From Arambol 2011

I am barefoot again and my feet are sore from the hot tarmac in the midday Goan sun. I walk from my house past the three sections that make up the way to Arambol. Each section takes about 10 minutes or so. From my house you pass the sawmill and Dadu, the carpenter, who was so kind when I arrived, sharing his lunch with me. He waves and waggles his head cheerfully. That day his wife had made something so deliciously subtle that I ate in ecstatic disbelief, before looking for a motorbike to hire. He still waves at me when I ride past on my Hero Honda Super Splendor+ and I wave back.

But today I am walking, listening to music, looking back through time almost seven months to the time in Chania when I took the bus and a small boat to the island of Gavdos and stayed six weeks in the juniper forest before going back to London. Its a long way and a long time, and I reflect on the the month in London and two weeks in Istanbul that preceded our return to Goa. Here the season is over, everyone has left to the north of India or Nepal, or Thailand to wait it out for a new visa. And I am here most days alone. I pass a jackfruit tree, its bulbous knobbly fruit hanging, impossibly heavy but not even near ripeness.

The second section of the walk passes a big holy tree and a temple and the third section, the row of shops, a bike mechanic next to a hair salon, a stationer and small restaurant. Then its the bus stand but just before I get there I meet Durga, the dog without a tail that belongs to the small restaurant. He sees me and becomes instantly animated wagging his stump with enthusiasm before walking over to me to be stroked. Seeing him reminds me of a night some two months ago that I can't forget easily. I passed along the same road that night and since then every day twice, and so the memory just won't go away. That night he was asleep in sphinx-like repose, his snout pointing to the ground. I didn't even really know him. He had chased the bike once but I didn't pay any attention on my way back in the December night. It was cool and I would arrive shivering at my small white house, the jungle behind it dripping with moisture as the water vapour condensed on the palm leaves in the cool air.

Then in February as the weather began to warm, I passed Durga and rode onwards to the temple. I turned around to check the pannier, turned back, and then with only a fraction of a second to react I realised I was about to drive off the road into the dry river. Millions of years of instinct kick in and I leap off the bike and fly through the air, headfirst. And then, the moment expands, and I am transported back into the past.

I watch myself walk through age-old fields of juniper, treading over thousands of years of shattered pottery that lies where it fell from the hands of Romans, Cretans and maybe pirates, landed from a voyage to enjoy some warmth in this small village. There is a heaviness, the gravity of ages that leaves no visible trace. We can't see the past, they say, but I see the erosion of centuries, the fields corner where local people gathered beneath a large juniper tree that is still there hundreds of years later. As I pass I can imagine what was there. I descend into a riverbed, reading the ground as I walk in silence, my footprints will vanish from Gavdos and I will be no more. The chapel of Ai Yorgios looks after me as I disappear from view, its old cracked wooden doors admitting just a tiny shaft of light into the dark vestibule. Almost none of the light reaches the simple altar and the golden Christ is silent.

From Gavdos

I see myself sitting in the pub at the end of my road in London. 'No dumping', reads a sign on the gentlemans toilets. A girl fishes two slices of lime out of her whiskey and coke, and someone turns up the volume at the bar. People seem to be having fun, while the bar staff pour out drinks with straight faces. The experience seems to me a thin veneer covering nothing, that everyone will forget before they wake to go to work on Monday morning. I try to feel like a local, even though I spent hardly a month in this city in four years, but it doesn't work. I can drive around and sit in the tube, but it just doesn't feel right.

'District Line.

Your District Line Service Yesterday.

I apologise for the disruption to your District Line service yesterday. This was caused by a number of unrelated incidents that included signalling problems, a trespasser incident and a person under a train at Southfields.

I appreciate that this made many journeys longer than usual.

Mike Shalley District Line General Manager 18/11/10.'

I read the sign and laugh at its perfunctory callousness. The other people reading it do not.

From İstanbul çok güzel

The Blue Mosque in Istanbul hums like a massive bubble of static. Soft vermillion carpets caress the socked feet of worshippers. They kneel and stand and mutter their prayers. And I take a couple of photos before returning to my bag to fetch a long sleeved shirt. I'm in a vest and suddenly it is inappropriate. Tourists go in and out to look at the inside of the building. A light and cold rain falls outside and the sun splits into a golden glow through the cloud above the big city. It's massive, so many people mostly Turkish. Almost all the Jews, Greeks and Armenians are gone. In a couple of days I leave to go to Goa. To the warmth, the coconuts, a different world.

I hit the ground hard, my hand breaking my fall and saving my jaw from a serious dislocation. I land on my belly, and slide before rolling over. I sit up in the ditch and look in disbelief around me. My mind tries to undo what just happened, but it can't. I curse hard and clutch my wrist. Fuck it hurts. Suddenly pain has leapt out of its resting place and bitten me as hard as it can, with hatred for my absent-mindedness. My arm moves, the violin on my back is fine, I think. My lower back seems OK. But my wrist hurts. A scooter pulls up and the driver helps me up and then single-handedly drags the bike out of the ditch. I thank him profusely, then I call Oshan, no answer. I call Serhan and in five minutes he races out of the distance from the first section, comes to an abrupt halt. At home I inspect my elbow, then I sleep. In the morning I wake to some more concise pain, it is serious. My elbow feels broken.

I walked home then, for a week, and at first Durga barked and seemed to threaten to chase me each night. Maybe he sensed my injury. A weak dog in the stray world in Goa is often ripped to pieces in the night, outside all the locked doors. I am wounded badly, arm in a sling, but I pick up a rock with my left arm and pretend to ready a shot. He backs off. And then one day I sit at the restaurant for some fried rice and the owner brings Durga to me. I stroke him. And from then on we were basically friends.

A blazing sun over Athens cut through a light haze as Elena dropped us off at the port and then we stepped into the towering, box-like ferry that was to take us to Crete. An enormous drawbridge at the stern rested on the dock, part of which had recently been bought by the Chinese in the midst of Greece's financial crisis. People and cars entered, and then we left. I stood at a railing high up and waved to Elena, standing by her pea-green car, glinting in the strong sunlight. I turned around to find Oshan sitting morosely at a table smoking. We were stressing the night before about leaving Athens and weren't talking, so I went up to the top of the ship to look at the 'animal village', a row of white cages where a small white dog was throwing a fit in its cell, barking incessantly as the owner tried to calm it. Soon the sea turned to a deep azure, such as I had never seen, and the wind blew across the deck. Tired from late nights, hot weather and drinking raki, I got my sleeping mat and lay on the shaded side of the ferry near a man and his brown dog that had a crooked leg. I was not happy. I wondered why things had sometimes to be so complicated between people and tried to sleep a bit as the ship hummed beneath me.

