Going home

I'm sitting in a dark taxi at half-past midnight, paying to be bumped and jarred over Mumbai's broken streets in the dead of night on my way to the airport. I'm going home and a line from the song 'Thank You' by Alanis Morissette flits across my mind: 'Thank you India, thank you providence, thank you disillusionment'. It feels unbearably, heart-achingly poignant, so obvious but so apt, and not just for the first phrase. As the melody plays in my mind, I feel a lump in my throat and tears blurring my vision. Mumbai's lights twinkle and glow with a quiet, watchful, motherly serenity while the city sleeps. Suddenly, having ached to go home on so many occasions, I don't want to leave. India has welcomed me and cared for me and and now here I am leaving her like a thief in the night, slipping out of her dark embrace like a restless lover.

'Thank you India, thank you providence, thank you disillusionment.'

After this journey I have, of course, a lot to thank India for and, if you believe in such things, providence or some guiding hand, so gentle I could not feel its touch and so credit myself with the decision, may have brought me here. And it's true that I was certainly soaked in a sour, dark disillusionment about my worklife that prompted me to decide to do what this blog's strapline states:  'I've quit work and I'm heading to India to discover who knows what? Maybe myself, maybe not...'

The line and the sentiment is vague, deliberately so. Deliberately because, when I wrote it in a hurry the night before I left, I didn't know what I was going to discover and I really, truly didn't know why I was going, so I didn't know what to write, how to sum up the compulsion I felt embark on a journey that had no apparent meaning or purpose. And as for discovering myself or not; well, that was more vaguery to cover my back. I have never really seen India as a place of the bright, primary-coloured spirituality that so many travellers before me have enthused over, pasted on top of its daily humdrum life like a child's collage. I think you can find spirituality in anything if you are seeking it. You see it where others don't because it your mind is tuned to search for it. As I am not seeking, I have never related to India in this way and as such, I didn't expect or intend to discover myself in any sense that could be called spiritual. But, should I return from India enlightened and up to my newly beaded, hennaed neck in mysticism, then people would have been warned of this possible self-discovery and no ridicule could follow; and should I return as Me as I'd been when I left, coloured by the sun but not the eastern spirit, then I'd covered that possibility too. Non-existent expectations had been managed, I thought, through that cunningly meaningless sentence.

And have I discovered myself or not? Well, I don't know whether to be pleased or disappointed in myself but in a word, yes, I have. Pleased because any form of self-awareness cannot be but a good thing, and disappointed because this means I may grudgingly have to trudge to the bottom of the list of the New Enlightened of India and accept my position as One Of Them. But I still don't see this discovery in a spiritual, mystical sense, a sense I scathingly like to call 'airy-fairy, hippy-drippy'. I've always been suspicious of what I saw as the slightly suspect sudden 'awakening' many claim to have experienced post-India. It's as if they know a precedent has been set for this kind of obligatory spiritual metamorphosis in-country and that if they don't return touched and permanently altered by some form of enlightenment, then their trip has not been a success, valuable or somehow right.

What I have discovered, or rather uncovered, in India is the Me I always was, who was always there, but who I didn't have the time or - more likely - the inclination to analyse in either a critical or an appraising way. Going to India, and not India itself - I use this form of words deliberately - has taught me how to read myself, to know myself, to learn from myself. The different perspective I've been granted by travelling a misty distance away from myself as located in my everyday life has made me see Me and myself in relation to that life with a clarity I didn't expect. I would describe it in this way: It's like looking at a glass of water in a glass with a pattern on one side. The pattern is facing away from you and, although you can see it, it is distorted by the water in front of it. If you travel round to the other side of the glass it, and everything contained within it, remains the same but you can see the pattern differently, clearly and perfectly. It may be a clumsy metaphor for what I'm trying to say but it works for me. My life and I have not changed, but the way I see them has.

A wise man and well-travelled friend of a friend, speaking from honest experience, once said to me, 'You can't escape yourself by travelling, after all it's always You who you take with you.' At the time I found it profound, wise and enlightening but its wisdom is obvious really, when you think about it. And besides, wisdom is a fantasy. You only see advice or information as such because, at the time you receive it, it furnishes you with a knowledge that you didn't have, a missing piece that you lacked. And it stays with you because it answers a need, a questioning in you that you probably hadn't known you had. Everybody is wise who has the answer you seek to the question you pose yourself. And you are wise to someone who doesn't possess the knowledge you have already learned. But to me this pronouncement was wise because I had not thought about it and because it struck a chord with me on some level. The person who I was, who worried endlessly about things including - whenever this rare moment stuck - not having anything to worry about; that person was still coming along with me, packed as neatly inside me, as my backpack was outside of me.

When you travel of course it is You who you take with you - along with your worries, prejudices, opinions, behaviours and attitudes. You still carry that essence of You with you whichever country you happen to be in. Through travelling I have not substantially changed who or what that essence is, I have just come to a better understanding of it and a way of managing, altering or accepting those bits I was never happy with. Travelling gave me the time and space to notice myself.

If this is beginning to sound suspiciously 'airy-fairy, hippy drippy', then I'm sorry, it isn't meant to. But if it is, you have my permission to smirk as scathingly as I once did. What I'm trying to say is that without the constant scratch of the stresses and strains of everyday life, I have had time to think.
In these many and varied moments of introspection I have looked at myself and seen myself properly. And the mirror has not always been kind. I have seen and often been appalled, but sometimes pleased, at how I react in a variety of familiar and unfamiliar situations, but crucially, I have had the time to analyse my own behaviour and decide why I do the things I do. Why I speak, act, feel, think the way I do.

So this is why I say that going to India and not India itself has helped me discover myself. Before I travelled I knew myself, now I know why I am myself and how to deal with that. It is travelling itself, and its blessed shift in perspective that has given me this knowledge, that has made me see the pattern properly. It could have been any country in the world, but it was India - for which, again, 'thank you India'.

Another wise person, this time from from 60kph, told me (actually it was several of them on different occasions, they all loved this) that 'to move you need speed, to travel you need stillness'. And it is right. They are right to love this neat little epigram. Travelling involves long periods of inactivity; queueing, waiting, sitting, moving from place to place. It is precisely during these periods that your mind can find that stillness and so be freed to think more clearly. You are at liberty, if you choose it, to meander the lanes of your own consciousness: how you behave, how you react, how you judge, how you think, how you act. In the physical act of travelling - a long bus trip, a tedious train journey, a sleek flight - for the duration of that passage you abdicate responsibilities for all practical matters to your driver, leaving you with unaccustomed hours to spend in reflection and appreciation of the situations you've encountered, the people you've met, the things you've seen. And your own reactions towards them. The many hours of enforced inactivity I spent while journeying from place to place allowed me the time to let my mind to fall open like a bursting, overstuffed cupboard, leaving me at leisure to pick over its contents, polish the things I like and put them back and turn over and over the things I don't like and decide how best to deal with them.

But, of course it was not all about me. I didn't journey miles and miles and spend months and months in a foreign country just to think about myself. I went to India to discover the country too. All the things I experienced leave me frustrated that the superlatives available to me are just tired, dried-out old husks that cannot flavour my writing with enough intensity to describe what I saw and heard and tasted and touched and smelled and felt. The following line sounds like it comes from the Indian Tourist Board but I assure you it comes from me: India is a world within one country. And it is and one that I feel unable to capture adequately. It is noisy and silent; aggressive and serene; age-old and modern; caring and uncaring; careless and careful; bold and meek. India has brightness and equal darkness; it is straightforward, yet incomprehensible; lovable yet infuriating; rude yet charming. Contrasts seem such a cheap way of encompassing its seething, inseparable, ever-changing mixture because it is not simply one or the other, it is both and all these things and everything in between, and all at the same time. It breathes contradiction and confusion, a mercurial nature that changes as you travel through it, never letting you grasp it fully. But the little I have grasped is this:

India is a land where anything can and does happen. I may have tried to make plans but India frequently had other plans for my plans. At the time I didn't appreciate this but, but with the benefit of hindsight, I always found the justification for India's apparent betrayal of my organisation. Once, in Pondicherry, I went to visit a museum. It was closed, as the guidebook I'd neglected to read properly said it would be on that day. Outside it I talked to a local man who'd also been caught out. Knowing I was at an unplanned loose end, as was he, he offered to take me out for a ride on his scooter to see the local villages and surrounding countryside I would never have made the effort to see otherwise. As we flitted between sun-drenched jade fields flecked with serene white egrets, he answered for me  many of the niggling questions I'd had about little quirks and customs I'd seen in daily Indian life but never understood. Wind-blown and tired, I returned with a new richness of understanding, given of sheer generosity, that I would not have found in a dusty museum.

This man was the perfect example of another joy I grasped: that in India the places are made special by the people in them. A town, village, beach, island, desert is just a place - beautiful in its own right, but just a place nonetheless - without the warmth and friendliness of its people that will tie my heart forever to it. In Hyderabad, in my hotel room the satellite TV was on the blink, so the manager swapped my faulty system for his own, private set-top box and let me use it for the duration of my stay, leaving him with nothing to watch. I loved that city of glittering palaces for this episode of kindness alone. If I ever left a place without experiencing that warmth of human contact, I left as much a stranger as when I arrived, but if I moved on, having been moved by the people I'd met, I always kept a fond memory of that place.

But to allow a bond to form you need to trust in people and putting your trust in India can make or break your day. I was a newbie, pale and definitely interesting to the shark-eyed Delhi travel agent who skillfully bullied me into buying a sheaf of train tickets and hotel rooms for a sickeningly over-the-odds price. When I asked if the hotels he'd hand-picked for me were used by travellers, he assured me sternly that I would meet lots of travellers in them. All I encountered in these cold, upmarket rooms - which I don't think had ever hosted a single traveller like me before - was dreadful loneliness, homesickness and a sharp, sudden acquaintance with my own gullibility and excessive trust.

Then, in Hampi, on invitation from an Indian biker called CP, I made the decision to spend a whole week on the back of a motorbike with a group of 20-odd hairy bikers I didn't know, going to places I couldn't even find on my map. That was taking a chance, trusting in the extreme. But my investment of trust paid out a huge dividend. It gave me the best week with the best people I ever met in India. We rode together, ate, drank, laughed, sang, danced, took strange drugs together. I loved it, I loved them, I loved myself for trusting. Trust in India taught me to look for the good in people and when I looked, I usually found it.

Good things, of course, come to those who wait and in India waiting with patience and tolerance becomes a form of art. If you are prepared to wait a while for something you want or need, in India be prepared to wait twice as long. Or three times. Or 10 times. In fact, when waiting becomes so extended as to provoke existential questioning in a 'What are we really waiting for?' kind of way, then you know what patience is. The injustice of ticket queues - never a queue but a bunched-up brawl, a battle of attrition, a test of willpower - were always a drain on my patience. It would sweat from me drop by irritated drop until I snapped and raged or until its well-spring simply ran dry and in its place seeped in a weary, empty acceptance. I always knew I would get served in the end, by fair means or - more usually - foul, but I never knew when that 'end' was going to be. Like the good, all bad things come to an end too, and so I learned to accept that waiting would have its conclusion eventually, rather than to demand the precise time at which I could expect it.

