There Are Other Rivers

Snapshot 

“The Earth teaches us more about ourselves than all the books in the world.” 

All the clichés about India are true. Clichés always are. But there is so much more. There always is. India: so vivid and loud. Energetic and mad. Charming, ingenious, squalid and callous. In my head I see all this. I suspect that anyone who has been to India and not just stayed in an International hotel will do too. But I fear that if you haven’t been to India then I am going to fail you. I don’t have the capacity to bottle the extraordinary essence of India. This is a pity as India is among my favourite of all countries, even though I have seen little of it. 

My first impressions of India, like generations of travellers before me, were intense and conformed to stereotypes. The filth, the chaos, the poverty, the stupid driving. The bright saris, the delicious food, the instinctive, gentle civility. 

After a few weeks on the road I’m settling in to India a little and getting used to how things work. I sit in the shade at a street stall drinking chai. The day feels oppressive. Heat. Dust. Noise. Glare. Stares. Music. Engines. Cell phones. Car horns. I need to hide from it all for a few minutes. 

A lorry beeps Silent Night loudly as it reverses. Oh, the irony. There are grubby finger marks round doors and half-removed bill posters and election flyers on half-painted walls. There are crates of empty glass bottles awaiting collection and strips of shampoo sachets hanging above shop counters. Bicycles squeak by, daring to compete with the lunatic drivers. They all have old sprung saddles, rod brakes and a bell. 

I flick through a newspaper, mostly reading the small articles and adverts. In the same way that I chose to walk an unglamorous slice of India, I prefer the small oddments of news rather than the main, attention-grabbing, Taj Mahal-esque headlines. 

• There have been surprise checks at various government offices to improve punctuality and attendance of staff. All officials were found to be absent from the Chemmedu Agriculture Extension Centre and Sericulture Department Office. 
• Health officials have been directed to take steps to appoint a driver for their ambulance. 
• An unknown, destitute old woman was mauled to death by stray dogs inside the grounds of the City Hospital. 
• Polling has been peaceful bar stray incidents of violence, rigging attempts and group clashes. A district general secretary was hacked to death. 
• A politician campaigns with the promise of free colour televisions for all. Asking a rally if they thought this was a good idea, he received “thunderous applause instantly.” 

I buy a glossy magazine, my curiosity piqued by the first hint of laddish culture I have seen in India. The magazine is expensive, £1.50, almost as much as I pay for a night’s lodging. I don’t think I’ve yet met anyone who would spend so much on a magazine. It is simplistic and aspirational. Its wealthy, urbanite readers are playing at being Western. On the front cover is a pouting babe in bodice, knickers and suspenders. Articles in the magazine include “10 things we bet you didn’t know about porn!” and “Drink smart: we tell you how.” 

I turn to the advice pages. 

• Question: “Should western commodes be kept open or shut when not in use? I’ve read stuff about women wanting the toilet seat down while men want it up or something like that? What’s the right funda [sic]?” 
• Answer: “Western toilets should be kept shut. There is a lid, right? Use it!!” 

Meanwhile an old television is playing in the shop behind me. It’s showing a glamorous horse racing event heaving with beautiful, rich Indians trying to look European. This too is so far removed – several generations removed, I imagine – from what I have experienced in my narrow slice of India. I really hope that, as more and more people rise out of poverty, India does not just copy Western fads and trends. 

Move just a few streets away from the centre and a town quickly feels more like a large village. Cowpat discs, to be used as fuel, dry outside homes painted with brand logos like Vodafone. Cows amble the streets, munching on rubbish. People gently and reverently touch the animals’ flanks as they pass. Children play with homemade kites. This is a different world to the town centre and the television. They do things differently there. I accept the folly of trying to make generalisations about a billion people, from billionaires to beggars, scattered across thousands of miles. 

Alone 

“All great and precious things are lonely.” 