From Chania

When I woke we were nearing Crete, and within an hour we docked at Souda, the port of Chania. We got off and jumped on a bus to the old town. I love to look back at those first moments in the places that I come to know well. I had no idea what Chania would be like, we had no idea where we would stay and no idea if we could make any money. I left Athens with almost nothing. And as we arrived at the old venetian harbour where tourists thronged along the pavement past the old ottoman mosque, and all the sprawling restaurant terraces I felt a sense of relief, it looked so good for busking and terracing. Perhaps too good to be true. And somehow it turned out to be so. But within a month I would be far past the other side of Crete in a most magical place so extraordinary that it hardly belonged in the tapestry of modern day reality.

We played backgammon and drank frappe before looking for a pitch to play, but caution got the better of us, it would not do to jump in and get a bad name with the police right at the start. So instead we sat a while by the mosque and chatted with people before playing a little for fun without putting out the case. And soon we met the twins, who we knew from Thessaloniki. We had a place to stay with their friend and things looked to be going our way as we headed off to see some student rock bands playing on a campus. Later we went home and slept in the oppressive heat that just got worse as the sun rose and baked the roof of the flat. I awoke in a sweat. We had arrived in Crete.

And so Oshan and I started to work. It was hard but soon Steele was on the case, arriving from turkey by train. Amber, his girlfriend, had gone on ahead and Steele fancied making some money and playing some spoons with us, and we started right away terracing. It took a while to work out the best times and spots but after a week we had a good system. We woke late in the the afternoon and drank coffee in the old Ottoman square that stretched over the top of an ancient cistern that used to be a hammam for the wealthier Ottoman Turks in Chania. Next to a church that still sported a big chunky minaret, several restaurants and cafes played host to all the relaxed people that liked to come and do nothing but talk and play backgammon all day. We sat and did as you would, if in Rome, and the hours passed nicely until the evening when we would amble over to the church square and lay out the case with CDs and play for a few crowds. Once we had the timing and place right we did really well and had no problems with the locals although apparently one shop keeper at the church square wanted to call the police, but he was brought into line by the other shops that liked out music. The sun would set and paint the baroque church in golden light as we stomped on into the night. After a couple of hours we would head off to the harbour to try the restaurants with our Polish hat girls.

From Chania

Terracing is a strange job. You feel like a door to door salesman as you stand in front of the tables and play to holidaymakers, with no idea if they are in the mood or not. Sometimes they aren't but sometimes they will call you over to ask for a few more pieces. But that is just part of an interesting and strange job. Chania in the summer is very busy with people from all over europe, but especially it seems, from scandinavia. The usual charicatures wend through the terraces, young children with baglamas, and Roma musicians, fat-bellied accordion and violinists thrusting their tambourines under the noses of the indifferent.

From Chania

At first I hated the atmosphere, the dark sound of money, lots of it, flowing behind the scenes. Inflated prices for mediocre food with a harbour view. Rooms, boat trips, souvenirs. It confused me to see myself divining the harbour for the small springs of euros that would sustain us, looked down upon by the greedy restaurant owners. Busking had felt so clean compared to this and it unnerved me to see that money could be god, the universe, life itself for people. Could it really? And for me? I wanted to walk away from it when noone listened. Past a thronging bar we sidled to reach the middle of the harbour, women and men drinking, laughing and barely catching breath between mouthfuls of drink and chitchat. High heels, handbags, tobacco and alcohol. Emptiness. Bad house and techno and still the tills gorged themselves behind the taps and ashtrays and shitty brown vinyl upholstery.

I may sound puritan, but it isn't that I feel any of this is wrong. It's all human. I have had a load of stuff in my life, drunk and smoked my fair share and talked more than the average amount of nonsense. But back in Thessaloniki I saw people with fear etched on their faces, their wages cut, guilty for taking the bus every day and not paying for it, because the price had doubled. It was so apparent there that there is something wrong in Greece. But it isn't just a simple case of a financial crisis, because even there on a weekend the bars were packed. Why do we choose to escape? Is the party over yet? I remember Gaetans' prophetic and apocalyptic vision of a post-crisis world. Best be a potter or a doctor. We will always need plates and doctors, he said as he stood in the line to enroll in medical school. And I wondered where I would fit with my violin. The party is over, get ready, he said. Well now I read the news in England and I see it isn't just Greece.

From Chania

From Athens

The train from Thessaloniki rolled into Athens in the early evening and we said goodbye to the Albanian grandfather and his little grandson Vassily, who spent the first half of the journey vapourising Oshan with a nuclear beam of energy, in various dramatic and monumentally destructive gestures. His peroxide blond mother scooped him up into her arms and then they were gone. We sat and drank frappe outside the train station and decided to busk. But the question was where?

Thissio didn't look too good, aside from the stunning backdrop of the acropolis sat on top of a rugged chunk of rock. It reminded me of the Potala in Lhasa. But there were too few people to busk, just rows of restaurant terraces, potentially very good terracing, but we were bedraggled and weighed down with luggage and instruments. Two mandolins, violin, oud, guitar and metal clarinet. So we headed to the Syntagma square and played for a little in the street before going to the Irish Pub for more music. And thankfully, at the end of the night we found our place to stay, with a wonderful friend that we met in Istanbul while we were playing. For the next days we were treated to an extraordinary example of Greek hospitality which left Oshan and I constantly astonished. We are so thankful.

From Athens

In the early evenings we would sit in the afternoons at Monastiraki and watch the various performances. Brazilian jazz, breakdancing, african dance and our fire-juggling friends from France. As with all capital cities, here is where you will find travellers from all over. And one evening I sat and learned some astonishing things about small ornaments from a 16 year old gypsy violinist from Romania, before we all moved at midnight towards Exharchia Square, where people gather to relax. It is a hot bed of anarchy in Athens though so from time to time, or rather every day, there is trouble between the police and people who agitate them. It was there that a young student died, causing a massive outcry. But it was quiet and very peaceful when we arrived. We sat down and started to play some music for the appreciative audience. It was beautiful.

And then, suddenly, a molotov cocktail had been thrown and ranks of grey clad riot police ran up the street and charged through the square. I was sitting on the floor with my back to the entrance to the square, and I didn't feel panicked but I got my violin back into its case and stood up to see what was going on before moving to stand in the shadow of a nearby building. Everyone freaked out and ran away and some of the police charged after them firing tear gas, pushed one totally random french traveller to the ground, and spat on him.

It was alarming. I walked around and watched as teams of police blocked off roads exchanging insults with the young people standing around. I don't understand greek, but the locals seemed to be giving the police a shaming. Everyone seemed stressed and upset.