And then there is tolerance. In this regard India is a demanding mistress. There is noise, dirt, poverty, pestering, over-charging, haggling, poor service. Like a kid in a candy shop, you have a bewildering array of things you can choose from at which to aim your tolerance. And an aim is mostly what it is, because hitting the target of being totally tolerant involves advanced level emotional control.

I aimed not to be bothered by the single stray dog who woofed softly at 2am, just because he heard me turn over in my thin-walled palm-leaf hut. I aimed not to mind when his sound set off a small, sharp bark from another stray dog next door; and I aimed not to scream in sleep-fuddled frustration as that bark set off a canine chain reaction of barks and howls from all the strays all over the serenity of Havelock Island that lasted a good half-hour.

And similarly Indians themselves don't seem to have a volume control that selects 'daytime' or nighttime': it has one setting, 'louder than necessary'. So another guest in your hotel, leaving at 5am to catch a bus, thinks nothing of hacking up the morning's crop of phlegm elaborately and expressively into the sink in the room next door to yours and carrying on a loud conversation with his wife between coughs.

Much harder to accept were the aspects of Indian life that dog you simply because you are a foreigner. I would bristle at the split-second pause of a rickshaw driver before he told me his price, in which I saw him mentally multiplying the truth by a factor of three or four because of the colour of my skin. I would feel the anger rise, then guiltily subside, at the sight of a lady beggar surreptitiously pinching her baby to make him cry before approaching me with her clawed hand and pleading eyes, gesturing with sickening desperation at the fat tears of 'hunger' squeezing from his crusty eyes. It was a trick but one borne of desperation. And if I gave her something, I had to squash the schoolma'am  indignation in me that wanted to berate her lack of manners for glancing with scorn at my offering, before turning on her heel without a word of thanks.

In India, tolerance was a vital but cruel skill to learn, as it made me accept both the irritations that didn't really matter, along with the ones I felt I shouldn't teach myself to ignore. In order to survive emotionally I had to learn to tolerate the poverty, hardship and filth, but sometimes I wished it was a lesson I could unlearn...

But one lesson I learned with pleasure was that India is where you are always welcome. If I could count my Indian riches in cups of chai offered, I would have more than enough to start up my own roadside stall. The tailor of Diglipur, the florist of Mysore, the shopkeepers of Udaipur, the tourists of Amritsar, the rickshaw driver of Agra and many more whose little kindness I have already forgotten, all extended the chai of friendship to me. We talked for minutes or for hours, our conversation somehow sanctioned as meaningful by the sharing of its fragrant accompaniment of a hot sweet cup, nursed then quickly drunk. If I had hours to spend, people would willingly pass them with me, or if it was minutes, they were just as happy to share what little of their life they could in this time. I was invited to dinners, weddings, people's homes and into their lives. When I unpacked my backpack for the last time, a confetti of scraps of paper and cards fluttered out, all covered with the names, numbers and emails of the people I'd met and promised - more in hope than expectation - to return to visit again.

And I pride myself that I was partly responsible for these encounters, because India is where, if you open wide the doors of yourself and show a little interest and curiosity, other curious and interested people will peep timidly round and want to come in and have a look around too. Whenever I went out in a bright and cheerful mood, open to whatever might happen, I found that the interesting interactions, the fascinating conversations, the memorable meetings came to find me. In my contentment I must have radiated some light of approachability and when I felt approachable, I was approached. While I wanted to know about them, people wanted to know about me too. They were fascinated as fascinated as I was. It was a thrill to see ordinary people as interested in my ordinary life as I was thrilled by theirs. My average existence was transformed to exotic for them by its unfamiliarity in the same way theirs was to me.

These encounters also made me realise that Indians are essentially the same as us. I tried to say more-or-less that when one of the 60kph bikers in Bangalore asked me what I now thought of Indians generally after completing most of my trip in India. But, put on the spot and unprepared, it came out in an embarrassed, fumbled, incoherent, messed-up way. To say that we're all the same may sound like a trite 'one world, one love' type of statement that didn't need me to take a four-month trip there to discover but, for me, it is true. This is how I would have liked to have said it:

Through talking and listening to Indians I came to realise that everyone's fears and our hopes are essentially the same. Different skin colour, culture, status or religion doesn't give you an immunity to fear or an assurance of happiness. If your skin is white or brown, you are still curious about others; if you worship in a church, a temple, a mosque or nowhere at all, you still want to be healthy and happy; if you eat curry every day or never in your life you still want to be loved; if you've travelled to a thousand countries or never left your town of birth you still want to be able to provide for your family. This is what makes us the same, not different.

I travel to experience the superficial differences, the dark or pale faces, the exploding colour of a festival, the beauty of the natural world, the bright city lights, the unfamiliar foods, the different lives, but above all I travel to meet people. Although they may do things differently, they may live in unfamiliar ways, they are still human beings and so I seek out what we share, what makes us the same, equal. If you look only for the differences that is all you'll see. But because I look, not even intentionally, for the similarities with the people - like the seeker of spiritual enlightenment - I find them.

Everyone comes back from a memorable trip with the same answer to the always-posed question,  'What was the best thing about your trip?': The people. And it's always the people because they are the common link through the physical, cultural, geographic and social differences. They are the hand that reaches out and guides us through the fog of bewildering unfamiliarity, the hand that says, 'Come, look, I'm just like you. Welcome.' And we recognise this hand through its welcoming touch, because its the same as ours and it has the same touch.

In a trance

When I told Aleks he laughed out loud.
'How do you accidentally go to a Goan trance party?' he asked. 'Well,' I replied, 'I'll tell you how.'
I'd got chatting to a Swiss man called Paul on the beach and when he was there again the next day we talked some more and he told me that apparently there was a big party happening tonight at a place on the beach in the nearby town of Morjim. He and some of his friend were going and he asked me if I wanted to join them. He didn't say it was a trance party and it didn't occur to me to ask.

From my previous experience of parties in Goa I wasn't expecting much. In Arambol there was always a rumour going round of some 'party' or other: 'Apparently there's a party going on at The Blue triangle tonight. Everyone's going to be there.' A 'party' was usually an artificial event dreamt up by wily bar or club owners who'd cottoned on to the fact that the rumour would grow and that hoards would descend on their establishment, drinking money in hand, if it became known that there was something happening there. These party rumours happened regularly and after a while you just got suspicious. If you could be bothered to turn up, you'd find that 'everyone' else had not, and the place would be packed full of no-one, made up of about 15 people and a few stray dogs under the table. Of these 15, two or three would be having their own internal party, totally off their head on their drug of choice. They would dance blearily on an otherwise empty dancefloor, watched by bored staff, surplus to requirements and the slightly huffy faces of those who'd believed in the power of the word 'party'.

So it was with this low expectation that I accepted Paul's invitation. Although I was on my own here and was quite happy being so - getting up late, going to the beach, eating, reading, writing and sleeping, pretty much being the sum of my parts - I thought it could be a fun, chilled evening and a chance to meet a few new people. 'A few' would prove to be a gross underestimate...

Paul said he'd pick me up on his motorbike at 4.30pm and we'd take the 30-minute ride to Morjim to get there for the start at 5pm. This may sound ridiculously early for a party to start but there was a reason for it. Recent elections in Goa meant that the Congress Party who had got into power had brought in a law forcing all restaurants, bars and clubs to switch off the music and close at the astonishingly early time of 10pm! So now the start time of any event was likely to have been pulled back to much earlier in the day in order to give people a decent spell of partying before the lights, music and alcohol were all turned off.

When we got the place in Morjim, the party was already in full swing. Apparently it hadn't started at 5pm but at 10am, making it a 12-hour party!
'This is nothing,' remarked Paul, who was a Goa regular. 'They used to go on for three days non-stop.' As he cut the bike's engine outside my ears were filled with a terrible sound and my heart with an equal dread: trance music. An online dictionary defines trance music thus: "Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s. It is usually characterised by a tempo of between 125 and 150 beats per minute." In other words, it's very fast and very repetitive. I am not a fan of this frenetic form of dance music in much the same way that I am not a fan of gouging out my eyeballs with hot spoons. Its too-fast beat irritates me and makes me feel on edge and anxious. You can't dance to it and it rarely has anything approaching a melody, let alone lyrics. Yes, I know I sound old and bad-tempered but with age has come discernment: I know what I like and trance music is not it. Had I known Paul's night out was going to be a trance party I probably would have said no to it and - with the benefit of hindsight - would have missed out on a superb evening's entertainment.

Paul looked at me for my reaction. 'Great music, ya?' he said enthusiastically. 'Do you like this kind of music?'
'Um, it's not really my kind of thing,' I said carefully. 'It's a bit fast for me, but it's fine,' I continued with a smile that I hoped would stand in for the excitement I was not feeling. Paul didn't seem to notice my lukewarm reaction.
'It's gonna be great, ya?' he said. It was also gonna be big. He'd parked the bike a few hundred metres down the dirt track that led to the beach and venue and as we walked the remaining distance, we passed bikes, scooters, taxis and rickshaws parked in every available nook and cranny. Outside the entrance a field full of hundreds of bikes and scooters stretched out, glittering hotly in the afternoon sun.

As we walked in there was no entry charge but my precious bottle of water was confiscated to force me to buy theirs at a greedily inflated price. Paul, however, knew the deal and how to get around it. He was wearing big, baggy knee-length shorts, with several pockets on each side. In these he had managed to stash several miniatures of vodka and, oddly, red wine. Now he'd only have to pay for mixers, at least at first. I was glad to be with someone like Paul, as it was becoming clear that he had a history of trance parties and knew their workings as well as I didn't.

Paul was a 45-year-old divorcé with an eight-year-old daughter. He had a mop of floppy brown hair, cut short at the back and sides and slightly greying at the temples. He had large pale blue eyes with which he always made intense eye contact when he talked to you. His skin was the hot nut-brown of someone who'd lived forever on the beach, yet he was only in Goa on his annual three-week holiday. He was about 6ft 1in tall and slimmish with a belly just slightly going to a paunch. He was Swiss by birth, but of an English mother from Manchester and an Italian father. This gave his English an peculiar, quirky lilt with the odd flat northern vowel and the sing-song intonations of Italian, all overlaid with a Swiss German stridency that ended most sentences with a question-inflection 'ya?': 'You wanna go doo a pardy, ya?' He was a great guy and easy to talk to but this question inflection always made me feel I had to make a reply, even when he was clearly only making a statement. Paul was a pizza chef back home and ran a couple of restaurants in Lucerne, where he lived. When he wasn't doing that or looking after his daughter trance parties were his thing.