Odd choice, India, if I wanted to be alone. But being alone is an important part of my journeys. Alone time. A lonely time. Alone with all of India. I feel more alone when I’m jostled by a billion strangers than somewhere wild and empty. But what is alone? 

Alone might be out in the hot scrub, watched by nervous deer. The only sound inside my head is my heart thumping. Everything is motionless except for the crunch of a family of wild elephants walking slowly past. I stare, awestruck, as small as a world and as large as alone. 

Or alone might be on the roof of a cheap guesthouse at sunset, having walked for hours through the crowds and chaos – like a murmuration of starlings – to reach the centre of the city and this brief moment of sanctuary. I watch the busy streets as parakeets dash madly for home, whooshing past in clusters. The call to prayer drifts lyrically across the city on the hot breeze. I feel a sense of exhilaration swelling inside me that howls, 

“Woohoo! I can’t believe I am here, in India, doing this. This is special. I am lucky.” 

I love this kick, the rush and buzz of joy and freedom. Just being in motion for the sheer heck of it. This is the unbeatable intensity of solitude that keeps me hooked on travelling alone. 

I love the continual exposure to new people, new faces and new ideas. And I appreciate being forced to make my own decisions and accept their consequences. I have to trust myself, encourage myself and boss myself all at the same time. The effort, the responsibility and the opportunity are all mine. 

Being alone forces me to be resilient and flexible. There can be no coasting, letting somebody else make the decisions, work out the route and find somewhere safe to sleep. And there are no ties, constraints or compromises. I can do what I want, go where I want, be who I want. It is an undeniably selfish pleasure. 

I miss those I left behind. Being alone adds a lick of lonely melancholy to the lovely moments. I can never share these memories with anybody. But being alone also adds a sheen of silence to each sunset and moonrise; the greedy pleasure of having it all to myself. Nobody within thousands of miles knows who I am. Nobody knows my name. I can be intimidated by that or relish the freedom it offers. 

Simplicity 

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.” 

A couple of years ago I was out on the crumpled ice of the frozen Arctic Ocean. It was bitterly cold. And I was deliriously happy. It was the stark simplicity of life out on the ice that I enjoyed so much. I had very few things to focus on each day, but I had to do each one to the best of my ability. If I did not then the consequences in those conditions could be severe. I decided, as my hands and nose thawed out back in the tent, that when I become King of the World this would be a good decree to run the world by: 

• Concentrate only on the stuff that really matters. Cut everything else. 

• Do what you do to the very best of your ability. Do this every single day. Otherwise you die! 

Walking across India was not a case of life or death. But it was a similarly refreshing draft of straightforwardness away from the noise and clutter of the 21st Century. 

As I walk upstream towards my goal the river becomes smaller and smaller. There are fewer diluting, polluting branches or confusing tributaries. Slowly I am moving away from the broad, stagnant channels of the delta towards the single holy well at the source. 

I wanted simplicity. Simplicity of purpose and to travel as light as possible. I wanted to pare life down to the basics again. India was a crash diet for me after the creeping lassitude of easy living. 

Simplicity of possessions felt difficult to achieve, accustomed as I had become to life, liberty and the pursuit of stuff. Yet it is liberating and enriching. Carrying all my possessions through a hot Indian day is a sweaty penance for materialism. It helps me focus on what I need. What I really need. The clothes I stand up in, plus a spare pair of socks, a lungi, flip-flops and a clean shirt now feels ample. A wise man once said that the things you own end up owning you. On the road you have few owners. Thoreau got it right, wanting to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life.” 

As I remove myself from needless material stuff, my mind also begins to unwind and I enjoy a lighter mental load too. I cleared my diary, turned off my phone and computer, and cleared off. I have de-cluttered my mind. I am wandering across a country, chatting to people, taking photos, making notes and drinking tea. By the standards of the real world, I am bumming around. I am not earning money, for heaven’s sake! Isn’t it time you got a real job, young man? 

“Adventurer and Writer?” comments a bright woman with a sparkle in her eye as she reads my business card. “Some may say, Alastair, that you are actually a wastrel. A vagabond.” 