We've been giving small public concerts, which seem sometimes to arise spontaneously while they are planned at other times. Two of us play, or we make a show together with our friends, the fire jugglers, and indeed with many people from Greek musicians, to people like Detroit Jimmy, the ebullient and tall character with a 12 string guitar and a shark costume. Or the amazing Argentinian accordionist. People gathered round and good music with the Acropolis as a backdrop. A great time indeed. And even though there is a tangibly sombre feeling about the busy centre as people seem to feel they have less money, we get some really nice appreciation. We laugh and say that we need a sign for busking that says; 'Free music. Help keep music free and support the Oshan and Darius Keep Music Free foundation (Ltd). All donations appreciated'.

We drove to Nafplio, the ancient capital of Greece, swam and slept on the beach after playing in the small square of the town. We did well and people liked the music, it felt different to Athens, just much more relaxed. I swam near to a moored yacht and later in the night we met the Serbians who were travelling in that yacht as we played with some cool musicians, a Guitar, an accordian and a clarinet, good gypsy players.

Back in Athens another night, we missed the metro after an amazing jam in the Monastiraki Square and walked around the Acropolis with the jugglers and some friends to sleep among the olive trees on the rocky hill that looks over to the ancient marble pillars and architraves of the Acropolis. Big crickets that you never see made washboard scraping sounds and the ground smelt of dry grass. In the morning the view from the top was incredible. The city swept away to the North following the contours of a long basin. I looked at some boats leaving the port of Piraeus. Tomorrow I will be on a boat like that to Crete, where I think the sun is strong like on the moon.

It is exciting and beautiful to travel. And it will be nice to get out of the city after a while in cities. I feel like I am leaving the Greece I know and that things to come will be very different. We will see. The next two weeks will be full of music, we shall have to perform well to make the money for the winter. We will manage it, inshallah. So I must pack my last things and sleep a couple of hours. Time to go back on the road.

From Thessaloniki

I'm eating a Greek salad in an old local resaurant in Thessaloniki. There's three generations in here. A mother feeding her toddler and six old men who play cards every night in a blue, smoky haze, beneath a painting of two fluffy persian kittens. The place is full of tat and old pictures, framed seafaring knots, an old telephone and dusty house plants. A guitar and a bouzouki hang on the wall.

I am slipping into a sleepy intoxication. The milky ouzo is going to my head rapidly. These days I feel weary, I've been on the road so long and never realised it properly. The accident in the bus changed the way I see things, as I learned to live with the fragmented days and nights of a painful life. Pain that cuts you off from the world and from yourself. Lost as I was then, disconnected, I no longer saw or felt my path over the months. I lived in the moment, which was always compared to another moment. Hope was elusive but then music became my hope.

The ouzo is really working. That fucking bus driver. I was flying so high at the apex of life, then he took away my wings and I fell to earth. I want to cry and take something apart, but I know the feeling will pass. I am only another man out of billions and a man must understand the world. I was dreaming and maybe that accident helped me understand the world better, maybe it made me a man. I feel the first touch of death which will never leave me. Life is no dream and the pain brought me to my senses. In Goa I didn't get it. I stumbled into the coconut grove and wept. Why? Why do this to me? And god said; There is no reason. Things are so and you are a part of all things.

And so I played and wove a dream of delight and agony for others. From the sand I climbed to the top of the plateau as if in a hallucination and sang to the moon. A bird led me out of the jungle down to the sea and I bodysurfed in the moonlight, sliding into the dark barrels of a powerful swell.

I come to my senses and Goa drifts back to join the other memories. We will leave this town soon and head into the unknown for the first time in a long time. To the Greek Islands. The future hinges on what will happen there, if we will make enough money to get to Israel and India again. I imagine cedar forests and azure coves below ancient white villages.

The old geezers are arguing about the cards. The kid wails. I wonder if I can finish the glass of booze. I reckon I can.

From Istanbul

Beneath a velvet teal-green dusk the ferry's propellers beat the water into a torment. Venus and the first stars shine above. I look at the boiling frenzy from the stern as the boat pushes out sideways into the bosphorus and coasts past a breakwater before the engines open up and we power past a container ship at the docks, behind it the millions of lights of Istanbul and on the other side of the Golden Horn the great mosques and the Aya Sofia, sitting like fantastic spacecraft bathed in the golden glow of their floodlights, sat like disciples around them.

As the ferry approaches Karakoy, the evening Azan sounds and I listen to the grand timelessness of man kneeling before his god. It's been almost three months in Istanbul, and I wonder why I feel so sad. It's a quiet and still melancholy that's always there. I suppose it is the uncertainty of this path I tread. It is a struggle, but a worthy one to work hard to learn to play music, but when you are homeless you surely will feel down once in a while, I tell myself. Maybe it is the sadness of the others around me. Those that love me and those that I love. How can we share ourselves when everything is changing and impermanent?

Maybe it's the everyday grind on the Istiklal, the hundreds of thousands of people who have passed by us while we play, who I shall never know. The anxiety of wondering whether we can play long enough to earn enough, or whether there will be a protest and riot police deployed to keep order while incidentally preventing street musicians from performing. Even the elements can conspire against us, rain meaning an afternoon of backgammon and cay (turkish tea)instead of work.

I step off the ferry and start to cry quietly. I am so far from home, I don't even know what home is and I don't know what my tears are for. I walk over the Galata bridge and past the New Mosque and the steps where the Kurdish tobacco sellers sit with their flat caps pulled down, on the lookout for the cops. I walk along the waterfront instead of taking the tram. It's a reflex action now, saving money, and comes when you see that each bowstroke on the strings of the violin, each run, every expression of humanity to the people, every breath you take translates into money. Work never meant so much to me as it does now, I think to myself. Cay and food taste so good, because it was my effort that created every single thing I consume. But it's a bondage too.

The last fish sandwich sellers try to hawk me a shitty 'balik ekmek' for 5 lira. They must think I'm an idiot, I mutter. My pride. My pride? What pride? Am I so proud that I stood my ground and took a handful of change today? I make my way past the great church and feel a little calmer. Soon I am in the back streets of Sultan Ahmet where the rickety bay windows lean out over cobbled streets and scores of feral cats run their world. I come to our door, opposite the building that fell down one night a couple of weeks ago with a crash that sent me out of the dream with a start. I undo the chain on the door and go in. Up the stairs to the top.

