There Are Other Rivers

Dawn 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Walk 

“You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.” 

This book is not a chronological narrative about walking across India. I did that as I went, sharing my experiences through Twitter. It’s like adventure haiku and a few excerpts should suffice to recount the walk. 

• >  I’ve arrived in the glorious madhouse of India. Excited and daunted about beginning the walk. 
• >  Munched by mosquitoes, sweating a lot and a bit overwhelmed. Tomorrow morning I begin. 
• >  Ridiculously hot. Dreaming of lovely fresh mornings on my way to the South Pole. 
• >  Played village cricket. Maintained England’s reputation: caught in the deep for 0. 
• >  Passed an elephant on the road today! 
• >  I now have a stick for whacking evil dogs. 
• >  Think I was guilty of underestimating this trip... 
• >  Sleeping in a rice field tonight. Rice for dinner. 
• >  A moon shadow, bats and the stars: a peaceful side to India at last. 
• >  300km down and no blisters – yet. 
• >  BEEP! BEEP! Indian drivers driving me mad. 
• >  Slept in a temple. Coracle fishermen at dawn. 
• >  Hand washed my clothes. How long after returning home before loading the washing machine becomes a hassle again..? 
• >  Policeman told me I was beautiful. I replied, “No, Sir, it is you who is beautiful.” He liked that! Different to conversations with UK police... 
• >  First blister. 
• >  Filling a popped blister with iodine hurts a disproportional amount. 
• >  Water crisis until teenagers drove 20km to fetch some for me. 
• >  In an internet cafe using Google Maps to plot a route into the mountains: easily the best map of India I have found. 
• >  Spent last night with a lovely family. Best curry yet. Thank you for your kindness! 
• >  Watching policeman try to control traffic. Chaos! Too many chiefs..? 
• >  I’m getting old and soft: the weight saving gained by cutting my toothbrush in half is now outweighed by its irritation factor. 
• >  Enjoyed watching cricket on TV at the tea stand this evening: Pietersen (Bangalore) v Flintoff (Chennai). 
• >  Beautiful hiking today, climbing up through coffee plantations. On foot beautiful usually = hard though. Tired. 
• >  The road is behind me. The beach is empty and white past the palm trees. Ahead, only the sea. I can walk no further. The sun sets. The End. 

• @al_humphreys #ThereAreOtherRivers 

Introduction 

“Beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes.” 

“Beep... beepbeepbeepbeep... BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP.”

 The alarm clock has just taken me on a journey. A journey that passed in an instant but which took me from one world to another. A journey from the magical world of dreams to a completely different one. A new world. A new day. India.

 Why am I in India?

 It does not matter that I am in India. This could be anywhere. Anywhere new to me. The story would be the same. What matters to me is why I am here. 

As soon as I hear the alarm I know where I am. I did not sleep well. I woke often, wondering if it was nearly morning, nearly time to begin. The coarse mesh of the mosquito net flopped against my skin, disturbing me. Mosquitoes whined and probed for my blood. 

I had been living in England, stationary, since my return from four years roaming the globe. I had crossed continents by bicycle and sailed across oceans. Now I had a home and I had a wife. I had settled down. Life was good. But perhaps that was the problem. 

It began on the flight to our honeymoon. By the vagaries of the Great Circle, we flew over the colossal white emptiness of the Arctic. Far beneath us were huge sheets of ice, shattered like glass with thin leads of black water between them. I ate my peanuts and stared down. Guiltily I realised that, as much as sharing beaches and piña coladas with little umbrellas and my radiant bride, what I craved was the pain and hardship of a difficulty journey. I wanted insecurity, strife and what others want nothing to do with1. This had been missing since I settled down to my lovely life.  

Outside is dark. The sky presses black against the window. The street clamour that continued late into the night has now quietened. A brief pause before the melee of India wakes and begins all over again. I lie sweating on top of my sleeping bag liner, spread over the dirty bed. My head rests on a thin pillow. Untold numbers of bus drivers, pilgrims, travelling salesmen and minor bureaucrats have lain their heads here since its last clean. For a few seconds I absorb the last traces of sleep and steel myself for the day to come. Then I reach out and silence the alarm. 

I was in thoughtful mood as the plane landed. A friend of mine is a polar explorer. He was planning an expedition to the South Pole. I sent him a text message from the sunshine. I asked whether there might be room for two. (Did this count as marital infidelity, I wondered?) 

