"Today I see your look is especially sad, and your arms are so slender, hugging your knees.

Listen: far, far away by Lake Chad, an elegant giraffe is wandering in the breeze."

There, to Africa, to Lake Chad, where Nikolai Gumilev's elegant giraffe is still wandering, is where Elisabeth Gordon wanted to go from Australia - to study musical traditions of Nigeria.

But she ended up on another continent: in Russia, in Tuva, where there are no African drums, but instead there is women's khoomei, the mystery of which bewitched  the young Australian woman.