The fleas are gone. They used to cling to your trousers as you went up to the top floor and you would have to catch them and get rid of them as soon as you entered the flat. Struggling against the fleas, six weeks have passed in this bizarre, old Ottoman house with floors askew. It seemed the only reasonable option after a week in the hostel in Taksim, and cost only 7.50 Turkish Lira a day each. So we moved in. It just seemed a little dusty. After we got back from working in Greece we had to find something, and this was it. No hot water, no cooker, no beds, no fridge or furniture, apart from a sofa bed in the big room upon which I elected not to sleep, though I noticed and removed the few hundred fly cocoons that lay beneath it. The room smelt strange, but I was happy to have a room so I stretched out on my sleeping mat and slept. Two days later we noticed the fleas. The fleas that cling to your clothes, crawl about in your bed and bleed you at night.

We got hold of some powdered chemical to spray the flat and I opened up the sofa bed while we were spraying the room. Inside were two young cats, long dead by the look of them, that had been eaten out to the bones by the maggots and turned into two crisp, leathery sacks of fur, locked in a macabre embrace. We left the flat a night but when we came back they were still there. Finally we called a man with a fumigating machine and the place was eventually habitable.

Weeks passed in this old heap of wood. We woke, ate a turkish breakfast, drank cay and headed out past the toursit strip behind the Aya Sofia to the Gulhane Sur Cafe, run by the small and amiable Mr Goskun. The cafe was the nerve centre of our operation, where cay was drunk by the tulip-shaped cupful in the morning, and nargile smoked on the way back home at night. We had arrived in April from New Delhi after three months in Goa playing music. It was no longer appropriate to saunter around dressed in a cloth about ones waist. We donned our tailor-made suits from Delhi and started playing immediately.

We find a spot and put the violin case out with a few CDs in it. And then we start to play. A few of the trickier songs can draw in a crowd, sometimes a hundred people or more at times. Then we start to hit our stride and lose ourselves in a stomping break-neck ecstasy. I am aware of the crowd but mostly I focus inside the music and try to catch the phrases and turn them into blinding scythes of my imagination. We connect ourselves to these people and there is a happening. It is only free music, but its every bit as intense as a concert in the opera house was for me, if not more so. Sometimes it doesn't work, there is no fire and we feel tired or bored, so we just play to ourselves, or to a handful of reserved but curious people. It is a surprise to see that the energy that gives rise to a good set is absolutely unpredictable.

When I left India I felt reborn into the real world in which I grew up. Europe was a quarter of an hour away from Asia by boat, and it seemed we could earn real money. Busking was Oshans idea, he had done it in Istanbul on the way out to India. And it worked.

Goa melted away and suddenly we started to look like anyone else.

One evening over dinner in Islamabad with friends we decided to visit Peshawar. It's not something one decides at dinner that often, and I wasn't happy about it at first, but didn't feel like letting Steele and Oshan go while I stayed. So the next day we got the bus, taking care to be attired in an appropriate manner, and after a couple of hours we were up the grand trunk road in a different city, a different land, barely a few dozen kilometres from Afghanistan. The Northwest Frontier Province, the land of the Pathans.

From Peshawar, and the friendliest people I know.

Pathans are an ancient tribe of people who may be, and believe themselves to be the decendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel. And I came to believe it after spending a few days in Peshawar. They are a proud and beautiful people, but fierce and warlike, as the British, Russians and Americans have discovered over the decades of conflict in pre-partition India and in Afghanistan, to their considerable cost. And the faces I saw seemed so similar to those of jewish people, which really surprised me. The citizens of Pakistan and Israel are not permitted to visit one anothers' countries, but they are most likely related, which is a little ironic I think.

We left Islamabad without our passports and it proved to be a constant headache, as bombs in Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Peshawar had resulted in plenty of random checks on traffic at hundreds of roadblocks. The Indian High Commission had insisted on retaining our pasports, and we didn't imagine it would be a problem anywhere, but it turned out to be a fairly large one. Dressed in Shalwar Kameez and with Chitrali hats, Oshan and I cartoonishly resembled taliban insurgents from Swat on their way to a marketplace in Peshawar. In Lahore and Karimabad it was a regular joke that people made regarding our appearance. But soon we realised how important appearances are in the world. I knew that already, but our effort to be inconspicuous and to blend in in Pakistan backfired somewhat, and in buses and taxis we were stopped time after time by the police and questioned about our origin, destination and intentions, though we were invariably allowed to continue on our way. But in Peshawar it became a problem.

We headed for the Rose hotel, as Steele had stayed there four years previously, but it was full, even though Eid had finished. We tried over the road at another hotel and after agreeing a price for the room with the manager, under the watchful gaze of a swarthy, dark-bearded, chain-smoking armed guard, we presented our passport photocopies that we naively thought would suffice as a form of identity in a region torn by infiltration and wracked by violent suicide attacks. They simply would not do, the manager appeared quite fearful and it seemed as if we might need to get straight back on the bus to Islamabad. At his suggestion we walked up to the Tourist Inn Motel, and stooped to pass through the steel door. Inside was Mansoor, the hotel attendant, a small unkempt man with a repertoire of hilarious exclamations. There were no guests staying in the old pale green building. There was an open space before the rooms and a counter, upon which Mansoor directed us to present our identity documents for inspection.

From Peshawar, and the friendliest people I know.

'Um, here's a photocopy of my passport, I'm afraid I haven't one of my Pakistan visa.', I said tentatively.

'No problem!', Mansoor replied.

'Our real passports are in the Indian High Comission.'

'No problem. No tension!', it seemed as if we would get a room, but perhaps not for long, once the photocopies of the photocopies of our passports, lacking a photocopy of a photocopy of my Pakstan visa, would reach special branch for investigation. But Mansoor was chilled, and so were we. We installed ourselves and sat down for a minute before going out to see a little of this feared city. Mansoor got down to smoking some heroin straight away and continued until we headed out.

From Peshawar, and the friendliest people I know.

The old town in Peshawar is a buzzing mix of sounds and smells, and was far from the sternly forbidding frontier town that I had imagined. Everywhere people were smiling and happy to chat with us and to have their photos taken, which suited me. We ate in a lovely place and strolled through the bazaar as the sun set and azan sounded. Passing a material shop I stopped to talk to the friendly owner, a well-built man dressed in 'pants-shirt' (the subcontinental term for western dress). He asked us why we were there, and were we not afraid since it was so dangerous. And within five minutes the three of us were stiffly suppressing our rising unease. It was the early evening and a more likely time for a bomb. And now a local had, quite sincerely, informed us that it was indeed a dangerous place. We knew it, but it is different coming from a resident. So we went home.