I untangle myself from the mosquito net and stand on the concrete floor. I feel for the light switch. A pretty burst of blue sparks flash, the light flickers a few times then pings into life. Cockroaches speed to dark corners. 

The walls are covered with smears, stains and scuffs. I don’t care. It’s just the usual squalid, cheap room. I slide my feet into flip-flops and shuffle to the toilet. Years of experience mean that instinctively I breathe only through my mouth as a precaution against the stink of Developing World toilets. I pee into a hole in the ground, scoop a jug of water from the bucket on the floor and pour it down the hole. 

Ben replied to my text message. “Yes.” I quit the second sensible job I had held in a year and, happily, abandoned my attempt at Real Life. 

I was back doing what I loved and what I was good at. That is a good place to be. Arduous expeditions in the world’s wild places. But now I was going to do it seriously. I was going to attempt to make a career from it. I began to earn enough money to get by, speaking and writing about my experiences. 

Ben and I worked hard. We had the capabilities to succeed. But financial meltdown had burst across the world. Unable to secure a sponsor we were forced to postpone the expedition for a year. 

With the postponement came a window in the calendar for Ben to scratch an itch: an attempt on the solo North Pole speed record. I didn’t begrudge that. But it meant that work stopped on our joint expedition whilst Ben’s attention turned north. 

I decided to do something interesting too. 

I dump a scoop of water over my head. Its coolness jolts me. I pour a few more jugfuls, savouring the day’s one moment of fresh cleanliness. I’m bracing myself for the day ahead. 

Where should I go? And what should I do once I got there? India was a glaring omission on my Travelling CV. So India it was. For all the reasons vagabonds and wanderers have always gone to India. And because I had never been. 

It never occurred to me to do anything other than a tough, cheap journey. Push myself hard. Try to achieve something that surprised me. These fundamental principles of my wanderlust have worn into my psyche since my first travels, like chariot wheels on a cobbled road, until I have come to accept them as permanent features of who I am. 

I had enjoyed the freedom of travelling by bike, the minimalism, the outdoor life and the difficulty of it. I liked the way its slowness encouraged me to use all my senses. I loved the spontaneous adventures, opportunities and encounters it threw up. Anything less from this trip would be like looking out at the world through a thick dusty window, a trip round the harbour in a glass-bottomed boat after swimming with dolphins. Having cycled round the world I knew that another bike trip would be a step down, a feeble attempt to recreate a memory. So cycling was out. 

I considered some of the things I enjoyed about cycling: the slowness, the simplicity, the physically arduous rhythm of the days. I extrapolated these on to their logical conclusion. How could I do something even slower, simpler and more miserable than cycling? Slow. Simple. Miserable... 

I would walk. 

The last piece of the jigsaw was where to walk. I liked the simple idea of walking from one coast to the other. I appreciate clear expeditions that can be explained fully in a sentence or two. Better still if they can actually be planned in a sentence or two2. I also fancied following a river, preferably a river with history and mystery and colour. Every river is taking a journey, one it has been on day and night for thousands and thousands of years. I find that fascinating. Pick any river on the planet and you will find an interesting journey. 

I didn’t have enough time to walk right across the top of India. So I guessed how far I could walk in the time available then worked south on a map until I found the latitude that corresponded with that distance. And then I went and did it. My trip was not far removed from grabbing a map, closing my eyes, jabbing my finger and going wherever it decreed. That’s the way to have an adventure. Better still: grab a globe, spin, point, go!  

It mattered little where I went. The important thing was just to go. The downside of this approach was that I did not see the Taj Mahal, nor all the other metaphorical Taj Mahals that India is blessed with. I’d love to see them one day. But on this trip I just wanted to experience normal India. Normal people, doing their normal things in normal landscapes. Normal people with dignity and self-respect. I didn’t want guidebooks telling me what to see, what to think and how many coins to hand down from my air-conditioned tour coach to the grubby hands of cute little poor kids. I wanted to get deeper than that. 

I look at my reflection in the small plastic mirror hanging from a nail. I pass my hand across my scalp. A spray of water rises from the cropped stubble. Number 2 all over. It feels strange. I look strange, different. 

My wife cut my hair the evening before I flew to India. She did it to humour me, for she thinks I look daft as a skinhead. I agree with her but I still like it. Shaving my head is a tradition at the start of my adventures. She ran the clippers and her soft hands over my head. My hair and ‘Normal Me’ fell to the floor around our feet in our London flat. Cutting my hair is partly pragmatic and partly symbolic. It’s about leaving things behind. It’s a new start. It’s a simple indicator, as the hair begins to grow back, of how long I have been on the road. It’s a reminder that I am going away to simplify things. Going where vanity and fashion are irrelevant and only personal performance is important. And it is a demand to myself to toughen up again and to stop taking myself too seriously. 

