LIFE is like one long train journey. The train is chugging forward along the tracks, its wheels rattling - clickety-clack - on the points of days and weeks. It whooshes past the whistle-stops of childhood and youth. It slows down at the station of maturity, and there, on the hazy horizon, one can already discern the sad blinking lights of the terminal.

Every journey has its beginning and its end - the rule that applies in equal measure to my six-month exploration of Scotland. It was promised at the start that I was going to ''uncover Scotland'' for The Herald readers. I am not sure if I have succeeded in the ''uncovering'', but if you think that I have managed to lift the lid even slightly, it would make me feel more than happy.

I have criss-crossed Scotland many times over - by buses, cars, boats, trains and even planes. Yes, yours is a big, little country - a realisation that struck me after an hour-and-something flight from Edinburgh to Shetland, or - particularly - after an eight-hour train journey from Waverley to Thurso.

Trains were by far my main means of transport, and, looking back, I see my Scottish wanderings as largely a train journey.

In my first column, I compared Scotland to a driver-less locomotive that had somehow got uncoupled from the rusty, slow-moving rolling stock of Great Britain.

Six months and one Scottish Executive later, I feel like modifying this metaphor by using a true episode from my travels, when an

Edinburgh-Glasgow shuttle once got stuck at Falkirk High - and then backed all the way down to Waverley, the explanation being that the driver had made a ''wrong turn''.

This is how I see Scotland now: a train shuttle that went halfway towards the junction of independence, but then, due to the uncertain and inexperienced driving, had made a wrong turn and was forced to reverse to where it had started from.

The real-life - as opposed to metaphorical - Edinburgh-Glasgow shuttle was probably my most frequently used train. Connecting Scotland's two main cities, it also served as a moveable (as well as moving) bridge across the age-long ''great divide'' between them.

To me, it was also a link between two different ways of life - friendliness and standoffishness, openness and obscurity, authenticity and pretence, soul and soullessness (I don't need to tell you which is which).

I used to particularly enjoy taking the last train from Glasgow leaving Queen Street at 11.30pm and arriving in Edinburgh 50 minutes later - at the very start of a new day. Its passengers, if compared to those on earlier shuttles, were less stressed, less sober, and never in a rush, for where could one possibly hurry to at midnight?

They were travellers - not just commuters.

It so happened that the midnight Glasgow-Edinburgh shuttle took me on this column's very last journey - Glasgow Queen Street to Falkirk High.

My carriage welcomes me with a strong smell of stale fish-and-chips (the stench itself probably contains more calories than a ''healthy'' lunch of bread roll and tuna salad): almost everyone is indulging in the favourite Scottish pastime - stuffing oneself with fast food.

The good thing, however, is that, unlike daytime shuttle carriages, with their taciturn and businesslike ''mind-the-gap'' attitude, this one is chatty and vociferous.

''Would you like a chip?'' I am asked by a kindly, ruddy-faced man sitting opposite. ''Thank you, I have just had dinner,'' I say. I am coming back home after an evening at Glasgow's Cafe Cossachok (''Little Cossack'') - Scotland's first and only Russian restaurant, doubling as an art gallery and a concert hall. I stumbled upon it in my six-month-long look-out for ''Scotland's best-kept secret'' - a cliche that I had heard applied to dozens of sites and places - from the cold war ''secret bunker'' near St Andrews to the Court of the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh.

I, for myself, had reasons to believe that Scotland's best-kept secret was the seemingly unremarkable Quids In discount shop in Edinburgh's Princes Street, where they sold excellent reading glasses without prescription and for a mere 99p a pair (I was tempted to buy dozens of them - enough to open a discount shop of my own): it saved me countless trips back home, where I would routinely forget my ''main'' (pounds) 100 ones.

Cossachok was the most unusual Russian restaurant I had ever been to. And I have been to many. Matrioshka Receptions in Melbourne was an archetypal one. Run by Lialia, a roly-poly Chicken Kiev-shaped veteran of Soviet public catering, it offered a set meal of 17 courses - a clever gimmick, for even the biggest of gluttons were never able to cope with more than seven, and therefore the remaining 10 never needed to be served (or cooked), yet were duly included in the bill. It also offered fiery and soul-piercing ''go-and-get-yourself-into-trouble'' live music and wild dancing - as if there were no tomorrow.