Mansoor was still smoking heroin and quite high. We sneaked out for a shoarma, and a visit to the surreal supermarket on the corner that had mannekins sitting in the wrought iron girders of the ceiling, seeming to chat together. A dozen shoppers drifted through the supermarket, and we marvelled at the refrigerator that contained cheddar cheese. Things seemed too normal, the calm was unnerving, the worried looks of people started to worry me. We were outside for a half hour and then back into our little compound, a peeling limey safety zone. Mansoor was still smoking heroin. He had almost finished his wrap. I wondered if it was dangerous inside too. But it wasn't. There was a TV, but it felt like a prison. Mansoor had woken up a bit and we struck up a sort of conversation.

'Me, no family. Father...sleeping. Mother...sleeping. Sister...sleeping. Wife...sleeping. No family. Only heroin', he gestured to the blackened length of aluminium foil.

'No good', he concluded.

From Peshawar, and the friendliest people I know.

It didn't seem all that good, but Mansoor was happy in a way, in this small oasis, as the bombs went off outside now and then, as Pakistan lurched from crisis to crisis. He watched the telly and chased the dragon and hung out with the very few westerners who were visiting this frontier region. I guess for some it's a kick, to visit somewhere feared. I will do it, if it is necessary, if I must, to follow my path. But to me it seemed like it wasn't worth it. How wrong I was. I discovered what is to me the heart of Pakistan, the link to the past and future and the corridor through which all the invaders and colonisers passed over the millenia.

The next day we sat with a chap from Special Branch. He fingered our pathetic scraps of paper and tutted. But he was cool and finally the deal was that we had to leave the next day for Islamabad. We had to chello, and soon. So we hit the old town again, with half the fear that we had felt the previous day, had breakfast and got down to chatting and strolling among the intriguing folks. We were forcibly stopped and made to enjoy delicious green tea by some Pathan animal hide sellers. The boss spoke farsi, and Oshan exchanged elegant sentences for a while while I shot a couple of photos of the old man who was liming up fresh goat skins. These guys were thrilled, since it was a boring occupation it seemed to me, and it must be fun to meet foreigners to see what the world thinks of the place you would dearly love to escape from, and everywhere the atmosphere was friendly, to the point of joyfulness.

Nothing is all roses and soon we met Prince. Steele had warned us that we would sooner or later meet this strange character. Prince was from a wealthy family and spent his time rubbing shoulders with tourists, showing them his bound album of kind testimonials to his kind service and photos of various people he had escorted to the smugglers' bazaar and Khyber pass. It was not a coincidence that Prince was in the very tea shop that we entered, centuries old, it was a famous place for tourists to visit. But we had been befriended by a charming pathan in black. And he tipped off Prince by mobile phone, so that he happened to be in the tea shop when we arrived.

From Peshawar, and the friendliest people I know.

Steele told us earlier that Prince had taken his girlfriend Amber to Swat, four years previously. He wanted to go to Afghanistan and Amber had not, so the friendly Prince was more than happy to take her to visit his ancestral home, to see the beauty of the famous Swat valley. Swat was then safe, as was pretty much the whole area. Steele headed off and upon his return learned that Prince had tried to drug Amber with opium slipped surreptitiously in her tea and then to molest her. He wasn't happy to meet him again this time, but after a while we left and shook them all off.

From Peshawar, and the friendliest people I know.

The large market street was top-and-tailed by barbed wire and police. Down some side alleys we came to the site of one large bomb that had killed and wounded scores, wiping out a couple of buildings in the constricted space. It was a building site now and shoppers went about their daily business, but it served as a quiet reminder that any moment we might be lamely standing next to a deadly blast.

We continued, but strangely the fear was almost gone. Fear is strange after all. It is up there, but only there, in the mind. Right then, I could see with my own eyes that there was nothing to fear in the moment, and somehow I accepted that this moment was where I belonged and where I was happy. I did not need to imagine the explosion, the smell of C5 and smoke, the fragments of people and things and the blurry sideways view from the place where I would lie paralysed for the last minute of my life. It wasn't relevant to reality, and soon it was gone, and I was free to laugh and chat with those around us. The shop-keepers and kids and men. Women giggled as they passed, veiled mostly from our sight. But the market and old town was charming, cosy and warm-feeling, thick with invitations to talk, drink tea and stand enjoying every moment.

From then on I had no more fear and the next day was really enjoyable. We were supposed to leave and had gone out for breakfast, but when we arrived home Mansoor was out, the gate was padlocked and he stayed out for the hour that I waited with the guys. Then I headed off to look around our area. We were staying a rickshaw ride from the old town and near our hotel was a large shopping area with mobile phone shops and flower stalls and a business complex full of travel agents and banks and things like that. I walked in to ask where I might find an internet shop to let my mum know that I was alive, and a kind young man invited me to his office where I sent an email. Then I was forced to drink delicious tea once again and sat for a couple of hours talking with the man and his friends. The security guard dropped in for a chat and then we ambled into one of the shopping mall-like corridors to talk to the guy manning a photocopy machine. He spoke good english and we discussed the situation in Peshawar. He expressed nothing but contemptuous disgust for those carrying out the bombings.

'These are not muslims, they are animals'. It was a statement that I was used to hearing. The army were finding Uzbeks in South Waziristan and it was clear that foreigners were involved. I felt such sympathy for the people who have to deal with the situation, during my whole time in Pakistan, but most especially in Peshawar, where the bombs have sometimes been a daily event and where people are famously hospitable. In the tribal areas the same pathans will lay down their life for a guest. They will also commit honour killings, and blood-feuds run for years, but it gives you an idea of their intensity. That night I spoke with two men by a kebab stall, who had had their dinner in the restaurant behind it. One was bearded and pale in complexion with green eyes, with a face that looked as though it might be capable of great fierceness and the other was a darker more subcontinental-looking man of rotund build and jovial character. They were obviously important, well-connected and well-educated and affluent. One was a retired colonel of the military, and both ran an operation mining copper and gold in Baluchistan. I asked how they dealt with the tribes down there, that are also pathan.

'It is obviously an undesirable thing, but the only way is to pay the head of the tribe. Then they deal with everyone else and order is maintained.'

I realised that this is how it must be working also in Afghanistan, and is how it has always worked, since the British had their noses bloodied once they reduced their tribute to the tribes that had kept them compliant. I wondered what democracy could ever have to do with such a society, and I saw how complicated the situation in Pakistan also must be, if the tribal areas had backers in the state. Intrigue, murderous and murky, has been the order of the day in this region for centuries. I could smell it in the night air, wafting around with the smoke from cooking meat. And then I engaged in a long discourse with the dignified looking pathan about Islam. After two months of practise I was able to answer the polite but constant questions about my beliefs, articulate well the various arguments surrounding religion, its definition in my view, and also in my search to educate myself in the world.