I disagree with her poetic description. I am filling my days with purpose, even if it is only a very simple purpose. That is not a waste.
Each day I have to walk as far as I can, as near to my river as possible. And I must find food and water and shelter. That is all. If I do just those few things then I have not wasted my day. Far from it. I have used my day fully. A day working hard on a project I care about is a day well spent. Find something you love. Do it well. Do it a lot. 

It feels good to carry my world on my back. I smile in the sunlight. I could travel and live this lightly forever, I remember as I get into my stride. 

Escape 

“For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that makes it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.” 

Head thumping heat shimmering sun beating. Loneliness in crowds of foreign tongues staring at one foreign face. Bruised feet dragging spirit bruised shoulders slumped. Can’t think. Can’t speak. Just walk. The monotony of the open road. 

These are common complaints on a difficult journey. I often get them all in a single day, and know there will be more of the same tomorrow. Most days involve very little except for this carousel of discomfort. It doesn’t sound like much of an escape. 

Yet escape is a key part of the appeal of the road. All my adult life I have felt the need to get away. Its intensity and frequency ebbs and flows but it has never gone altogether. Perhaps it is immaturity, perhaps a low tolerance threshold. But there is something about rush hour on the London underground, tax return forms and the spirit-sapping averageness of normal life that weighs on my soul like a damp, drizzly November. It makes me want to scream. Life is so much easier out on the road. And so I run away for a while. I’m not proud of that. But the rush of freedom I feel each time I escape keeps me coming back for more. Trading it all in for Simplicity, Adventure, Endurance, Curiosity and Perspective. For my complicated love affair with the open road. 

Escaping to the open road is not a solution to life’s difficulties. It’s not going to win the beautiful girl or stop the debt letters piling up on the doormat. (It will probably do the opposite.) It’s just an escape. A pause button for real life. An escape portal to a life that feels real. Life is so much simpler out there. 

But it is not only about running away. I am also escaping to attempt difficult things, to see what I am capable of. I don’t see it as opting out of life. I’m opting in. 

On this walk my feet and shoulders are the vital parts of my body. My face, my looks and my hairstyle are irrelevant. Out here nobody knows who I am. Nobody knows what I have done well in my life. Nobody knows what I have failed at. I’m just a guy on a walk. 

I take a photograph of myself resting in a bus shelter. Only since returning have I figured out why I like it. It’s a photo that captures my youth. The days and years alone on the road. The thousands of miles, defining my life. Thousands of brief rests in shaded bus shelters like this one. I know that I will never live days quite like those again. I am tired but smiling. My pack is by my side. I have had that pack for almost 20 years now. I’m wearing an old hat, a veteran of scores of countries, unrecognisable now as the cricket hat it began life as. I must be somewhere remote for it’s rare to take a photo without a curious Indian face peering into the frame. It’s a self-portrait: I am alone. Nobody else sees this moment. It’s just me and my thoughts out on the road, where every new horizon is filled with promise. 

Sunrise 

“And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid anymore.” 

It is the chai stall’s busiest hour of the day. The chai man is bustling slickly through his well-practiced movements. The cup of tea is a small part of his customers’ day, but to him it is the most important. The care he devotes to his task reflects that. It seems a good strategy for a successful business. Start small, do what you do with enthusiasm and do it very well. Stick to that and growth will come. 

He presides proudly over his small stall, dressed in a blue lungi and yellow vest. His slender hands work gracefully, methodically and quickly. He mixes the tea, sugar and boiled milk flamboyantly, pouring it from one jug to another at arms’ length. With a smile he hands a glass of tea to each customer. 

