“We have the advantage to walk around as there are not many people in the neighborhood,” he wrote.

“I wish you a creative and enlightening quarantine,” Sergey wrote as a signoff.

I looked at my phone and found myself smiling, thinking of late nights talking to Sergey, the Siberian wind rattling the windows. Sometimes, he would close his eyes as he spoke, searching for each word with intense concentration. I wondered if, every Sunday, he still rang the bells outside the church he takes care of despite orders to stay home. I wondered if the wooden poles scattered across the island, totems of the indigenous Buryat religion, were even more covered in colorful prayer ribbons during this time of global desperation.

Buoyed by my conversation with Sergey, I started reaching out to others who had welcomed me during my year of traveling when I showed up to their cities, alone and lost. From inside my apartment, they suddenly were just as close — and just as far — as my friends down the street in New York.