has lived her entire life completely cut off from the world – she was 35 when she first saw a human other than her parents and siblings – and she doesn’t take well to visitors.