Now inside, I saw that this was far from the three-man-and-his dog-affair I'd been expecting. A large area of the beachfront had been laid with turf and covered overhead with cloth shades in Indian and psychedelic prints. This area, still in full daylight, was packed full of writhing, moving bodies, all dancing to the 'boom-tiss, boom-tiss, boom-tiss' of heavy trance. There must have been at least 1,000 people there. Everywhere you looked polished, gleaming, tanned people jumped and lurched awkwardly around (trance is not easy to dance to, as the rhythm is too fast for most normal speed moves), all in broad, natural daylight, unlit by lights of any kind. It was very odd to see this sight without the darkness and the flashing lights. I got the feeling you get when you go somewhere familiar and something has changed but you can't work out what it is right away. It's like going back to your parents' house and they've moved a couple of pieces of furniture: everything's there, but it's not quite right somehow. Seeing crowds dancing in the daylight with no flashing lights felt like someone had moved an armchair - very unsettling.

At the front of the dancefloor area was the DJ stage, a glinting desk of techno buttons, knobs, faders, computers and snakes of cable. To one side of it a huge screen showed computer-generated abstract images. They were swirling, folding, twisting and curling in and out of themselves in a rainbow of colours and a mass of shapes.

But it was the people and their outfits that stopped me in my tracks. It was like a carnival, crossed with a circus, mixed with a freak show, with a sprinkling of a festival, splashed with a dash of India. Almost the first person I saw as I walked in was a tall man - 6ft 5in at least - painted entirely in bright pink body paint, even his hair. His only clothing was a pair of bright pink baggy trousers and a pair of tiny pink child's fairy wings, attached to his body with straps of elastic round the shoulders. He held a pink fairy wand in one hand and had even found little pointy ears from somewhere to complete the look. In the intense heat from the press of people, his body paint was melting with his sweat and little rivulets of it ran down his sides from his armpits. Against the pink of the paint, the blue of his eyes (which I think were his natural colour and not coloured contacts) was startlingly intense and the whites of his eyes took on a greenish tinge. He saw me staring and rather than giving me a dirty look, smiled broadly and posed with his fairy wand aloft. I was so surprised I took a photo to please him.

Elsewhere I saw another big striking man. He wore knee-length black shorts and ankle boots but his chest was bare. All visible parts of his solid, toned brown body covered in heavy, strong black Maori tribal tattoos. Great bands of black inked his arms, legs, torso and back. Glinting between these, he had row upon row of decorative body piercings. Tiny little pairs of silver balls, like cake decorations, outlined his ribs and chest and, on his back, they followed the line of his broad shoulders and the small of his back. His head was shaved but for a topknot of thick, spongy dreadlocks, tipped with feathers and beads. He was an awesome and impressive sight and I surreptitiously took a photo of him. I found this strange, savage beauty quite stirring. It wasn't the tattoos or the piercings themselves that I was in awe of but more the sheer presence of the man. He must possess such strength of character to make these permanent changes to his physical body and such assured confidence to be able to carry them off.

Now, in my little black dress which showed off my tanned skin, and my simple, tasteful gold bangles, I felt like the odd one out. Back in my room I'd thought it was quite cute but oddly now, I felt like the freak at the party.

The women were also eccentrically dressed - or rather half-dressed. A thin, lithe girl with cropped dark hair danced past wearing a pair of skimpy, shiny purple and black lace-edged knickers - they were definitely underwear - and a mismatched, clashing patterned bikini top. Apart from a few glittering face jewels, stuck at the corner of each eye, this was all she wore. I couldn't help staring at her pert bum, wriggling suggestively and barely covered by her knickers. I wondered vaguely about the level of maintenance such a bikini line would require...

Meanwhile Paul had found his friends and introduced me to them. I can't remember most of their names, apart from Maya, a dark Italian-looking lady. She was all dressed-up in trance party attire too - though more conventional - and every detail of her outfit was meticulously correct for the scene. She had loose waist-length black hair and large blue eyes fringed with thick crusts of black mascara. She was probably in her mid-40s but was trying to look younger. She'd had her lips done and probably her breasts too, which were thrusting from a low-cut top, just a little too perky and with no visible means of support. Her skin was a deep solid gravy brown that looked as though she'd been dyed from the inside out, so that if you cut her it would probably be brown right down to the bone. She wore a backless top in a black suede fabric with an asymmetric, ragged-edged cut and a fringed black suede miniskirt and brown fringed suede Native-American-style boots. On her arms and wrists she wore a menagerie of feather, leather, shell and bead armbands and bracelets. She was pleasant and friendly and I liked her, but I couldn't stop staring at her and wondering if this was 'normal' dress or 'fancy'.

At 40ish, her age wasn't an anomaly there, more like a normality. A quick scan of the crowd showed me that at 37, I was firmly in the middle of the age range, rather than being at the higher end as I would be in a club back home. Grizzled men and women anywhere from 60 to fresh-faced teens mingled with each other. There were even families with children and toddlers, the latter wearing enormous ear defenders to protect them from the volume of the music. Men and women, who were probably grandparents, with skin like a beloved worn-out handbag, wondered round in outfits too young, too short, too tight, too revealing that they wouldn't have dreamt of wearing back home. Wrinkled cleavages vied with baggy knees and artificial flowers decorated greying, thinning hair, while neon T-shirts stretched across middle-aged paunches.

My first uncharitable thought was to laugh and smirk at these people, too old to be clinging to their long-past youth with leathery brown fingers. They should have been at home knitting, not partying. But, observing their faces, all I could see were smiles. No-one was judging others, no-one was checking out and scorning what anyone else was wearing, no-one cared. Everyone was having a good time, doing what they enjoyed and expressing themselves in whatever way they liked in an atmosphere where anything and everything was acceptable. They felt free and were wearing this freedom painted on their faces, tattooed on their bodies, tied to their hair and proudly for all to see.
Who was I, in my conventional LBD, with my 'should do, shouldn't do' notions of acceptable behaviour to judge their happiness and pleasure? No-one was hurting anyone else, everyone was accepting everyone else, so I decided to do the same. In fact, it wasn't difficult as I love to see people doing what they love doing, being who they love being. I strongly believe that our differences, not our similarities, are what make us interesting. Having the strength to stand up and be visibly different to those around you takes a courage that I cannot but respect and admire. Even if I don't share someone's passion (they can keep their trance music, thanks) or their taste in self-expression (body piercings and I will remain apart until my grave) I love to see them indulging it, unapologetically revelling in it and being proud, not ashamed of or embarrassed by of their differences.

In England, being normal is the norm, whereas here there was no normal, the concept of such a limiting, proscriptive idea didn't seem to exist. People had no need for it as they could write their own rules, then break them as they pleased.

As if to underline my thoughts a man, probably in his 50s, walked by wearing a spiky orange and black fright wig, quite likely a Halloween relic. He carried a long, serious-looking wooden staff and wore yards and yards of heavy bead necklaces and flower garlands around his neck. With a smile on his face he walked serenely past, his first two fingers together raised in a gesture of blessing, like a Pope from some outlandish nightmare horror film. As he passed, the crowd parted to let him pass. No-one laughed at him, they only smiled too, the indulgent beam of those who recognise a happy person. Some shook his hand and said complimentary things about his outfit. He didn't even acknowledge these. Why should he? Why should he care what other people thought? He was doing it for himself not others.

I began to relax now and, despite myself, even began to enjoy the music. Happiness breeds happiness and seeing 1,000 people expressing their own peculiar brand of enjoyment was infectious and I began to feel the vibe too. While I danced demurely and neatly, keeping to a small space around me, others were wildly expressive, abandoning themselves to the vibrating, pulsating beat and the possibly involuntary inclinations of their own bodies to bounce, twitch, contort and stomp at will. In front of me were a couple who embodied the spirit of abandon perfectly. They were facing each other with the simpering smiles of those in love or of those tripping on a drug that induced such feelings. He was tall, thin and wiry, with a deep Goan tan and long iron-grey hair, done up in two neat French plaits, one on either side of his head. Although he could never have passed for one, there was something of the schoolgirl pigtails about it.

His partner was contrastingly pale. Not a 'just-arrived-in-India' pale but a bit of an unhealthy, sickly pallor with dark maroon circles under her eyes, but she seemed happy enough. Her hair was so full of dreads and feathers that from the back she looked like a big matted bird that had somehow flown inside the party. While he stood upright and did nothing much, with his arms around her waist providing support, she swung her upper body from side to side and over backwards, arching her back and sweeping her hair from side to side so her plumage fluttered through the air, occasionally trailing across the ground. She writhed like this unselfconsciously for several minutes, always returning to an upright position eventually, with her face tilted lovingly up towards his, like some alternative pastiche of a Gone With The Wind poster. For his part, he smiled at her indulgently, occasionally brushing an errant feather out of her simpering eyes. It was lovely, if amusing, to watch. They were in a world of their own and didn't care who witnessed it.

While these two didn't have a tattoo between them, others made up for it. Everywhere I looked body art, most of it larger rather than smaller, curled round arms, legs, backs and chests. On man nearby had an enormous design of an ant, detailed in black, that ran the whole length of his back, disappearing under the waistband of his shorts. It was horribly precise and detailed, yet impressive in its way. Even the tiny hairs on the ant's legs and the oily gleam on its domed head had been rendered for eternity on the man's skin. Another full back tattoo, also on a man's back, was of a pair of wings, but rather than a design of soft feathers, the wings were made of bones. The position of each vertebrae, bone and articulation inked on his skin, corresponded with his real anatomy underneath. Pointed rib bones curved around his own and long 'wing' bones arched over his shoulders, fanning out into several fingers, just like a bat's wings, before tapering to points. Over his right shoulder blade, embedded and skillfully incorporated into this skeletal structure was a skull design complete with huge portion of the front of the forehead missing in a jagged hole, as if the head had been smashed in violently.

I stared in fascination, grateful that the owners of these tattoos (Do you 'own' a tattoo? You can't be parted from it, even in death, as from any other physical possession, so does the same verb apply? I don't know) couldn't see my eyes drilling with mildly appalled curiosity into their backs. While I wouldn't have a tattoo myself, I don't disapprove of them on others and admire those who have them, bewildered as I am by their confidence to endure the pain that accompanies an act that will mark their bodies forever. I see a tattoo as a form of art but, unlike most 'drawings', it has the capacity to appall merely because it is executed on one's own skin, an unconventional and living canvas that is both private and personal, yet shockingly public and open at the same time. I have heard it said that having tattoos is addictive and that once you have one, you want another and another. Looked at logically, this is no different from an art collector who buys work after work, each more beautiful and meaningful than then last. A painting or sculpture is created by someone else and may be for public viewing but at the same time it has a meaning which is deeply personal, deeply beautiful to the collector and strong enough for him to want to possess it. The same is true of a tattoo, the only difference being that the collector of skin art will eventually run out of exhibition space...