It was a satisfying conversation and after we turned to the subject of the tribe that probably came from Israel and settled in Afghanistan. Everyone knows from whom they are descended, which branch of the pathan tribe, although now city life and migration is obviously clouding peoples vision of their individual roots. It is fascinating and I was listened to with great interest and respect by the gentlemen. They seemed to be glad to speak about what they knew and were very intelligent and very kind indeed. I don't know what their mining operation is up to, but I liked them very much.

And so I turned back towards the hotel for the last time, walked down the wrong turning and into an army roadblock, which was exactly where I didn't want to be. After a firm handshake and 'salam aleikum' to a big khaki-clad major, I presented my photocopy and driving license, which being laminated by the DVLA in England, looked a little more official than the piece of paper. He thought it was my ID card. The streets were deserted and I was in a cantonment area, near a big military base, in which we were actually not allowed, as was stated on our Pakistani tourist visas. But the Tourist Inn Hotel was inside the cantonment, so it was a catch 22. I waited, and the soldiers stopped every vehicle to check them.

Then after a few minutes the major courteously organised a rickshaw for me, shook my hand again and off I went into the night without a hitch, with a super-friendly rickshaw driver, though I had hoped to save the 50 rupees for a rickshaw by walking. Soon I was back and the guys were sitting playing scrabble, while Mansoor got high. It was our last night and I felt as if apart from the hassle of not having valid documentation, Peshawar was safer than London and a damn sight more friendly. I would have loved to stay for a while, but we had our reward and were satisfied after all. A sound nights sleep and it was time to get back to the Indian High Commission. I was never so happy to be reunited with my little maroon book.

From Sector I8/1, Islamabad. The place to hang out, play cricket and eat shami burgers.

Islamabad. I had no idea what it would be like to visit the capital of Pakistan, but traffic, concrete, and embassy stress were uppermost in my preconceptions. In the end there were all three, but also one of the biggest surprises of my travels. I thought it would be like Delhi, but with more mosques and less touts. It was nothing like Delhi, but there were loads of mosques. The people around us were to a man the most decent and polite. Staying in I/8 at the flat of our friends from Hunza, we were able to taste life in a quiet residential area, a serene part of the city that you only hear about on the news.

Islamabad is the administrative capital, next to it Rawalpindi, the old garrison town, a sort of twin city. Bombs have been killing the people and soldiers of the Pakistan military and their families. You see the bombs on the telly and you hear about government corruption and terrorism. But you never hear about the sweet people, families and kids, shops and businesses that welcome the international traveller as their guest. Even those who have been in Iran, a famously hospitable but deeply misunderstood country, place Pakistan as equal or above, in the friendly scale. For me the people of this country have redefined friendliness.

I arrived in I8 and immediately I felt confused. Where was the traffic and the stress? There was so much space and many open green areas for children to play in. Most cars and motorbikes are from the '70s or based on old blueprints. In the market square I was welcomed by all. It was the day before Eid, the ancient festival of sacrifice initiated by the act of faith of Abraham, father of the Jews and Arabs. He was ready to kill his own beloved son according to God's will, and at the last moment his hand was stayed by divine intervention.

Moslems across the globe carry out a symbolic sacrifice of their very best animals, in the streets and houses and fields. In the area I was in I was amazed at the profundity of the day. It was gory, it was confusing, and some conservative sounding guys were less than happy about me taking photos for fear that I would propagate an image of Islam as brutal. But many more were thrilled that I was interested, that I showed my respect and that I cared about their beliefs and their lives which are torn apart by violence, fear and real death mixed in a cocktail of political, military and ideological madness. People are dying as well as animals, they are dying like animals and it is intolerable.

Quite honestly, it almost moves me to tears when I think of the people I have met these two and a half months, that suffer with stoicism through these times. All the people that I have spoken to, that have invited me to their houses and treated me with the greatest respect and warmth. The people that I should apparently not trust, according those who try to advise me as I journey. The Pakistanis are my friends. And even they do not know who is stoking the blazing evil that threatens to tear apart the country. Is it America, though they profess their wish to see a democratic, stable Pakistan and Afghanistan? Perhaps they prefer the instability to justify their presence in these countries. Who knows? It seems clear that they created the what became the Taliban, to fight Russia in Afghanistan. Then they left, then they returned. Saudi Arabia have something to say about Osama bin Laden's fight, I would say.

Is it India, stabbing their arch-enemy in the back by supplying arms to the militants, or even carrying out explosions? Is it the Taliban? Who are the Taliban? Is the pakistani Taliban like the afghani Taliban? Are elements of the Pakistani secret service itself complicit, have they allowed the 'Taliban' to breathe just freely enough for some years, to go on murdering, because they are hedging their bets in the future of Afghanistan? What will happen when America leaves? This is the question. Most Pakistanis hate the Taliban, and are appalled, but most feel that America has caused only trouble in the region and would be better off going back home. But there is nothing they can do while their leaders line their own pockets, and ready themselves to jump ship when it goes down.

We westerners are not targeted, and after a few weeks it becomes clear that you may as easily die crossing the road as you might from an act of terrorism. So it has become rather irritating to have to field the two dimensional and wholly fearful perceptions of those at home every day, though of course you have to have sympathy if your mother worries. If I had a choice, I would stay in Pakistan, for it gives so much happiness to the people to meet foreigners and to learn that we do not all see Pakistan as a country full of terrorists. I have spoken to government officials, soldiers that have served in South Waziristan, journalists form Pakistan, taxi drivers and all sorts, and I'm sure we humans need to take a look at how we perceive things, and bear in mind that what we see in our heads is not necessarily reality. Just my tuppence worth. I can recommend Pakistan as a great destination to visit, without reservation. Yes, there are problems and people are getting killed. But our brothers in the world need our support and Pakistan needs love, not fear.

From Eid. Warning, contains pictures of animals being slaughtered and butchered.

On Eid I headed out the door at 8am and hadn't really an idea what it would be like. I awoke to a cacophony of azan mixing up over the flat, slightly misty city and forced myself out to see what it was all about. Goats were being lead to the slaughter, without any idea that they were to die and soon I met a young man who took me to an anointed slaughter ground. A crowd was gathered and the local Imam was overseeing the proceedings, to make sure everything was kosher, as it were. It seemed as if I should be very careful about photographing things, but after a couple of hours watching and chatting I was fully welcomed and encouraged to learn all I could about the fascinating occasion. Bulls were brought in and bound and toppled before being killed quite quickly, their throats slit in the direction of Mecca to the exclamation 'Allahu akbar', 'God is great'. The butchers stroke the bulls and whisper in their ears to calm them and the cutting, if done efficiently, ends the life of the animal in about 30 seconds. The jugular vein and windpipe are cut and then the knife cuts open the heart. Immediately the body is skinned, gutted and butchered and cut into pieces to be divided exactly between people, their families and friends and the poor. After ten bulls' deaths I was tired of the carnage, but I could see that we humans have reared and slaughtered livestock as long as we have herded them. And if an animal should die and must die, as moslems believe, it is one of the better ways. They have lead good lives and die in a sacred way. I can't judge the fact that it isn't necessary, that they do suffer, how can they not? But this is the way it is.

