EARTH! The day of the event. Having been given an enormous red ‘Gallmann Memorial Foundation’ t-shirt, I was told at the last minute that I had to go to the airstrip to meet the guests that were flying in. There were about 400 guests in total, some flying in, some driving. I met Ian Douglas-Hamilton which was cool, and also the American Ambassador (addressed by his staff as ‘Mr Ambassador’!) The show started at 6:30, and as people were still arriving then, it was a mad rush to get everyone to the theatre on time. The views from the Theatre are amazing and the Tuvans opened the evening just as the sun was setting. All of the artists were fantastic. It started to rain at one point but it was so perfectly timed, it seemed like part of the performance. At the end there was a fantastic light projection onto water showing the indigenous plants growing out of the planet Earth. Michel was beneath it singing, it was such a magical atmosphere.

When it was over everyone followed a trail of flaming torches to dinner, passing the sculptures along the way. After dinner everyone sat around the numerous fires, drinking, talking and playing music. Most of the guests went to bed fairly early but the artists and the GMF team were there for quite a while! There was a special (and extremely expensive) lyre used in the performance, so valuable that it had a man with it whose sole job was to look after it. I tried to tell him that I would probably damage it by just looking at it but he still convinced me to have a go on it! By about 2am most people had had a lot to drink and thank God that no one fell seriously ill because the doctor was in no fit state to treat anyone!

I finally got back to Centre with Alex and Constanza at about 5am. I was up again by 7, finding the lyre man asleep on the sofa in centre house with his lyre! It was hilarious! Apparently he’d got off the bus with the three of us but we hadn’t noticed him and he’d staggered to centre house without a torch (it’s not the easiest route) with this enormous instrument!