The sun was beginning to set now, and the rich, warm light intensified the bronze of the partygoers' bodies. It was an odd sensation to dance in daylight, unprotected by the flash and strobe of lights that would normally imbue the incoherent, lumpish movements of dancers with an elegance, grace and sexiness, suggested because only half-seen. The dancefloor immediately in front of the DJ was packed with seething, writhing bodies and the heat, even under the shade of the fabric roof must have been unbearable. Faces, arms, legs, backs and chests gleamed slick like polished wood with a sheen of sweat and many dancers were dripping with it. But no-one seemed to care. Their minds were on some higher plane of consciousness - connecting through the deep, dark, vibrating base and the chirps, tweets and rasps of electronic sounds - with a blissful state of euphoria I couldn't quite join but was more than happy to observe.

I could certainly feel, if not entirely appreciate, the lure of the music. It was not deafeningly loud but loud enough to physically feel the vibration inside you. It made my whole body buzz and pulse and come alive, until I almost felt as though the beat was coming from within me, and not from outside. It was like a second, confused yet ultimately more powerful heartbeat. Was it a relic of evolutionary psychology in which I was subconsciously transported back to the ancestral African drums and was now feeling that distant pulse, as my ancestors once did in the cradle of civilisation? Was that primal beat stirring in me sensations long-stifled under thousands of years of distancing civilisation and social structures? Or was it merely because the pulsating rhythms so closely reflected my own heartbeat that I felt twice as alive and as if I had two hearts pumping life through me?

Behind me, over the beach, the setting sun was not a cause of celebration for once, as it meant that darkness would soon fall and I would be deprived of the fun I'd had in my detailed people-watching. But for the now I still had time...

Paul was enjoying himself too. Shortly after we'd arrived he'd taken some MDMA and was now tripping. His pupils were dilated, wide like inkwells, and his 'talk' button, usually set to 'voluble', was now stuck on 'constant'. He rambled on, his Swiss accent now overriding his Manchester/Italian strain, about the the music, the people, the music, the beach, the music, the freaks and - again for good measure - the music.
'Awesome music, Ya?', 'Great pardy, ya?', 'Cool freaks, ya?' At first I agreed with him, adding my own comment then, as he continued repeating the same thing, I just nodded then, when I realised he wasn't really talking to me but was just talking, I just smiled and ignored him. He didn't seem to mind. In his little world all was good. He had offered me some of his MDMA earlier on but I declined. I'd never taken it before so I didn't know how it would affect me and I didn't want to leave him, already wasted, responsible for me if I had a bad trip. I was interested though and asked him how it affected him.

'It chust mekks you feel reelly heppy, ya?'
'Is that all?'
Ya. It's reelly great, ya?'

This rather lame attempt at promoting the appeal of the drug didn't exactly leave me desperate to try it or thrilled with its potential powers, so I didn't feel I was missing out so much after all. Besides the spliffs and chillum pipes were out in force and being smoked openly all around. Their mist of sweet second-hand grass smoke was already contributing to my mellow mood.

Paul now got out some of his own hash and sat down to build a spliff. He employed me to hold the paper and filter while he built the joint. When it was done, I conveniently forgot two pieces of vital information I'd gained in India: firstly that smoking weed just makes me sleepy and secondly that Indian tobacco is cough-inducingly harsh. I took a drag and once I'd stopped hacking and my eyes had stopped watering, I began to feel it working its usual magic. The familiar deep relaxation began to penetrate my muscles and a smile of peaceful content welled up from inside me for no particular reason. I was happy now.

Then I made another error by thinking it was a good idea to stand up again. At first I was OK, but once I started to dance, I realised my legs had been replaced by bendy rubber ones and someone had forgotten to connect them to the part of my brain that told them how to work. I held on to a nearby pillar for support, but jigging up and down while thus encumbered felt and probably looked silly, so I sank to the floor instead with my back against the pillar and watched the partygoers from knee-level instead.

They had quite nice knees on the whole. Slim, tanned and smooth, they were made more interesting by the clothes above and the footwear below them. In my blissful state they were so very fascinating, in fact, that I decided making a short video of their beauty would be a work of art I would treasure for years to come. I focused on Maya's knees first, framed above and below by the fringes of her miniskirt and boots. Then I moved on to a pair of white leather boots, divided between the big and second toe. My altered mind was momentarily confused and I thought they were a pair of white socks worn with invisible flip-flops. Amazing! Their owner stomped up and down vigorously but helpfully remained more-or-less static in the frame. Next I spied a brightly-coloured ankle tattoo, partly hidden behind the Velcro strap of a sensible-looking pair of sandals. I zoomed in on it, hoping to capture its detail, realising as I did so that I didn't know how to focus again after going in close-up. Reviewing my 15-second masterpiece, it was as blurred as I was feeling, so I gave up and and just sat content to watch knees and feet instead.

Some time passed very agreeably in this manner, as I sat with a dopey smile on my face, stoned out of my tree. Paul came over, looking slightly concerned and leaned over.

'Are you stoned?' he asked bluntly, but not without concern.

'I think so,' I replied airily with a happy smile, 'but I'm OK.' And I was. I was felt so mellow, the feet were unbelievably fascinating and, at that moment, the pillar was the most comfortable thing I had ever leaned against in my life. My simple mind and been reduced to the simplest of pleasures and it was happy. He looked at me closely with his saucer eyes for a moment, trying to detect signs of imminent catastrophe, but seemed content with my answer.

Soon the munchies were upon me, so I got to my feet, feeling steadier now and headed to the food stall off to one side of the dancefloor. There I parted with three times the price for a chicken tikka wrap that was half the normal size. On my way back I was distracted by the flickering glow of candlelight and a large sign advertising 'The Alchemist & Magik Tequila'. The candlelight was coming from a long trestle table, covered in clear glass bottles of every shape and size, interspersed with flickering candles. Liquids in various colours inside the bottles picked up the glow of the candles and shone like magic potions. Behind the table a muscled man - The Alchemist - bare to the waist, with a cloth wound round his head like a turban, was leaping energetically from bottle to bottle and from each one, adding a drop of this and a splash of that to a shallow, richly decorated metal goblet. This was a cocktail bar, Goan trance party style! As he worked, the candlelight shone on his rippling body, making him look like a demon from the underworld working among the flickering fires of Hell, and his movements caused the candle flames to shiver and stir. It was a magical scene. I watched, mesmerised for several minutes, as he concocted his Magik Tequila, with theatrical gestures and flourishes, pouring very long and high from one bottle, then dripping minutely from another. His face shone with amber light and concentration until, eventually his potion was finished. He leaned low over the goblet and lit its contents. It was instantly covered with a sheet of electric blue flame shimmering over its surface. He turned to me with a big grin, posed for my camera and handed the flaming potion to his customer. As the price of one of his concoctions cost approximately my food budget for two days I declined his offer to make me one.

I could have watched him all night, but I didn't want Paul to worry that something had happened to me and he'd lost me, so I pushed my way back through the crowds to our spot. I needn't have worried: when I returned I'd lost him and he was nowhere to be seen. Remembering suddenly and belatedly that he was my ride home that night, I sobered up rather suddenly. I had no idea where he was and would never find him in the crowd, which was now so packed in you could hardly move. I didn't fancy trying to find a taxi back to Vagator when the hordes of people left at the end or paying the over-the-odds price the driver would inevitably charge me. But then I remembered Paul had left his jacket on the floor nearby and sure enough, it was there, so I thought it was just a matter of staying close by or coming back to it at the end when he would come back to pick it and me up.

Now that it was dark - very few lights of any kind illuminated the place - and the people-watching was limited, the novelty and the weed began to wear off. The throbbing, primal beat, gradually became annoying again and my feet were starting to ache. It would be impossible to find Paul and his friends in the dark, sticky throng so I resigned myself to waiting, like a faithful puppy, by his jacket until he returned. Jigging half-heartedly to myself, I watched the dark shapes moving, a handful nearby lit up by what seemed to be the only flashing disco light in the place. The rest, including the main dancefloor, were in semi-darkness.

A few UV tubes had been installed on the pillars at the corners of the dancefloor. A few figures dressed in white, had been attracted to them like ghostly moths to a blue flame. They circled and danced around the tubes, their clothes pouring out lilac light and their teeth glowing an odd pistachio green.

I was getting bored now. People-watching had been unbelievably entertaining under the influence, but now it was just a dark club with terrible music and no-one to pretend to enjoy it with. I began to wonder how I could make it to 10pm without dying of boredom, when my eye was caught by a burst of flame at the back of the venue. My first thought was that The Alchemist had set his turban on fire by mistake, but the light was coming from somewhere else. And so were loud cheers. Peering through the gloom I could make out a ring of people on the open area overlooking the beach, their faces lit by a glow and in the centre of the circle, two fire dancers putting on a show.

I pushed my way to the back to see. On an open-air platform that jutted out over the beach, two girls were putting on an impromptu display. They looked stunning. Both were petite and slim. One had long, dark, dreadlocked hair, decorated with an ill-advised feather decoration, while the other had short strawberry blond hair. Both their faces gleamed with dramatic theatrical make-up in dark shades of grey and charcoal and sparkled with stick-on face jewels and glitter. Each wore a short skirt that looked as thought it was made of animal hide with an artfully tattered and asymmetric hemline and a strappy top of a similar style. They wore flat knee-high black leather boots and their arms and wrists were adorned with all manner of studded, jewelled, leather and metallic armbands and bracelets. In each hand, each girl carried a ball of fire on the end of a short chain which they spun and whirled around them as they danced to the music that came from the main stage. It looked fantastic.

Their movements were smooth, fluid and well-practised but their expressions of deep concentration gave them a fierce, savage look that worked perfectly with the tribal costumes and the beat of the music. The crowd all round was lit up by the golden light of the flames, their faces awestruck and slightly smiling. This being India, there were no marshalls or safety barriers and the crowds were held back by nothing more than their fear of being inadvertently torched. The girls twisted and turned about the stage, their ragged flames strobing the jet-black sky above with intricate circles, loops and curls. At one point they even sank to their knees and arched over backwards till their head touched the floor behind their feet, all the while twirling their searing flames along the length of their bodies. The crowd lapped it up, cheering and clapping intermittently but mostly watching in silence with the odd gasp. One Indian man was so excited by the display that he screamed alarmingly at intervals, an animal yelp of pain that made those nearby turn to look worriedly at him in case he'd been caught by a stray flame, but no, he was just enjoying himself in his own peculiarly vocal way.

Now the girls were joined by a man, tall and slim and dressed entirely in black. He carried a long fire stick, about 2m long, topped at either end with a ball of fire. With strong masculine shapes he moved, bent, crouched and knelt, while the flaming baton whizzed round him with a roar of flames, above, below, to the sides, rotating across his back, his chest or his shoulders. As he moved from one side of the open area to the other, the crowd backed off at his approach and then surged back as he passed by, forming a tidal ebb and flow that advanced and receded in time with the danger. The air was thick with the smell of burning kerosene and feathers of black smoke trailed after the spinning flames. 

During the man's routine, the girls had melted away into the crowd, extinguishing their fires to give him centre stage but now they returned, with two fans of flames each. These they pirouetted and fluttered like wings and tail feathers, performing complicated, bird-mimicking dances and moves, sometimes coming together to form one 'bird' at other times separating and becoming two again. The Yelper loved it, shrieking and shouting like an injured but happy man. Their feathers fluttered and shook, framing the girls in flickering, dancing arcs of orange blaze.