One bull would not submit and fought to the end. Ten minutes it took four men to bring him down and I half-jokingly suggested that they let just one go free, since he had acquitted himself so bravely. But he had been paid for and had to go aswell. Then I watched a thirteen year old boy expertly skin and butcher two of the bulls, chatted with many people and then I headed home, relieved that I could stop looking at the killing. In the beginning it was fascinating, to see life walk onto the field and then disappear at the hand of man, to see that it must go somewhere. But where does it go? After no breakfast a kind offer of biscuits and tea settled my stomach and I went back to see Sadaqat and the sweet friends of ours from Hunza. It had been a very long morning.

Finally I feel I understand mans' killing of animals. But people too are being slaughtered and I wish it would stop.

I woke slowly, the hauntingly beautiful echoes of the dawn calls to prayer fading with my dreams. Five or six voices singing out praise to God with focused devotion. Layers of the same awareness drifting across the Gilgit valley on a still friday morning.

By the time I rise it is cold in the room. Straight green walls, mottled white above, cold surfaces blind to feeling. For a moment I don't know where I am, but I feel dark eyes, deeply beautiful, gazing into mine, so comforting. Somewhere, I can feel them, there in the world. Far away, and it hurts, for I long to be near. A longing I can now hardly contain, that surrounds me where I lie, lifts me up and guides my steps. It comes with me outside, as I tread sleepily to the garden, I look up to the massive, rugged, frosted mountainsides. Are these eyes divine, earthly, cosmic? I wonder where it was that I saw them before, then I remember.

My hands are cold again. I remember the teeth of December, a year ago as I thrust my hands into my pockets, walking towards the tube station. At four in the afternoon people, hundreds of them, were streaming about like fish. I had taken some big prints to some galleries in London to see if they might be interested in my photographs. I was trying to get home, I suppose everyone was. Soon I would leave London, leave home again for the road, and somehow everything I did was suspended from reality, from what seemed to be the 'true' path. I wished only to return to the East to continue my search. To ride in the days and dream at night. To think of the pomegranate trees in Iran and the tomb of Hafez. I did not realise that London held in it's lap a jewel that would enlighten me, a jewel that might not be realised until many extraordinary things had come to pass.

I step into line and down into the folds of Londons' unloved belly at Gloucester Road. Only one stop reels past, I see it as if it were a stretch of tarmac beneath the blurring wheels of my bicycle, feel frustrated. At the next stop some leave and enter the carriage. I look at some of the faces but noone meets my gaze, there is only an invisible pressure, turning all our minds inwards, or outwards with the appearance of inwardness. This paradox puzzles me deeply. Awareness wrapped in a pretense of nonchalance.

Suddenly it was too much, to be human yet sit in silence, alone but so close to others, feeling the warmth of their bodies and unfamiliar odours. The rails and bogies clattered and screeched and when the doors next opened, I just left without a moments' thought, and headed for the open air, to walk home and feel the earth and see the people in the fading light. I breathed more freely as I ascended the escalator and then I was outside again. As I crossed the road I looked around me and then I saw a friend sitting alone at a table outside a cafe, wrapped in a coat and reading, outside even though the cold was intense. We had in fact never met before, but we knew one another as surely as siblings. That dark evening and freezing night would become etched into my memory as one of the strangest experiences of my life. The eyes of my dear friend red with tears of sorrow for the surrounding tumult of life's difficulties, my effort to help and advise, to bring peace and calm. And after our paths diverged for a year. Those dark brown eyes, seeing and wise would return to me and bring gladness, but I did not know it then.

It is Friday, and after chai I notice the sleek black-coated male goat tethered to the gate of the Madina guest-house. I feed him and touch his face. He seems restless, having been taken from his normal environment. I wonder if he knows that he will die today. I name him 'Mandrake', and my attention seems to comfort him, as much as it is possible to comfort a goat. It puzzles me that his little ears are sealed shut, perhaps because of a birth defect. And then after a half hour the man with his knife comes and Mandrake is slaughtered. Since I have been eating meat, I feel it very important to see and appreciate the passing of this life, an innocent being in the world. I wonder what gives man the right to kill? I watch as the lurid blood spurts from Mandrake's neck, into the moist earth, in the direction of Mecca. It steams.

He seems to die quite calmly, but maybe because he is being held down firmly. He is a gentle and harmless animal and I would prefer his neck to be completely severed, but it is a holy act and there is a prescribed way. I feel some sadness, but understand why it is, what tradition supports the act, the thousands of years of man's quest for meaning and survival, worldy and spiritual. The search for the divine, Abrahams willingness through his love of God, to kill his son, to go against his natural instinct, his earthly love. Mandrake is butchered and I see the last meal that I gave him. In the evening I eat some of his flesh and do not enjoy it, but am thankful for my life.

After a few days I leave Gilgit by plane to go to Islamabad. I sit next to the Secretary for Health and Population Welfare and talk for the 55 minutes of flight, briefly glancing out of the window of the small plane to see snaking, frozen rivers of white ice on the gently undulating tabletops of some of the greatest mountains on earth. I ask about India-Pakistan relations and diplomacy, economics and regional security, corruption and environmental issues. It is interesting to speak to someone with power over a country's policy, but I feel the world of government is as far removed from the real world as we are,in the sleek white plane that cruises over the Karakorum highway and down to the plains.

From up here you can see the whole range of mountains, but you cannot see the trucks and vans and labourers and Chinese engineers on the ground below, invisible. It currently takes 24 hours to drive what takes us a mere 55 minutes. I experienced it on the way up, but I am glad to fly down, to save my back the trouble of driving down. When the road-widening is finished, the link between Pakistan and China will be enhanced. Trade will flourish. Things will change. I wonder what it is that makes things change. Politicians and generals, or chai wallahs and workers. I guess they all do. Later, he tells me about his love of literature and translating Urdu poetry to English. A cultured and intelligent man, but I can't help wondering if the world of government in all our countries has limited power to bring a decent life to the invisible multitudes, and care for our physical world that supports us, if it is to the detriment of proserity, real, imagined or apparent.