I do not linger long. There is a compromise between walking far enough to finish the journey, balanced against slowing down and savouring it all. My natural inclination is always to push out more miles and make things harder on myself. As I thank the owner and the customers who have made me welcome (“nandri, nandri, nandri”), I notice that the sky is already growing lighter behind me. I walk on.
These first hours of the day are my favourite. Coursing through me is the drug that fuels my journeys, the feeling that keeps me coming back for more, despite my long-held feeling that I am not ideal material for this life (too soft, too hasty, too introspective). It’s a fresh morning. I am someplace new on the far side of the planet. I am lean and very fit. The road stretches enticingly ahead of me. My legs ask to be tested and I lengthen my stride, accelerating with the glow of well-being. I’m eager to tackle the miles ahead and intrigued by what the day will offer. 

I follow a meandering little road through green sugarcane fields. The broad river, my river, is on the right, flowing slowly in the opposite direction to me. Enormous cotton wool clouds glow pink, lit from beneath the horizon by the sun. Men are already working in the fields, wielding sickles as their grandfathers’ grandfathers would have done. Will their grandchildren do the same, I wonder? 

A temple on the far bank looks fabulous in the honeyed light. Its pyramidal gopura stands twenty metres tall, every inch carved with gods and legend. It is a scenic view, very National Geographic, until I look closely and notice people squatting and shitting alongside those brushing their teeth or collecting water. The world is awake now, though the day is still quiet. People who are up early move with a quiet purpose. I love this time of day. Before the crowds swell there is more world to go round, more magic to share amongst those of us who are awake. 

On the river a fisherman casts his net from a coracle, as his grandfather’s grandfathers would have done. The net lands gently and the reflections of those extraordinary clouds ripple across the smooth water. It is a mesmerising scene, unchanged in hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. The fisherman’s mobile phone rings. I hear him jabbering away as he hauls in his net. Will his grandchildren also fish like him? 

Though it is early, young boys are already playing in the river. They shout and splash around the washing ghats4. When the boys see me, they start showing off, spinning and twisting as they leap into the water. I take some photos then show the boys my shots. Showing people the image on the back of my digital camera causes amazement on this walk. For most, it is a complete surprise. They are wet and noisy as they jostle round me for a better view of the camera. 

A man wearing a red lungi and a vest passes as he returns from his morning wash. He is holding a piece of soap and a chewing twig. He invites me, shyly, to photograph the flowers in his garden. 

We walk away from the road towards a cluster of small homes set back amongst trees. The orange earth is packed hard and smooth. The homes are painted baby blue. There is a small hayrick outside each one. Many have a buffalo too, tied through the nose and chewing methodically. Fishing nets are draped to dry alongside swathes of colourful saris. A young girl in a blue school uniform is washing shiny metal trays at a water pump. Next to her is a mound of yellow bananas. Her face is smeared all over with green paste and a bright scarlet bindi dot beams from her forehead. 

Kids dash forward to see me, curious, excited and a little scared. My new friend (like many in South India his name is a multi-syllabic tongue twister that I do not catch) is the centre of attention with me at his side. He went out to brush his teeth and returned with a pink Englishman. Everyone is calling to him, laughing and questioning. He enjoys the fun and I don’t mind it either. It is good-humoured. But this reaction to me plays out many times every day. It is an aspect I do not miss when I return home and become part of an anonymous majority once again. 

The man is proud of his garden. He has planted a couple of rows of flowers, about ten in each row, in front of his home. He waters them from an old plastic bottle and then gestures for me to come, look, enjoy. It is humbling and inspiring to see something planted, purely for pleasure, by someone with little spare time or money. 

The sun is rising now. It’s not a spectacular one today, but all sunrises are good to see, if only for the smug feeling of knowing that nearly everyone else is asleep and missing this moment. I think how rarely I watch the sunrise since I settled down to life in England. I resolve to start rising early again when I return home. I make many resolutions when I’m on the road and dreaming of home. I think how I’ll make a better fist of it next time and make plans for a better-lived future, but already I know that I will never stick to this one. 

“Here comes the sun, little darling,” I sing loudly, every day, at the moment the sunlight first strikes my face. “It’s alright, it’s alright...” 