Cossachok was different in everything, except perhaps for the food - abundant and authentically Russian. Owned and run (on a non-profit basis) by Yulia and Lev Atlas - Russian-Jewish immigrants from Rostov, it was a ''catering establishment'' all right, but it catered more for the customers' souls than for their stomachs.

Designed by Yulia herself in conjunction with Tim Stead, an acclaimed Scottish wood sculptor, the cafe's interior resembled a fairy-tale Russian marquee. Upstairs, was an exhibition of Russian puppets, and downstairs - in the food-hall - a never-ending celebration of Russian cuisine, music and culture.

On my way from Falkirk High to Polmont I ponder the question - why is it that drunks, madmen and football hooligans always choose to sit next to me on trains?

The man who enters (or rather falls into) the carriage at Falkirk seems to be a curious fusion of all those three species. With clean-shaven head and unshaven cheeks, he resembles a dried cactus. His red, hairy hands are covered with pale tattoos of unclear message and origins. He has a protruding beer belly, as if he has accidentally swallowed a football.

He starts by telling me - with a burp - that he supports the English BNP (Burping National Party?) and, mystified by my accent, no doubt, proceeds to ask where I am from - a difficult question, with which, for some reason, I am confronted in Scotland more often than anywhere else in the world.

Initially, I tried to be honest. Contrary to the good English proverb, it was not always the best policy (not in Scotland), for almost inevitably the following dialogue then occurred:

I am from Edinburgh.

You don't sound Scottish.

Actually, I used to live in London until several months ago.

You don't sound English either.

You are right: I am Australian by passport . . . as well as British . . . and so on.

I still wonder what it is that makes the Scots particularly interested in my elusive origins - a natural curiosity, xenophobia, or just some mysterious small-nation sensitivity?

In any case, I decide that, inebriated as he is, my new travel companion won't appreciate jokes or puns and the best thing would be to give him the shortest possible answer.

''What? From Ukraine? . . . We accept everyone here,'' he mutters with disdain and burps out sarcastically: ''Are you enjoying Scotland?'' ''Yes. I do. How about you?'' I reply, but the BNP supporter is already fast asleep, dripping saliva on to his hairy chest.

I shut my eyes and transfer myself back to Cossachok, where Lev, who combined his role as a cafe proprietor with that of principal viola of the Scottish Opera Orchestra, was playing Romance by Sviridov.

The heart-piercing laments of his magic violin brought everything to a standstill. The patrons stopped eating. The waiters stopped serving. Even the coffee-machine in the corner stopped hissing.

Music was the only creature that spoke and moved inside the cafe. I looked at the faces of the people, filling the smallish premises to the brim, and suddenly realised that - just as the passengers on the shuttle were not commuters but travellers - they were neither patrons, nor customers. They were audience.

Listening to the painfully familiar Russian melody, I felt as if I had just walked out on an unfaithful woman, whom I still loved. I now knew what Scotland's ''best-kept secret'' was.

Taste buds die last. I open the bottle of Three Bears Russian beer, given to me ''for the road'' by Yulia. The label says it was produced by Ivan Taranov Brewery. At least, it is no longer a Lenin brewery (everything used to be named after Lenin in the Soviet Union): things must be really changing in Russia. Yet, the taste is still unmistakably Soviet - bitterish and medicine-like. It is much easier to change labels than to improve the contents.

I savour the half-forgotten taste of Russia in my mouth as the train now running from Polmont to Linlithgow keeps dashing ahead through thick Scottish darkness, making me feel strangely at home - more so than any place in the world that I have visited or lived in.

More even than Cossachok cafe - this enclave of Russian culture in the heart of Glasgow, where no one would ever ask me where I was from.

Maybe, this is because - unlike all ''normal'' trains - a shuttle, never quite arrives at a destination. After a quick clean-up, it is bound to go straight back to where it came from. A seemingly endless journey. On the last leg of the shuttle just leaving Linlithgow to Edinburgh, the few remaining passengers in the carriage are all asleep. A navy-and-red Flying Scotsman train, travelling in the opposite direction, flashes past, blinding me momentarily with the jumpy ECG-like garland of its window lights. It is good to know that Scotland is still on the move.

It is here - on board the shuttle, permanently commuting between Edinburgh and Glasgow - that I am going to leave you. It is two minutes past midnight. A new day has just begun.