Suddenly, without warning, the dark girl's hair decoration caught fire, a snake of flame devouring a long trailing feather in an instant. A gasp issued from the crowd, at first stunned and disbelieving their own eyes. Then a man yelled and gesticulated at her. But she didn't notice, either oblivious or carrying on with a misplaced professionalism. He shouted out again as a mini inferno took hold of the side of her head. Still she did nothing, I looked on in panic, too far away to be of any use. The man put down his drink and started to make a dash towards her to bat out the fire, when suddenly, as quickly as it had taken hold, the fire shrivelled and died out, having consumed all the feathers. The girl carried on, apparently still unaware that she now had a scorched stump where one bright plumes had graced her hair.
The crowd backed off nervously, fearing similar could happen to them if a flame strayed too close, but after a few minutes, wrapped up in the spectacle, they forgot their fear and edged closer again. Now the girls were joined by the man again and another girl. Now the four of them danced, filling the space which was surely too small to hold them all. The crowd shrank back again, giving them vital room in which to perform. Through the whirl of stirring flames, I was as mesmerised by their bodies as by the fiery shapes they made and wielded. Their limbs and bodies folded, curled, twisted and rolled themselves like circus acrobats with grace, beauty and precision, never dropping or stopping the spinning, soaring, arcing fires they held. When they finally ended to roaring cheers and applause and wolf-like howls from The Yelper, I was dizzy and dazed with the beauty of it all. I didn't even try to take any photos or videos, as I knew I would never be able to capture the glowing, smoking, moving, shifting hot brilliance of such a performance.

I stumbled back into the dark interior, tripping over ledges and getting tangled in unseen pot plants. I was glad now that I'd stayed to witness that. Eventually Paul turned up, dark with sweat and talking non-stop with MDMA-fuelled excitement. He had made his way into the centre of the main dancefloor and had had the time of his life thrashing about to his heart's content. I was glad I had not tried to find him.

The journey back through the dark villages and down country roads was cool and sobering. We stopped at a late-night juice bar and greedily downed thick, sweet, fresh mango juices, one after another, topped with oozing vanilla ice cream. Paul rambled on, his eyes still almost black, so big were his pupils. To him it was just another party but to me it had been a revelation of a sub-culture in India that I had known existed but had not yet experienced. While I'd felt a bit out of place there, I hadn't felt at all uncomfortable. After all, people are people and a party is a party, whatever either one looks like, so there was absolutely no need to feel uncomfortable. Ultimately a good party is within you, in the mood you allow yourself to adopt when you go to one. If you tell yourself you'll hate it, you will. If you try to find things to like about it, you probably will too. That the music, the people and the scene were not familiar to me didn't prevent me from having as good a time as I did, because I made myself open to its strange possibilities and didn't judge on its decidedly outlandish appearances.

Paul was going back to Switzerland early in the morning. He dropped me off at my dark and silent guest house where I said goodbye to him and to an experience that I wouldn't forget in a hurry but am unlikely to repeat in one either.

Rock-solid faith

Random chance and a silly promise forced me to go to a specific place in India where I saw one of the most beautiful and impressive sights I've seen in the country.

Before I left Cambridge, I met up with a couple of friends in a local cafe to say goodbye. There was a bookshelf behind our table and on it, one of my friends, Sian, noticed a big travel photography book on India. I took it down to have a look. It was quite old with black & white photos but it still filled me with excitement. In my hands I held the country I would be spending the next four months discovering. Leafing through the pages, I was taken by a strange feeling of slightly uneasy detachment: in a few days I would start to see these places for real and in full colour. I was leaving home and all that was familiar little by little through a chain of bright but poignant farewells, but I still didn't feel any closer to India yet. I was floating in a limbo where I had almost discarded my life here but had, as yet, no concept of the life of travel that would replace it.

I was about to put the book back on the shelf when my other friend, Emma, said what I had been thinking: 'Just think, Bridge, you'll soon be seeing all those places for real.' And I was seized by a silly idea.

'I know,' I said, 'I'm going to open the book at a random page and wherever it falls, I will visit that place.' Sian and Emma liked the idea and, with eyes closed, I flicked through, then placed my finger between the fluttering pages. It fell on a place called Ajanta in the state of Maharashtra.

'Good choice, me!' I said, with a smile. 'It seems to be place where there are lots of Old Buddhist cave temples. Right that's one place I will definitely go to.' And so I did.

Without realising it, I'd chosen my random destination very well: the caves at Ajanta are a World Heritage Site and they are amazingly beautiful. There are 30 temples cut into the sheer rock face of a horseshoe-shaped river gorge. The 2nd century BC is when the site was started but they are so well-preserved that with some of them you might think they were finished only a few years ago.

I arrived at the place, in Middle of Nowhere-type countryside, surrounded by lonely, dry brown hills, dusted with a few sprinklings of villages. But, being a World Heritage Site, everybody knew about it - and was there! As I entered what would once have been a peaceful, secluded place, I had only my imagination to help me picture it, as the bullet-loud shouts and calls of swarms of schoolchildren ricocheted and bounced off the walls of the gorge. They passed me in a loud buzz of chatter, their voices sharpened and shrilled with the excitement of a day out.

The safety of being in a much great number than me on my own melted their shyness and roughened their impeccable manners so they stared frankly at me and other foreigners and egged each other on to dare to talk to me. The girls looked fresh in olive green salwar kameez. Each one had her long, gleaming, oil-black hair parted down the centre and braided into two neat plaits. Each plait was looped up and attached to the side of her head with a girlish white bow, like a papery butterfly caught in her hair. The boys wore neat olive green trousers and white shirts, oddly lilac-tinged from a whitening product that didn't quite do the job it was supposed to do.

The entrance to the caves was up a long flight of steps and porters lounged at the base of the climb, waiting for the rich, lazy, fat or infirm, who would pay them to carry them up the steps atop an ordinary kitchen chair, with frayed and fading seat cushion, lashed to two long poles. When I reached the top of the stairs, out of breath from the climb, I paused to watch in cringing fascination as an elderly, overweight Indian lady and her husband appeared slowly, noddingly over the horizon. Each was on one of the chairs, borne by four sweating, straining porters, their neck tendons standing out like tree roots above their orange hi-vis tabards.

The lady clutched a sturdy, matronly handbag Margaret Thatcher-style on her lap. Her sari was edged deeply with gold and heavy gold jewellery hung about her neck and ears, making her look like a down-on-her-luck Maharani on a threadbare DIY palanquin. As she ascended, trying to look regal or inconspicuous - I couldn't be sure which - like a true ruler, she avoided eye contact with everyone around her. She looked awkward and embarrassed at her hoisted journey. Aloft like a Goddess carried through the streets, I had the impression she'd somehow misplaced her adoring believers and was slightly perturbed by this. When the labouring porters brought her gently in to land, she hefted herself awkwardly off her humble throne and walked away with a heavy limp and without a backward glance or a word of thanks for their suffering.

Her husband followed sheepishly behind her, looking even more pained with mortification than her. His domed belly spilled over the straining band of his trousers and the sweat beaded his brow below the sparse wisps of hair that tufted his head. He too, struggled to get off his chair and displayed equal ignorance of his beleaguered porters.

Now I'd caught my breath I turned towards the gorge and the caves. A sheer cliff rose up on both sides of the river bed to form a narrow canyon and the river - at this time of year a dry mass of smooth pebbles and boulders - curved away to the left in a perfect horseshoe. On top of the cliffs wind-blown trees slanted to one side and dead, yellow-gold grass flowed back across the undulating hills as far as the eye could see. Mid-way down the face of the cliff I could see the exterior of a line of temples curving round the horseshoe bend, carved directly the vertical rock.

The skill of the stonemasons who carved them and achieved such beauty, complexity and stability is truly staggering. Each cave is different but each is supported by internal pillars and most have a carved shrine at the back with a towering sculpted image of Buddha inside. The temples vary in size from small rooms to large halls, sometimes two storeys high. The the pillars and other surfaces in many of the temples are sculpted with fine, intricate detail and the ceilings are sometimes carved with ribs and vaults. Inside some temples, the remains of finely detailed paintings of scenes from the life of Buddha and of daily life cover the ceilings and walls.

I wondered from cave to cave, feeling the cool, dark serenity of the rooms, still moving despite regular interruptions to my peaceful progress by the noisy schoolchildren, whose path through the temples seemed to closely follow my own. There was a soothing, mystical quality to those spaces, dark and empty but somehow filled with a lightness of feeling, a happy peace that was so much at odds with the stern, reverent, 'son't touch, don't speak' silence of churches back home.

But what I found most fascinating and awe-inspiring about the temples is their construction. Each is hewn and chipped out, chunk by enormous chunk, shard by infinitesimal shard from a wall of solid rock. Every roof, wall and floor; pillar, shrine and decoration is carved from one solid mass. Nothing is added or attached, there are no joins, pins, fixtures or fastenings: everything is in its place because it was carved there. And before it was there, there was only dense, solid, impenetrable rock. I cannot imagine low many years a single temple took to carve out, let alone 30 of them!

What vision those workers must have had to 'see' a finished temple in a vertical face of unforgiving rock; what dedication they must have possessed to consecrate their life's work to its construction; and above all, what deep faith they must have held to offer such endurance, patience and time to produce these wonders of architecture all for the worship of a God they couldn't see!

I can think of nothing I believe in strongly enough that would cause me to dedicate my entire life's work to the completion of something so grand in its honour. And I am humbled by this realisation. I was brought up in the Catholic faith, which I have long since discarded, more out of youthful laziness and the inevitable inconvenience of its strict precepts to the living of modern life, than out of a lack of faith in the existence of God. But religion is still a part of me, its shadow still haunts me and its pulse still runs through me, weak but alive. And I am still very much fascinated by religion in all its forms and the deep and powerful hold it has over people.

Faith has the ability to make believers undertake colossal challenges and make superhuman efforts that they would be unlikely to undergo in respect of their everyday life: How many people have spent their entire life planning and building the domestic dwelling of their dreams, knowing they may well die before it reaches completion? We don't do this, because a house is for this life, so we cannot conceive of taking the span of our time on Earth to finish it. It must be there for us to live in, as we live our life. Yet, how many great men have begun to build cathedrals, temples or other places of worship to the dedication of their God, knowing they will probably not live to see their dream complete? The answer is many, because, although such buildings are designed for daily worship for the masses, they are also a form of insurance for the afterlife. To build to the glory of God is a means to gain entrance into whichever Heaven or new life cycle your religion dictates. A beautiful, soaring cathedral, an elaborate mosque of the finest materials, a rich and vast temple: all these are meant to guarantee your place and your eternal peace in the next life. And which believer, with the vision and the means for such a project, could value the pleasure of his short earthly life as more important than the dedication of it to the protection and assurance of his eternal one? It is not too great a price to pay.