It’s a road tradition begun thousands of mornings ago, thousands of miles from here, in the cold, oxygen-starved heights of the Andes. There the faintest hit of warmth was welcomed. This morning the sunrise is thick and warm, rich with oxygen and the sweet reeks of India. Of dust and petrol fumes, of curry and cows (of rice and men?), festering drains, flowers and a thousand kerosene cookers. There is no place I’d rather be. Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive, but to be on the road is very heaven. 

Routine 

“It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.” 

People looking at me walking through India might envisage my daily routine to be something like: 

• Get up, walk. 
• Lunch, walk. 
• Eat, sleep. 

  There is more to it than that. Every day on the road includes many more tiny routines: 

• Pack away everything I own each morning. There is a place for everything and everything goes in its place (unlike the messy chaos I live in at home).
•  Find someone who seems intelligent to ask for directions. Check with someone else to make sure. 
• Work out, across language barriers, from people who never walk, how far it is to the next source of drinking water.
• Establish, with no menus and no common language, what food is available. 
• Eat food completely unlike what I was expecting.
• Study my map and calculate how far I have to go. Repeat at every rest break.
• Ask people if they will fill my water bottles. 
• Think of new songs to sing. Wave/swear at beeping trucks and buses. 
• Daydream about home or future trips. 
• Answer the same questions for everyone I meet. “What is your good name? What is your native place? How many children do you have? What is your profession? How much do you earn? Why are you walking? Do you want a lift?”
• Dream of what I will eat when I get home (clue: it will not be curry). 

Routine is comforting and reassuring. It is the backbone of any long journey or expedition. There is a point to everything I do. Do things well and the day and the journey improve. Do things shoddily and I pay the price. 

Routine can be a curse as well as a crutch. After all, boring routine is what I ran from in the first place. And the grinding repetitiveness of the road’s routine does wear me down on a long journey. I often ask myself how I managed four years of it on my bike. Chapeau, my young friend, chapeau. 

At times then I need something different, a break from the routine. Something that makes all the grunt work worthwhile. 

I crest a hill and across the rain-freshened plain see a gleaming pavilion of shining gold. It is a monastery for exiled Tibetan monks. I stare in astonishment, having had no idea I would find this. My wild surmise is my reward for choosing to learn nothing about what lay along my route. 

The Tibetans are mesmerising, dressed in their distinctive scarlet robes. They feel like fellow foreigners after hundreds of miles of Indians. A gong sounds and young monks scuttle past, like schoolboys late for class, splashing through puddles. An elderly monk smiles at me from the broad double doors of the spectacular temple and beckons me inside. I leave my gigantic shoes amongst piles of small ones and walk barefoot into the temple. 

Instantly I have to recompose my list of the highlights of this walk. The interior is a vast space. The walls are painted with myths and legend. Thick red pillars support the roof. Two birds fly through the cavernous space, their smallness helping me grasp how mighty the temple is. The crowning glories are three colossal, golden Buddhas that tower above us all. They shine even on this drab morning. Many hundreds of novice monks sit cross-legged on the floor, facing a huge central gong. Rows of candles burn and incense sweetens the air. 

Not all the young monks are as awestruck as me. Some chat to their friends or fiddle with their long, rectangular boxes of holy texts. If they had mobile phones they wd hv bn txting. 

After about ten minutes a tall monk crashes the gong. Hundreds of voices begin to chant. The sound is low and ragged at first. But the chorus grows stronger and stronger until it reverberates round the temple. I tingle with the power of simultaneous prayer from so many. I sit back and close my eyes. I try to imprint the sound deep into my brain so that I never forget this journey. I give thanks for the never-ending surprises of travel, the rewards earned by persistently climbing the grinding ladder of routine. 

River 

“Don’t you dare take the lazy way... Whatever you do, it will be you who do.” 