And so I arrive in the Punjab again. It is a pleasure to talk to the men working the telephone both, who dial peoples numbers and then hand them the handset. They tell me that since the mobile phone their business has suffered massively, but they are cheerful. I enjoy watching the bustle of an international airport adn speak to a bright young teenager who studies in an 'Education City'. I have never heard of such a thing, but at Taxila, where there are ancient Buddhist archaeological remains, there is a massive campus that serves to educate thousands, from toddlers to adults. The boy wants to be a software engineer, speaks perfect English and expresses his dismay at the mindless desire of todays Pakistani youth, for western clothes and culture. There I am, wearing the Shalwar Kameez, looking like a strange Pathan with longish hair.

Later I travel by cab to the flat of my friends brother who are studying in Islamabad. They are from Hunza and are from a Shia family, the forbears of which came to the subcontinent from Iran hundreds of years ago. When I arrive I am struck by something I didn't quite realise before, that being the extreme earnestness of the people that I have met in Pakistan over these two months, now a country I have really grown to love. I discuss Islam with my new friends and are surprised to learn that Shia adherents are far more moderate than people imagine. Soon I will leave, after my friend Oshan arrives and we arrange our Indian visas. Then we head south to Arambol to play music and meet friends, old and new, the mix of travellers in the subcontinent overlapping, parting and coming together again. It will surely be a joyous time at Christmas.

And so tomorrow is Eid, these days a holiday, and as the soft high cloud burns off in the early winter sunshine, I amble out to watch men play cricket in a park, dusty, yellowed grass surrounded by weeds and the blocks of flats built in the seventies, to accommodate Pakistans growing populace. They play with a lightweight cricket ball and the ball is struck far from time to time. The men enjoy the game intensely. I am happy to be able to see normal, everyday life in Sector I/8 of this massive, modern city built in a grid. The bazaar consists of little squares, outdoor barbers, restaurants, quiet avenues and all sorts of shops. It feels like a crumbly version of some suburb of Zurich or London.

Sitting there, as a sermon sounds out of loudspeakers, echoing around the square, I wonder when I will see those deep, dark eyes again, that reflected my spirit back to me, whether for man that recognition between souls could save us and bring us safe to the place from whence we came. The eyes that I see, that see me, become one with mine.

From New Delhi

I walk slowly and deliberately past shops, people, street dogs and children. A man and his blind wife implore the passers by for money, an old dog looks into my eyes and when I hold the gaze barks aggressively in a hoarse voice. A local man raises his hand and the dog cowers. Then I come close to a main road. Rickshaws and buses speed past and I stride out into the traffic. The vehicles rush past like fish and I reach the other side. Soon I am lost in a maze of alleyways lined with tiny shops.

'Namaste', I say to two women wrapped in colourful saris who are offering prasad outside a temple, they reply in kind and I think about what this word means. 'I salute the divine within you', is the best translation I can come up with. How strange, I think, to use this noble greeting in such a cramped corner of a city of 13 million people. A deeply civilized and gentle expression of human understanding, though whether divine or not is still not clear to me.

Some rain falls and then the street narrows even more to become a web of very small alleys and crossways. At one micro-junction fifteen or twenty youths fill jerry cans with water from a tap in the wall of red brick which has been rubbed to a dull smoothness by decades of waiting. Suddenly I imagine all 13 million people standing together, stretching all the way to the horizon and facing a light or the sun, no longer seperated by individuality. Then they all mix and rush back to their places in the scene in front of me, here in Delhi. Furniture workshops here, a tailor in a broom cupboard-stroke-shop there, and people fill every tiny space and crevice, save the gutters which stink. Biscuit-barrow man, ice-cream cart boy.

The alley widens and children pass, their eyes pointing skywards. I realise that they are following the wheeling and stalling kites above. Mottled high cloud and the sun's glow at evening bring nature back into the metropolis, and it is hot again.

I sweat. A dripping rickshaw driver with carefully combed hair freewheels past, his head turned and attention fixed on the conversation with his customer. I pass a boy with scabies who scratches his ribs absentmindedly and then come to the railway line where waggons shunt slowly past and two boys play cricket with a tower of stones for a wicket and a rough piece of wood as a bat. They laugh and smile at me, a strange intruder. Other children place stones on the rails and muslim men step over the sleepers to reach a crumbling mosque on the other side to pray at sunset. Young men call to me from under a tree and a sheep bleats in mechanical desperation, its neck tethered to a wall, turning this way and that, then back again. It cannot escape.

After I turn back to the main road as the sky's glow dims, I see boys on a roof, standing transfixed as they fly their kites. Soaring above a hundred or more metres high, they connect the hearts of the youths to the heavens in ecstasy.

From Solar eclipse in Varanasi

After nearly four months in India I feel as if I have finally arrived. I've cycled along the mountain and hill regions in the north, and learned all I could in Rishikesh from Indians and tourists alike about this massive country and it's ancient soul. So after a long tour from Rishikesh to Shimla and then to Dharamsala, some time in Bhagsu playing folk music with some great players and gazing at the mountains and strange mists that blow in from the plains to trigger heavy rain showers, I made the train journey with friends from Dharamsala to Varanasi. It was the eclipse that brought us here, since before I felt as though I hadn't time to see 'Kashi', the city 'where the supreme light shines'. But to come during the solar eclipse seemed an opportunity not to pass up.

Stepping out into the bustling street on the first morning to find the curd shop, I felt as though I had slipped into a comfortable bath, so perfect a temperature, the pace of life so natural and flowing. In the old city cars are banned and so the narrow lanes are easy to amble about, labyrinthine and intriguing. Time draws an unbroken line back thousands of years to when people first started to worship here, at the riverside, at the temples. A flame, purportedly to have burned for 4500 years, lights the funeral pyres which burn from morning to night every day, while the Ganga moves slowly past. It is simply the most incredible city I have ever seen.

The night before the eclipse the wind blew hard with portent as we lay on the roof of the house, and at sunrise we gathered to see what would happen. The atmosphere in Varanasi is charged when the city is at its calmest, but down on the ghats this morning thousands of people gathered to bathe, as usual, but also to do so while witnessing the eclipse. A feeling of a somehow altered reality descended as the sun was gradually obscured, and I ran down to the waters edge to take photos. As the sun disappeared a cry rang out along the ghats and people raised their arms to the sky in excitement and fear. 'Mahadev, mahadev', they cried. A total eclipse happens only once in a lifetime here in Varanasi. After totality I leapt into the sacred and tepid river for an ecstatic swim, the sun had returned and bathed the city in light and warmth once again.