Such dedication is inspiring because it is so rare and this is why the temples at Ajanta moved me so much. They embody in a literally rock-solid way, the lengths and pains faith will make human beings go to. They are an expression of faith that survives thousands of years after the faith itself has lost much of its power and influence.

When I sat in that warm cafe nearly four months earlier, I hadn't know exactly what Ajanta had to offer, but I knew it was worth seeing. Throughout my travels in India, they have always been there in the back of my mind, and I nurtured this urge to fulfil my strange and light-hearted promise. I didn't know when I would see the caves, but I knew I would, I knew I had to. It became a mission that I knew I couldn't leave India without completing.

Maybe I built them up in my mind to such an extent that I had to find something Important or Moving about them when I finally saw them, to justify my desire and my decision to visit them. Or maybe it was the other way round: I was meant to visit them in order for me to discover their power and realise and wonder at the faith which is such a huge but intangible part of them. Whatever the case, I did truly find them moving. I hadn't known what to expect from Ajanta but it certainly wasn't this kind of revelation or realisation.

Out of service

When you have been travelling for a long time, what was once unusual, noticeable, different and therefore worthy of remark, becomes everyday, normal and natural and so ceases to register with you. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on the situation, item or person in question. Sometimes the things you couldn't bear originally become bearable, but equally the everyday charms and quirks, the little things that make you smile also lose their bright edge of pleasure.

But there is one thing that still strikes me afresh every time, however small and insignificant or big, and grand and that is the kindness of strangers. The small sparks of generosity, friendship and human contact never lose their novelty or shine. Each one is a new and beautiful moment to be savoured, wondered over and cherished. I suppose this is because they come in so many guises. There are innumerable nuances and shades of kindness, unexpected touches of friendship and different ways that humanity possesses to be nice to each other, so there is always a new way in which someone you meet can touch or move you.

In Hyderabad I was the recipient of a particular and sustained kindness in the guise of good customer service in the hotel I stayed at. It was no grand gesture but a simple act of selfless generosity delivered with a friendliness that elevated somehow it in my mind to a moment I will remember in a way that is out of proportion to its magnitude. And it came after I'd experienced rudeness that was its polar opposite in another hotel, so it charmed and pleased me doubly.

As I had taken an overnight bus to the city, I knew I would arrive early in the morning, about 6am. I had booked a room in a hotel, not wanting to traipse the streets after what I knew and now accepted would be a predominantly sleepless night.

I thought I'd chosen wisely, picking a hotel from The Bible which sung the praises of its helpful, friendly, cheerful staff, saying that if all hotel staff were like this travelling in India would be considerably easier and a more pleasant experience. I beg to differ in the strongest terms possible. Whoever the guidebook spoke to at this establishment at the time was as far away from that description as it was possible to be when I turned up. 

When I arrived at the hotel tired but not irritable, I was kept waiting at the counter while the receptionist sat behind it carefully and deliberately ignored me to carry on watching the grainy little TV he had nearby. I didn't ask for his attention, knowing it would eventually come to me.

In India people seem to behave in apparently opposite ways according to which side of a desk they occupy. If they are in front of it and in need of service, they do not hesitate to barge in without a sideways glance of guilt at other people present and wanting attention too, in order to deliver their desires, requests and questions in a loud voice over the top of anyone else currently engaged in conversation with the person behind the desk. If, however, they are behind a desk in a position to dispense such services, information or goods they do a remarkably good and thorough job of ignoring you entirely until you behave in such a way as to attract their attention (see above).

So, I waited in polite and silent English fashion, complete with winning smile, for the man to come to my aid. The desk was empty at that hour of the morning, so it wasn't necessary to go through the ritual of barging in - still awkward to my manners which were programmed to queue from the moment I was born and entered English air space - as there was no-one in front of me into whom I could 'barge'. Clearly the check-in man did think this necessary, as he took a spectacularly complete lack of notice of me, apart from a brief glance as I entered the reception area, until I called out meekly, 'Hello?'
'Wait,' was his considered reply. So, knowing that he had at least registered my presence I did as I was told, thinking wryly that The Bible and I seemed to diverge in our opinion of what constituted good service. Still, I had my room booked so there was no hurry. Evidently Receptionist didn't think there was any hurry either, as he continued to watch the TV then, still ignoring me, to talk to another employee, who appeared from the interior of the hotel. As I waited, I had a chance to look around at the place. It was pretty dingy and dusty, as The Bible had admitted to would be, but no better or worse than many places I'd stayed in, so I didn't give it too much thought.

Receptionist had now given the second man, who was not even a potential guest, more of his time than he had to me, and I was beginning to feel the first tell-tale prickles of irritation that tightened my jaw, creased my brow and caused tingling angry sensations, like ants with burning feet, in my stomach.
'Hello?' I called again.
'Wait, OK?' But I was not prepared to wait anymore.
'I booked a room with you. I want to check in.' He looked at me with barely disguised irritation and could not keep the emotion from straying into his mouth and out in his tone and his words.
'Wait, wait, OK?' I read his frown and the distasteful look on his face as though the words were written across it in letters of fire: "What the hell do you want? I'm busy," I am convinced they said.
My irritation flared suddenly and quickly into a flame of anger, burning white-hot and sharp.
'Look, I have booked a room and I would like to see it please,' I said, louder and sharper than was necessary. Shooting me a look that managed to combine disdain and sarcasm he finally gave me his attention.
'Fill this here. Passport.' It was not a request or a suggestion, it was an order. He shoved a huge guestbook at me, already turning back to the television. This is the one thing he should not have asked me to do and I fumed quietly but oh-so-dangerously inside. The innocuous guestbook in all Indian hotels and guest houses is a conduit. Through it and its use in my initial contact with a hotel's front-of-house staff, is channelled in a blinding and almost-always irretrievable way, my entire impression of a hotel and it's service, good or bad.

Let me explain. In its guestbook a hotel is required to note a stupendously excessive amount of detail for each foreign guest. You are obliged to give your name, home address, phone number, nationality, profession, passport number, date and place of issue (and photocopy of same); visa number and date and place of issue (and photocopy of same); date and port of entry into India; expected date of departure from India; the name of the town from which you have just come, the name of the town to which you intend to travel; the expected duration of your stay in the hotel. And the book is always a book. It is never a computer into which the detail can rapidly be entered with a few quick keystrokes. It must be filled in by draggingly laborious longhand.

But all this detail in itself is not what forms my impression of the place: it is whether the desk clerk takes on this tedious task himself or whether he gets me to do his work for him! Many is the time, I have had the book thrust into my hands and been asked to fill it in myself. Why should I stand there scribbling all my particulars down for him while he stands there looking bored, picking his teeth and watching me do it? For some reason being asked to fill in the guestbook myself enrages me out of all proportion to the simplicity of the task. Why? One simple word: laziness.

Indian hotels are often over-staffed, peopled by lolling employees who seem to have one specific task to perform many, several or few times a day. When they are not engaged in performing it, they do not appear to do anything else, preferring to sit arround waiting for the next occasion at which they can try to avoid doing this task. It is infuriating. Yet for the desk clerk, surely filling in the forms of each and every guest is a large part of the scant activity he is required to do during a day's work? So why should I - whose money pays for his wages to do this meagre amount of activity - have to do it for him and allow his paper-thin amount of work to concertina and collapse into almost nothing? Still, I suppose he did have a heavy workload of television-watching to do...

Not every hotel makes you fill in the guestbook, which is why those places that do create such a bad impression and rate instantly low in my estimations before I have even seen the room.

Now Receptionist had asked me to do this - and so rudely too - he had unwittingly unleashed wave of unstoppable anger that could probably never be turned back, however much of a palace the room turned out to be.

It turned out to be nothing of a palace whatsoever. The sickly, fug of damp enveloped me as I walked through the door and the grey light that scratched in through the grimy windows, illuminated with great and unfortunate brilliance the horizontal strata of dirt and dust that clung to the folds of the tattered curtains that blew in the exhaust-laced early-morning breeze that wafted in through the open window.

The bed, when I poked at it, was not just hard, but lumpy and hard and a foul abstract of stains spattered the blanket that lay folded and sagging like a corpse at the end of the mattress. The light was pleasantly bright but what it illuminated was not. The walls were painted with brushstrokes of smudged dirt in the oddest of places - above the door, above head height, nowhere near any furniture - as well as more typical smears on doors and above the headboard. It made me wonder what possible human activity could have caused them to be in places that I would have thought it impossible and unnecessary for anyone staying in a hotel to need to reach.

In other circumstances I may have been able to overlook the room's multiple failings, but heaped on top of the indignation of the rude and lazy service I had received so far, I was about as far from being accepting as it was possible to be.

'This is disgusting! It's filthy!' I said angrily, all the while knowing that the expression my distaste would never make the slightest bit of difference in the cleanliness of the room, either now or in the future. 'Do you have another room?' I don't know why I asked this, as I was sure that another would be equally unfit for hygienic habitation. It was.

I made a quick decision. I could either accept one of these dirty rooms and try to get a couple of hours sleep before starting my day or go out into Hyderabad and try to find another. I was too tired (and obviously more irritable than I believed myself to be) to do the latter, so I said to Receptionist, 'Ok, I'll take it, but can you change the blanket for a clean one and can I have a discount because it's so dirty?' He looked as incredulous as though I'd asked him to strip off all his clothes there and then in front of me.

'No, no discount,' he said, the note of surprise and incredulity at such a brazen request, raising his voice a notch. Did I really expect him to bow and scrape and agree to my demands after such a poor show of customer service downstairs at the front desk? No, not really, but the brutal bluntness of his answer when it came still shocked me like a slap in the face. And like a slap in the face, my reactionary rage was as swift and shocking.
'Well, stuff your shitty hotel, then!' I shouted at him, my face burning with fury. To his credit he remained remarkably calm.
'Ok, no problem, you can go,' he said sarcastically.
'I will and I'll never come back to this shithole again. It's absolutely disgusting, disgusting!' I roared, knowing that I would never in a million years shame him in the slightest: he saw nothing wrong with that room and therefore nothing which merited the ludicrous service and discount I had suggested.

I stormed off down the stairs and picked up by backpack. I realised ruefully that I'd made my decision now. And it was not the one I had intended a few seconds ago. I hailed a rickshaw and asked him to take me to another of the hotels in the guidebook. It and the other four in the book that I tried were all full. I began to feel the familiar cold, clammy hand of fear that I would not find a place to stay. All the while, as we drove between hotels the driver kept pestering me to go to hotels he knew. I resisted, spitting bitterly, 'What, so you can get commission and I get charged a higher price to pay for it? No thanks.' But soon, in desperation and weariness I agreed.

The entrance of the hotel he took me to was down a dark narrow alley with a third floor reception accessed via a grimy lift in a dirt-blackened lobby. I nearly laughed when I saw it. It was as bad as the first hotel. Had I just wasted the last hour or so, only to find myself back where I started, in the hygiene stakes? Well yes, I more-or-less had. But what I had also found here was another recepetionist who was the most charming and helpful person I was to meet in Hyderabad.