I push through a bamboo grove to the river and sit beneath a teak tree. I write my diary and study my map, a computer print out of a survey from 1912. It’s the best map I managed to find for this area. Having a river to follow provides a tangible, constant thread to the route. It automatically gives purpose and direction to the walk. My river is small and boisterous now. The contours are tight and curling. Earlier I passed a magnificent waterfall, the noisy blast an invigorating change from the usually sedate flow. Upstream from this wide, gentle bend is a red and white striped temple and a deep gorge jumbled with gigantic boulders. Cormorants dry their wings on the bank. Tucked amongst the tangled tree roots are small shrines to Shiva and flame-blackened statues of cobras. 

There is a low babble of chatter from people bathing and washing clothes. A girl is singing. Old, paunched men with worn bodies are praying. They bathe then bow their heads. They lift their arms to the sky, muttering all the while. A beautiful young woman stoops to collect water. She strains to lift the full container. Shaped like an amphora it fits snugly into the curve of her hip and I watch the bones in her back ripple as she walks away. 

This scene has played out, virtually unchanged, for centuries. It has taken place every day of my life without me ever being aware of it. India’s enormity reminds me how small the sphere I live my normal life in is. It alters perspective. The ageless river reminds me that my own time is fleeting. This tableau will take place again tomorrow when I have walked out of it and on thousands of rivers that I will never see, right across India, on every day of my life. 

I find myself wondering whether any other tourist has ever sat here before. I doubt it. I ask not as a member of the Lonely Planet generation boastfully ticking off experiences and trumping others’ tales. I ask because I had wanted a journey far from the picture postcard views and picture postcard sellers. I wanted to feel that I was discovering places for myself rather than following a prescribed path. And I am delighted how easy that was to achieve. I am really enjoying my own slice of India. It is fresh, exotic and unfailingly fascinating. 

My river has changed so much since I began walking. The meandering delta near the coast, its agricultural irrigation canals and religious bathing ponds (kalyani) feel a long way away now. I’m getting there. I look down at the water flowing in the direction I have come from and imagine how long it will take to flow all the way to the sea. 

“Take your time,” I urge the river. “Enjoy it. I did.” 

Go 

“The virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from here seems broad and straight and sweet.” 

An urge builds in me, a voice in one everlasting whisper, day and night repeated until I just have to go. It doesn’t really matter where I go. All that matters is that I go. Somewhere different. Somewhere new. Maybe I get bored with where I am. Maybe the restless dissatisfaction rises from everything being too familiar, too easy. Whatever the cause, being in motion feels good. 

It can be as simple as driving through the night, music playing, windows down, headlights picking out road signs and counting down the miles to new places. The moon sways back and forth overhead, mirroring the twists and turns of the road as I roll on under the stars. Turnings I don’t take and pass with a pinprick of regret and curiosity. What would I discover down that road? Who would I meet? How would my life change? Places I will never see again, but it does not matter because I am on the way to even more that is new. It is the gleam of the untravelled world that drives me on. Go, go, go. 

Before I begin a big trip nerves and excitement brew in my belly. I’m diffident by nature so the nerves generally outweigh the excitement. I worry about all that might go wrong and have to cajole myself instead to imagine the good things that might happen. I stir scenarios round and round inside my skull until they begin to drive me mad. I feel as though I am on a runaway train. But worse than that: it’s a runaway train that I have set in motion myself. I can’t jump off. My lazy streak gets to work, busily concocting reasons not to begin at all. Things are just fine here... Don’t rock the boat... 

It does not help when everyone I tell about my plans tries to persuade me to take a bus to the Taj Mahal instead. 

“No, no, no,” said a man on the beach at the very beginning of the walk. His face was serious, his head wobbling from side to side. “It is a Very Big River. You must enquire about the bus facilities instead. It is very barren. You won’t even get a cup of water. Indian food is very spicy for you people. There is a very big valley. There are snakes. There is bamboo...” 

Thankfully there is a tiny sliver of my brain that fights back. Without it I would never do anything interesting. It is a still, small voice that simply maintains that I must begin. I thank the man for his concern, assure him that I will definitely heed his advice and then do no such thing. 

