On the morning of 21st August, I lay awake in my top bunk, as the train rattled across the western extremities of the USSR (formerly Belarus) towards the border with Poland. Try as I might, I couldn’t get out of my mind’s eye the images of the last few days, and the fact of being instantly plunged into a critical news event of historic proportions. It was all still sinking in, and I kept replaying it in my mind…

In the same compartment, heading home, was an East German who was part of a democratic pressure group. He said he and his group had been utterly horrified by the coup in the USSR, but he shared with me the optimism that it would fail due to the determination of the people.

The train reached the Polish border late morning, and it was time to remove the wheels – the bogies were swapped from Russian to European gauge. This was done in a long shed and the mechanics seemed to be quite competent at it. It provided something interesting to watch during the wait.

Finally I was stamped into Poland, where I was immediately struck by the lack of the communist red stars on the signs and uniforms. These had been very much there in 1986 on the last visit.

After 3 hours I reached Warsaw and in doing so closed the “overland loop” in the sense that I have previously travelled to Warsaw from the west. The days of breaking new ground are over.

Warsaw looked very westernised compared with my last visit – much more like a Western European capital. A lot more colour everywhere – not the grey Stalin-esque appearance that I remembered from before.

I had decided to try to ring my old friend Slawomir at the last number that I had for him. There was no answer, so I decided to head for the youth hostel, via tourist information to get a map. Since crossing into Mongolia I have been travelling without a guide book, and this has certainly forced me to be more resourceful.

I decided to try calling Slawek’s number again, but it occurred to me that if he wasn’t there then his parents wouldn’t understand what I was saying. I asked the English speaking youth hostel staff for help, writing out in my notebook what I needed:

It worked!! Within a few minutes they made contact, established that Slewek had moved out of his parents home, obtained his new number, and shortly after that I was speaking to Slawek, who said to check out of the youth hostel and that he was coming straight down to fetch me and take me to stay at his new home.

I was introduced to his dog – a Dobermann – who was a little scary at first but who soon decided that I was a friend.

A celebratory bottle of vodka appeared, and I made an unsuccessful attempt to tell Slawek everything that had happened in the last 5 years.

I slept very well and when I awoke on 22nd August, Slawek had gone to work. His girlfriend, with whom apparently his relations were currently a bit strained, was there, and she got me some breakfast. I then headed for the wonderful Warsaw Old Town, which seemed incredibly colourful and bright.

I had to keep reminding myself that the old town, and much of Warsaw, was systematically dynamited by the Nazis towards the end of World War 2 as a reprisal for the Warsaw Uprising, and later was lovingly rebuilt. I went into the Old Town museum and saw a stunning film about the destruction and reconstruction.

I decided that I should probably call one of my sisters, to say where I was. They had no idea that I had been in Moscow, so shouldn’t have been worried. It was different from the occasion in 1982 when I was in Kenya when there was an attempted coup, and my 3 friends and I had to work very hard to get a message out to the UK (via short wave radio and Telex) to let families know that we were OK.

On this occasion it was just a question of finding a phone booth, and I called my eldest sister in Bristol to say I’d been in Moscow, and was now in Warsaw. “Ah yes,” she said, “…we decided you were probably in Moscow, because whenever there is a coup anywhere, you always seem to manage to be there!”

Before heading back for another night at Slawek’s home, I was at last able to figure out which frequency the BBC World Service was on. I hadn’t heard much since leaving Moscow, except that that the coup leaders had gone quiet, and there was some evidence they might have left the Kremlin by helicopter. This was something that I found easy to believe, given what I had seen in Karl Marx Prospekt on Tuesday afternoon.

But now, at last, the news was official…

Gorbachev was on his way back to Moscow! We will not be sliding back to the Cold War era. The worldwide relief caused by this news is as intense as it is universal.

The BBC commentators talked about the power of the crowds in Moscow, the defiant way they had flooded the streets near the Kremlin, the crucial presence of foreign reporters with cameras at the Russian Parliament Building, transmitting to the world the fact that Yeltsin was alive and well, and that he and the people were resisting the coup.

On hearing this I was filled with a inner thrill of the fact that I had witnessed such a crucial world event. And not at a distance, but around me, at street level, mixing with those massing behind the barricades, those climbing on tanks. I had literally rubbed shoulders with those who had shown defiance, disobeyed the state of emergency, and proved that the old Soviet control had lost the absolute power which it had held over their minds for so many decades.

It was, I reflected, a huge privilege to have observed the course of world history being changed by those around me. Then it struck me that I also had been marching the streets, climbing on tanks, making up the numbers…

I hadn’t just been an observer. I had been a participant.