He was probably in his 40s, with an excitable face and a quick, genuine smile and he was a perfect gentleman. I noticed that I was the only non-Indian guest there, as he filled in the guestbook for me. I think he was so surprised and elated to find a foreigner wanting a room in his dingy digs that he welcomed me with open arms.

The first room he showed me overlooked the blaringly loud main road, so I asked if he had a quieter one. With a beaming smile he said, 'Yes, of course. Come, come.' It was as if he couldn't believe his luck at having someone he could offer good service to. As I followed him to the room, he turned and grinned over his shoulder at me, nodding eagerly. 'This one good, quiet.' It was at the back of the hotel and while it wasn't exactly quiet it was better than the first one.

Though the walls were cleaner than the first hotel, they were far from perfect. The bathroom was clean but in a pretty poor state with rusting, decrepit taps and flaking metal window frames, like rotting teeth, held in place loosely by plaster that was falling away in crumbled chunks at the sides. The bed was neatly made, but the sheets still displayed dubious stains, so I tried my luck.
'It's OK, but the sheets look dirty. Is it possible to change them please?'
He looked surprised but not offended. 'No, no, sheets clean, just stain. But I can change,' he added eagerly, again accompanied by that beaming smile. Then he had a better idea.
'You want another room?' he offered, looking worriedly at me.
'No, no, it's fine,' I reassured him, 'but if you can change the sheets, I will take it.'
'OK, OK. I change the sheet. Then you happy,' he beamed. 'Yes,' I laughed, 'then I'll be happy.'

Unfortunately I wasn't quite happy just yet. A room boy came and changed the sheet for an equally stained but reassuringly pressed one, that at least smelled as if it had been reently laundered. Contrary to appearances, I persuaded myself to accept that it was clean and went to have a shower.  I hunted for the bathroom light switch, only to find that the bathroom didn't actually have a light fitting at all. The walls and ceiling were totally bare of anything that would illuminate the space. It was fine during the day, but at night I wouldn't be able to see a thing.

I went back out to reception and told the receptionist. He came with me to check it out himself. 'Oh so sorry, so sorry,' he said, his face crumpled and bereft with apology. He was appalled at the unacceptable inconvenience I was suffering. Seeing I had half-unpacked my things he said, 'You relax and use this room for daytime and I give you different one tonight. OK?'
'Ok, that's fine,' I said. I was stunned. He was so accommodating! His customer service was as attentive as the first man's was dismissive. I couldn't believe my luck at having been directed to this place, so unpromising on the outside, but so friendly on the inside. It was almost as if the guidebook entry should have been written for this hotel (which didn't even appear in it) rather than the shockingly bad one that had made it into its pages.

After my shower, I went out to for the day. When I returned that evening, he was still there and stopped me at the desk. He wanted to chat and me told me all about his friends in England who were going to sponsor his visa application to go there. I listened amused and caught up in his infectious excitement about his impending trip. He had a childlike wonder about the whole thing and told me several times that his friend was a doctor over there and a very good man.

'You change room now?' he asked. 'I get boy to move your luggage.' And he called one over and sent him with me to the room.

Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that he was just doing his job and why was I so impressed with his kindness and service? But, having experienced the other extreme of service so recently (one which is all too prevalent) it merely highlighted how charming and helpful this man was. And he seemed to get so much joy from taking care of me and making sure I was comfortable, that I was almost glad to have a few niggles that it would give him such pleasure to sort out for me. His careful attention and his happiness at being given the opportunity to provide it was simply charming and made his dirty, crumbling hotel shine with a radiance that couldn't be dimmed by grubby paintwork and missing light fittings.

The new room was a definite improvement. It had obviously been refurbished recently and had clean, cream walls and cleanish correctly-lit bathroom and a just-about acceptably clean bed, although the stained sheets were still in evidence. It also had a big TV with cable channels. It was a rare pleasure to have such a luxury, so I switched it on to relax in front of something mindless and sleep-inducing. But my relaxation was denied. The image on every channel was fuzzy and jumpy and unwatchable. I went back to reception to explain the situation. The receptionist came back with me, all apologies and concern, but sure he could make it work. He couldn't and neither could any of the room boys, who, one by one, crowded into my room. Each successive person pressed all the same buttons and jiggled all the same cables in the same sequence as the man before him, but no-one could re-instate an acceptable signal.

Finally, the receptionist admitted defeat and, shooing the boys out again, said to me, 'I get my box from my room. Many channels.' He took my offending set-top box, trailing cables behind him, disappeared and came back with a more modern, sleek looking alternative. He plugged it in and immediately crystal-clear pictures leapt from the screen. He nearly burst with happiness.
'Look, you have good image! And many extra channels, look. Many English too!' Gleefully he flicked through the channels, finding several BBC and American options for me. He was clearly more excited than I was by the bounty on offer to me now. 'This my own box,' he explained 'You use it while you stay in hotel.'

I didn't know a different set-top box would fix the problem, but he did and so he brought me one - his own. I tried to protest but he wouldn't hear of it, brushing away my concern with a flip of his hand and a big smile. I was guiltily grateful and totally charmed. Guilty because I wasn't really bothered about the TV and could take it or leave it, but also because through his unnecessary generosity, I had deprived him of his viewing pleasure for the duration of my stay - and I hadn't decided how many days I was staying yet. And I was charmed because he was happy to give up his TV viewing for me and so readily too.

But most of all I was thrilled and pleased that I am still thrilled and pleased by this type of tiny kindness. I've experienced generosity and helpfulness repeatedly all over India and its power to move me has not diminished through repetition and familiarity. Neither had my reaction to it - always grateful, always full of wonder. I love that Indians are so free with their time, their friendship, their care and attention and I love that I still love this even after all this time. I have not begun to take it for granted despite it being a common occurrence.

This small act of generosity revealed to me again and with bright clarity one of the reasons why I love India so much. People are so open and they want to help you. And if they can, they will, up until the point where they perceive you have all you need or the point where you persuade them that their generosity has gone far enough. They don't (usually) do it because they think they can get something out of you in return, they do it because it is in their power to do so and if this is the case what would be the point in withholding it?

Rickshaw drivers who have seen me poring over a map sense that a fare might come their way from me, but once I tell them I intend to walk the distance and am just trying to get my bearings, they are just as happy to point me in the right direction and reassure me it's not too far. Knowing they will not get anything from me, does not stop them from wanting to help.

And the beautiful thing about such generosity as this receptionist's was its unexpectedness. A helping hand where you didn't realise you needed one until it has already been offered is so much sweeter than one received after being asked for. A request for help or assistance brings with it the potential for refusal and rejection, the 'no' where you would like a 'yes', while the unknown need that is met for you is a delight because it is satisfied before you even had knowledge of its existence. In its revelation is a two-fold joy: that the person has both met your need and even more wondrously, has anticipated it for you.

Finding friends again

Arriving in a new place but knowing that you already know people there gives that place a special feeling, a sense that you are in some way coming home. Home is where friends are, where you know the lie of the land. It is where you feel instantly at ease without having to find your place, establish routines or make contacts. I 'came home' in Bangalore.

I had been there briefly before when I started out on my epic motorbike ride with 60kph, but I didn't have time to explore it. Now, I was back to see the place properly and I knew I had friends, The Bang Gang, whose presence there made me see the city in a favourable light already. There was Anu and Kaushik, Vishu, Sanju, Aalok, Shantanu, Biju and Sanjay. Knowing they were out there somewhere, as I arrived at 11pm in the sparkling bright night that hid the unfamiliar from view, was a comforting thought that dissolved the usual anxieties of arriving in a new place. I'd come straight here from The Andaman Islands and hadn't had time to contact anyone to let them know I was in town, so I planned to stay in a hotel for the first night. I had rung one in advance to reserve a room, but my careful forward planning and reality almost didn't coincide.

My flight from Port Blair arrived in Chennai (after a five-hour delay) at around 3pm, but I didn't want to spend a night the city's noisy, filthy squalor before moving on. It has the distinction of having the worst accommodation I have ever stayed in in India so far. A mosquito-infested swamp of a room, where the curtains were stiff with thick, caked dirt and the bathroom hygiene was such that I preferred not to shower in it, as I felt such ablutions would leave me dirtier than before.

So with this deterrent in mind, I set off immediately for the bus station from the airport to take the next available bus to Bangalore. I would have to be quick if I wasn't to arrive there at the dead of night when all the hotels had closed for the night. I was lucky, as a bus was leaving literally the moment I arrived on the platform. After establishing that it was going to Bangalore, I dived on, with the ticket man shouting impatiently, 'Let's go, let's go!' and slumped into my seat. I'd been doubly lucky, as this was a private Volvo bus, one of the luxury coaches that travel across India. Luxury means a modern bus with comfortable, clean(ish) seats, A/C, sometimes a complementary bottle of water and blanket and a smoother, more relaxing experience overall. This compares with the state-run buses which specialise in a particularly punishing form of hard seat - which has probably been a stranger to the ministrations of a cleaning team since its first run - permanently open windows and a driver who believes that he can make known his every intention and emotion with loud, sustained blasts of intricate hornwork.

The Volvos cost more, of course, often four or five times the price of a state bus, but sometimes when the spirits are flagging, it is a price worth paying. The only negative they have for the foreign traveller is that they often play a film during the journey. Sounds great? No so when the entertainment in question is roared out across the speakers in deafening Hindi or the local language, whether you want to watch/hear it or not. But with earplugs in, I could read my book for a while until it got dark.

A helpful man at Chennai Airport tourist information desk had told me that a bus would take around four hours to reach Bangalore from Chennai. Having left the bus station at 4pm, I rang the hotel, telling them I would check-in around 9pm, allowing an extra hour in case of delays. Unfortunately, the helpful man was as uninformed as he was helpful. I tried to clarify the arrival time of the bus with the ticket officer. His English was not good but was certainly up to the task of delivering the bad news that it would be a seven-hour journey, not four.

Indians are not generally bothered or irritated by lateness, so I didn't think there would be a problem if I arrived at the hotel 11pm, but I didn't want to turn up and find my bed given to someone else, so I rang them again to let them know my new check-in time. My phone wouldn't connect and a message told me I'd dialled an incorrect number. I hadn't, as I'd re-used the number I'd called and got through with earlier on. I tried again. Again the message. I checked in my guide book just to be sure I'd got it right. I had. I tried again. Message again. The number I'd dialled an hour before seemed not to be working now. I didn't even have phone numbers for any of the Bang Gang, just Facebook details and I couldn't access those on my basic Indian phone. There was nothing I could do, but sit there and hope for the best when I arrived.

The bus arrived on time at 11pm, then I had to get a rickshaw from there to the hotel. At nighttime the price doubles for Indians and goes up by a factor of anything at all for foreigners, depending on the driver's perception of your wealth, fatigue and desperation. If my scruffy, dishevelled clothes and dirty backpack didn't say 'wealth' to him, my bleary eyes and the lateness of the hour certainly announced the other two. I can't remember what he charged but I know it was a price that would normally have left me laughing bitterly and walking off to try someone else. I agreed it straightaway, even though I knew the hotel was not far. I didn't fancy walking at that time of night and anyway I have discovered that my ability to get lost anywhere other than an empty room with one door, is really quite remarkable.