It is like a kayaker approaching a rapid. Once he reaches the point of no return he just has to go for it and trust himself to cope with whatever may be thrown at him. I am on my way. There is no point worrying anymore. I feel a surge of release and remember why I put myself through all these agonies. I love the thrill of beginning new projects. It is a feeling that makes me sing out loud and feel like the luckiest man alive. 

Flabbiness 

“You know how advice is: you only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyways.” 

There are three stages of flabbiness in life. Each is more restricting and stifling than the one before. They creep insidiously over me like vines until it takes one hell of a struggle to escape their clutches. If ever I feel the saggy symptoms snuffling up on my life then I know it is time to hit the road. 

The first stage of flabbiness, and the easiest to fix, is physical flabbiness. It begins when busy schedules, dark winter days and eating too much win the devil’s footrace against the part of me that knows that exercise isn’t a waste of time but actually makes me more efficient, alert and happy. Despite knowing this I am still at times sufficiently idle to let my standards slip and my fitness slide away. Fitness is like chasing a shoal of fish: difficult to master and get on top of, easy to lose. 

If I don’t go running for a few days, I feel cooped up and ratty. Leave it a few more and the habit is broken. I know I need to run. I want to run. But I just can’t be bothered. Flabbiness has begun to set in, slowly, invasively, like cataracts. Before I know it I am easing out my belt buckle and blaming my sloth on the effects of age. 

The second stage is mental flabbiness. Give up exercising, stop forcing myself out the front door for a run and inevitably my mind starts to sag too. I used to feel alert and inquisitive. I read lots of books. But one evening I came home tired. Flopping down onto the sofa I reached for the television remote instead. Suddenly I am gripped by light entertainment. I realise how pleasant life can be if I stop thinking about it. It is much simpler to exist than to live. I’ve got a dishwasher and a coffee percolator and I drink at home most nights with the TV on. I sit slumped in front of the telly flicking round the channels until I have frittered away enough of my life that it’s time to go to bed. 

Finally, if I start forgetting any of these things, then I know I am on a slippery slope towards the third, terminal, stage of flabbiness: moral flabbiness! 

•  Each day I am one day closer to my death. No matter how aware I am of this, it is still sometimes difficult to believe in my own death. 
• I don’t know when I will die, so putting things off to an indeterminate date in an un-guaranteed future is pretty daft. 
• I am happiest when I have a sense of purpose.  
• There are so many places I would still like to see, so many interesting people to meet, so much to do. And there is so little time. Before I know it I’ll be dead and what a bloody waste that will be if I’ve just been arsing around. 

By the time I have succumbed to the debilitating onslaught of physical and mental flabbiness I am already well on the primrose path to moral flabbiness. Not only have I conceded my physical health and settled for candyfloss in place of a brain, I have accepted that this is good enough for my life. I have become comfortably numb. I have decided that Friends repeats and a Chinese takeaway are sufficient return for the privilege of being born, healthy and intelligent enough, in one of the richest, most free countries on the planet. I have a passport to explore the world. I will always be able to find some sort of work. I will never starve to death. It’s hard really for me to come up with any decent excuses. The choice is all mine. 

Life is too brief and too rich to tiptoe through half-heartedly, rather than galloping at it with whooping excitement and ambition. And so I explode in rage just in time. It’s time to go prowling in the wilderness. It is time to live violently again. It is time to sort my life out. This can be done in two ways. I either jump in the nearest cold river for a bracing swim, or I plan a trip, set a start date and, come what may, begin. 

Dawn 

“It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings.” 

I walk quietly past the night watchman, bundled in blankets and snoring on the floor. I step out of the lodge. I’m out into the world. I have begun. Dawn will come quickly. But not yet. My pack feels comfortable. It’s as small as I could manage, but we can’t travel without baggage. We carry it wherever we go, even when we’re trying to leave it all behind. 