As the driver pulled up at the hotel I'd booked, my heart sank. There was no sign of life and a heavy metal shutter had been rolled almost down to the ground across the front of it. I was too late. They'd closed up for the night and the prospect of hunting for a bed was now a reality.

But the shutter was not fully closed so, asking the driver to wait with my backpack, I crouched down under it and shouted out, 'Hello? Is anybody there?' No-one was. I tried again, just in case asking for someone would miraculously cause them to appear. Unbelievably it did! A couple of men appeared from the lift I could see at the back of the lobby carrying, oddly, a large pile of firewood. I called out, telling them I had a reservation and they nodded but didn't put down their load to come to my aid. One of them merely said, 'One moment, one moment,' and, with his colleague, disappeared round a corner. I waited. And I waited some more. When you are in a desperate situation, time becomes elastic and stretches out to unforgivable lengths. It was probably only a couple of minutes but in my panic it felt much longer. Just when I thought they weren't going to come back, they appeared. One of them came over and said, 'Yes please?'

'I have a reservation,' I said again, thinking it wasn't worth trying to explain the whole situation. He smiled sadly and sheepishly, 'Sorry, closed.'
'But I have a reservation. Bridget Davidson?' I said, as if that would immediately open the shutter for me.
'Sorry, closed,' he repeated. Apparently not.
Now desperate times called for desperate acting. I made my eyes look as big, pleading and child-like as possible (no easy task when you've been up since 5am). There may even have been the suggestion of a tear glinting in the corner of my eyes and a trembling of a lip. He looked unmoved. With a slight quavering to my begging voice I said, 'Please, please? I have nowhere else to go.' This was probably true, which did give my acting an edge that it might not otherwise have had. If this hotel was closed, the chances were that most of the others would be too and I didn't want to think about what that would mean. He still wasn't sure. 'Manager asleep,' he explained. It seemed I'd been pleading with the wrong person. But he was my link to the right one so I placed my palms together into a gesture of prayer, re-positioned the pleading face and tried again. 'Please, please?' That did it. He still looked unsure but said, 'Ask manager. One moment,' and disappeared.

I don't think the manager was asleep, as he arrived briskly and smartly dressed, but I wasn't going to argue the point now. He was my saviour and if you want a bed for the night, arguing with the man who could provide it is not recommended. I apologised and explained why I was late, and true to Indian form, he didn't seem bothered, annoyed, or even interested. I was here now and he just had to fill in the paperwork, then he could go back to 'sleep' with the additional bonus of another full room for the night.

So it was with some excitement the next day that I found an internet cafe and messaged Anu on Facebook to tell her I was there and would love to meet up with her and the others. I was pleased to be in Bangalore. I had a ready-made circle of friends there and it was like being back home, planning to see them.

My friends back home are the people with whom I've experienced life. We've been through funny, crazy, sad, happy experiences together and discovered that despite all this, we still like each other and enjoy each other's company. Coming to India is the one of the biggest, craziest experiences of my life, but I have come without them and their warm, cosy, Sunday pub lunch, coffee on my day off, long chats, short absences, familiar presence. However much I tell myself I am an independent, free-spirited soul, self-sufficient in all the ways that matter, I still miss them and the familiar that they represent. They have been and still are a major ingredient in the soup of Me. They have helped and encouraged, warned and discouraged and, in part, their presence and their counsel has made me who I am today.

The Bang Gang and 60kph as a whole have come to represent the same thing for me in India. If coming to India is a big, crazy experience, my ride with them is the biggest, craziest part of that experience. I turned up in their close-knit group, unknown, untried, untested and was with them for an annual occasion that was as important for them as it was new and exciting for me. Over the space of one short week, we got to know each other, spend time and talk together and experience good and bad times together, and at the end of it all we still like and enjoy each other's company. It is a friendship in fast-forward motion but no less strong or enduring for that. And coming to Bangalore was a chance to renew that new friendship. We had a shared experience behind us, we had memories, we had in-jokes. In short we had all you need for a friendship, with the added bonus of still having so much to find out about each other.

While I was on Facebook, I noticed that Vishu was too and within a few rapidly exchanged messages, the ever-efficient organiser of the anniversary ride had organised everything. He would pick me up later in the day, take me to Anu and Kaushik's where I would stay the night and, in the meantime, he would try to round up as many of the Bang Gang as possible to join us there for an impromptu party. I smiled to myself. It was just like being back home. You want to see some friends, so you send messages and texts and somehow it organises itself.

Outside, Bangalore somehow felt like home too. People were friendly and the modernity of the city, due to the wealth that the IT industry had bought with it, gave it a familiar feeling, even though I didn't know the place. I headed off to a big, new shopping mall, my first real shopping trip since being in India, where I thought the gleaming, polished designer stores might offer bargain Indian prices on the brands I could never afford back home. I couldn't afford them here either. It seemed Bangalore's rich had more money than I'd ever have... But I was content to wander the expensively-conditioned chill of the mall.

I realised then, as the hot, feverish blood of shopping pumped through me, that I wasn't really, and never would be, a true crusty traveller at heart. The lure - the bright lights, big city lure - of New Stuff, was too enticing, too compelling. The high brought on by the purchase of something pretty that I would soon tire of once I saw the next pretty thing, was still there and always would be. I sniffed greedily at the scented candles I'd never bother to light, stroked the patterned plates I knew I already had too many of, and fingered wistfully the breathtakingly beautiful ethnic bedspreads I knew Aleks would never allow to touch our bed if I brought them home.

And I realised that, for me, travelling isn't about Being A Traveller. I am not designed to live in a state of slight but permanent need and discomfort. I can give up all the comforts, decadences and luxuries of home - even, for months on end, a hot shower - because I know that at some point I will return to these things and they will fill me with joy again, simply because of their previous absence. I can sleep in the mosquito swamp room in Chennai, because I know my warm, soft bed is still there when I get back home. I can forgo the expensive food and the trendy clothes in favour of tuppenny street food and practical beige, and anything else that is demanded of me. And I can do it easily. It is as simple as if I have unzipped the warm coat of consumerism and left it behind in my wardrobe in Cambridge. But I haven't forgotten its comfort. And when I return I will slip it on again - baggy, slightly slack and strange from lack of use - and within days it will feel comfortable again and as if I had never taken it off.

But I don't berate myself for this realisation. I do not feel a lesser person for having this need. It is just a fact of life, of me. If others can live their life sustained by a few simple, practical and essential items, then good luck to them and well done. I am not one of those people but I make no apologies for it. After all, William Morris said, "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." I believe in 'beautiful', however useless it is, and I believe in 'useful' only if it is, well, useful. And anyway, I am one of the ones who keeps the looms of commerce weaving by buying the beautiful things whose purchase keeps the economy spinning...

As promised, Vishu picked me up outside the mall and we drove towards Anu and Kaushik's house. Being back on a bike again felt good, although Vishu apologised for the hardness of the seat. I felt a little guilty, remembering that I written about how uncomfortable his bike was in one of my earlier posts. But it was part of a shared memory we had of the ride so I hoped he didn't feel too put out by it. All the bikes were uncomfortable after a while, that's just how it was, and I hadn't meant to single his bike out for specific criticism.

After stopping by at his parents' apartment where I met them briefly - hospitable and very proud of all their three sons - we carried on to Anu and Kaushik's apartment. It was lovely to see them again and such a strange and welcome feeling to be staying somewhere that wasn't a hotel where I had to fill in forms, hand over my passport, state how long I'd be staying, where I'd been and where I was going next. It was like being at a friend's house - it was being at a friend's house - and it was all the more welcoming to have such friends so far from home.

Vishu had to run a few errands and disappeared but returned later that evening with some of the other Bang Gang members: Sanju, Aalok, Shantanu and Sanjay. I was thrilled and touched that they had made the effort to come and see me (and each other), and on a week night. Much of the talk was about the ride and their reminiscences of it. I was slightly worried about what they'd thought of my interpretation of it through my blog. They did offer some corrections where I'd got things wrong but were in general complimentary. Seeing the ride through the eyes of a non-member gave them a renewed appreciation for it and for why they loved riding in the first place.

The vodka and whisky came out and we were on familiar ground again. The jokes flowed and the stories came out and gradually the evening slipped happily away, as the alcohol slipped down, the conversation slipped into more Hindi than English and Shantanu slipped into a contented sleep on the sofa, it felt like old friends. New old friends.

Anu and Kaushik were lovely hosts, organising me and the days I spent with them. After travelling alone, it was a welcome relief and I quickly abdicated responsibility to them, allowing them to suggest things to do and places to visit. We went to the theatre, on Vishu's suggestion, and saw a wonderfully clever comedy in English. I was thrilled to understand not just the language, but the characters, whose essential 'Indian-ness' I had become familiar with every day on the streets. I got many of the cultural references and those I didn't, didn't matter.

The one or two days I'd planned to stay in Bangalore, turned into three, into four. When Anu wasn't studying she came shopping with me (I abandoned the idea of sightseeing for once). We trailed round clothes shops, interiors stores, cafes and coffee shops. We talked and gossiped and shared our lives, our hopes and fears. She was honest about herself and with me in the way that only true friends can be. And I appreciated her being so. She readly admitted that she often didn't make an effort with people she didn't warm to, so I felt her friendship was of a genuine kind.

In the evenings when Kaushik came home, we talked some more. He had also written up his version of the ride, a brilliantly witty and funny piece, sharp with laugh-out-loud humour and full of finely-observed characterisations of everyone. We discussed our writing styles; he was envious of elements of mine, as I was of his. We talked about books and shared our love of words. Kaushik worked in IT, but had a passion for writing. He was also remarkably self-aware. When I told him his writing was excellent and asked why he didn't do it for a living he replied that he didn't want to lose the passion for the thing he loved by doing it every day. For him, writing was something he did for pleasure and he didn't want to destroy the pleasure by having to do it repeatedly and on demand. I admired his honesty and self-awareness and the unspoken acceptance that went with it that his job was not his passion and was simply a means to an end.

These chats with Anu and Kaushik made me realise that in my travels I'd been missing the depth of conversation and its attendant mental satisfaction that comes when you spend a considerable length of time with someone. Although I'd had many fascinating, profound and moving encounters with people, they had mostly been brief and few had allowed me to really get to know the person in the way that spending a few days with Kaushik and Anu had. We'd talked of serious and important things, as well as frivolous and light-hearted ones. I'd seen them in their real lives in a way I hadn't with anyone else and lived that life with them. Of course I don't claim to know them inside out in such a short period of time, but I certainly felt an attachment to them and an understanding of them that was strengthened by its duration.

When I left four days later, bound for Hyderabad, I felt refreshed and ready for travel again. I told them I hoped I hadn't outstayed my welcome and that I hoped I could return the favour someday, maybe in England.