I glance up at the dark sky. I find Venus and use the bright star to check my bearings. I turn my back on it and begin walking west. I now know which direction I am going. That is virtually all I know about today. 

One of the few certainties is the blazing heat and the noisiest country on Earth. So I breathe in the cool air and savour the silence while it lasts. Dawn smells different far from home. The air is full of possibilities. That’s rubbish, of course. Air is air. Nothing more. But I’m excited to be on my way and am sniffing possibility all around me. 

My legs are strong. My feet are comfortable. I have a sense of purpose. I’m here to learn and think and experience. And also to walk well and cover distance. To test myself. I feel good. I love it out here. The day has not yet knocked that out of me. 

The street sweepers are already working. Bent double with one arm behind their backs, they sweep the street with short broomsticks made of twigs. They sweep, sweep, sweep at the dust, coconut husks, scraps of newspapers, cigarette ends and plastic bags. Sweeping India clean. Oxymoron, impossibility. Sweep, sweep, sweep. Sisyphus meets Escher. Sweep, sweep, sweep. Repeat day after day. Year after year. 

With rhythmical arcs they sweep yesterday’s unwanted remains into small piles. Perhaps an ox cart will collect them. Perhaps they will be rifled through by the stray dogs with sores and lame legs. Or perhaps their human rivals will beat them to it: India’s unloved, nameless and destitute (who each, of course, have names and were, once at least, loved). They lie in doorways, their lungis (sarongs) wrapped tightly round their frail bodies like shrouds. They sleep the sweet hours of blessed escape when, if their dreams are kind, their lives are limited only by their imaginations. I wish them long sleeps. Is this the only kindness I can offer? Is this the best I can do? 

I continue down the dark street. At dawn towns are quieter than villages. There are no cockerels, no bleating goats being led to pasture. I pass a small temple. The gate is still shut. On the outside wall is a small deity in a niche. A candle flame casts a tiny glow over the god. The wall above the statue is black with years of smoke. Rippling downwards is a red waterfall of solidified candle wax. 

Dawn never arrives gradually. It comes in little leaps each time I notice that it has grown lighter since I last paid attention. The sky is greying. I can see further. I am past the shops and bus stand. There are homes beside the road now. Most are still dark but a few are beginning to stir. Through an open door I see smoky orange flames wrapping up around a cooking pot. A fat woman in a green sari stands sleepily in the doorway. She doesn’t notice me. 

The ground outside another home has already been swept and splashed with cow dung and water to keep the dust down. The fronts of India’s rural homes are always pristine, even if just yards away a stinking pile of rubbish has been dumped. An elderly woman is marking out her kolam for the day. These elaborate, symmetrical patterns of white rice flour are redrawn each morning. They welcome guests to the home as well as Lakshmi, the beautiful four-armed goddess of prosperity. The old woman, bent double and concentrating on her kolam, does not notice either as I pad past. She pours white flour from her dark fingers in a thin, neat line, like sand rushing through an egg timer. Thousands of days have begun like this for her. I wonder how many remain. 

Ahead of me a circle of light illuminates a cluster of men at a small tea stand. Two are sitting on a homemade bench. They are discussing the morning’s newspaper, a broadsheet of few pages, inky photographs and swirling Indian script. The other men are standing, quietly sipping steaming glasses of milky tea. They hold them delicately at the rim as the glass is too hot to hold. Moths swirl round the bright bulb that hangs above the busy proprietor. 

In a reminder to myself that this journey is about more than merely pushing through miles and pain, I stop. I enter the pool of light. I unclip my rucksack, roll it from my back and dump it on the floor. All eyes are on me. I stoop under the low thatched roof and sit on the end of the wooden bench. I look around, smile and blow out dramatically, suggesting that I am tired. It’s not true: I’ve only walked a few miles. It’s just a role I play. The road has taught me that this is an approach that works. It starts a conversation. 

“Chai?” someone asks. “Chai,” I agree.
It’s time for a cup of tea.