Some friends had lived in India for years. They invited me for home-cooked Indian food and to discuss ideas for my trip. They also invited a couple who had lived and travelled in India for two decades. I took off my coat and was handed a frothing bottle of Cobra beer. 

I felt that this evening would be crucial in determining whether my idea to walk across India had a future. R 

I walk back into the bedroom, the air cool on my wet body. Goosebumps rise on my arms. From the cold, I presume, though I am also anxious now about the day ahead. It’s the nervousness of stepping out into the unfamiliar with no knowledge of what the day may bring. 

It’s time to get a move on. 

The early signs were not encouraging. I looked down at the bubbles in my beer. I had just described my plans to the room in their entire detail. 

“I want to, er, walk, er, from one coast of India to, er, the other. And maybe follow a river.” 

That was it. 

This incisive briefing did not catalyse spontaneous applause, tossing of garlands, dabbing of tears or a standing ovation. Instead there was silence. Only a short silence, but one that was mere moments away from becoming embarrassing. 

Tha

“Maatraan thottathu malligaikku manam irukkum.”
“The far-off jasmine flower smells sweeter.” 

Author’s Note 

First of all, here’s what this book is not:
• A book about India.
• A chronological account of a coast-to-coast walk across southern India.
• An epic adventure tale. 

So what is it? Primarily this book is an attempt to articulate my fascination with the open road and the magnetism of the next horizon. I hope it will strike a chord with anyone restless and yearning for a long journey. I wrote it because I spend much of my time on big trips asking myself why on Earth I am doing it. And the answer is often not particularly clear. 

The days are hot, hard and repetitive. I am often lonely, thirsty and tired. Yet I keep coming back for more. What is the enduring appeal of these days that have forged my adult life? They have made me who I am, both the bad and the good. These days have created most of my strongest memories and all my best anecdotes. These are the days of clarity that I turn to when I’m looking for answers and direction in my life. And I think to myself, “one day, on the road...” 

I also wanted to try to share what a day on the road is actually like. So this is a tale about a single day on my walk through India, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. I wanted to describe any day on the road, from any journey like this. It could have taken place anywhere, at any time since people began taking on these questing adventures. This is why I have removed all dates, time frames and names. Everything in this book is true. I have only re-ordered the incidents to build up my “day”. It’s a bit like Morecambe and Wise. They defended their terrible piano playing by saying they had “all the right notes, although not necessarily in the right order.” 

Most travel and adventure writing focuses on the occasional extraordinary stuff that happens amongst all the humdrum ordinariness. By definition, these incidents are not how most of the time on the journey is spent. The greatest expeditions in history are nothing more than a string of single days, most of them pretty uncomfortable and mundane. Perhaps long adventures are about nothing more than mining for the extraordinary? I don’t think so. The average day on the road, the hundreds and thousands of normal days that make up the majority of my adventures, has a magnetism that draws me back time and time again. The terrible food, the sore feet, the repetitive conversations, the fungal rashes and the pummelling heat. The happiest days of my life. Any day, any journey. One day on the road. 

There are many reasons why I chose to self-publish There Are Other Rivers. It may be interesting to share some of them here. I self-published my first book. I didn’t do it through choice. I did it because no agents or publishers were interested in my story about cycling round the world. Trying to get my self-published book stocked in bookshops on a meaningful scale was futile and frustrating. Eventually though I found a publisher and began selling books in the traditional way. I will continue to do this where I deem it appropriate.
Fast-forward five years and five books and I am choosing to return to self-publishing. Why?
I love bookshops but they account for a tiny percentage of my book sales. Almost all my sales are online or at my talks. This book will not be for sale in any bookshops. What I lose by that I make up with the freedom I gain. Self-publishing gives me total control. I can share the story however I want. This is a linear, chronological journey but I wanted to share it in a non- linear way. That might not be sensible. It probably won’t appeal to a mainstream audience. It may not even be a good idea. But it was my idea and I am willing to stand by it. I have produced this book as a Foldedsheet “mappazine” (which I really like), as a book of photography, a Kindle version, a PDF download, an audio book and even as a good old fashioned “normal” book. The schedule for getting all of this work done was determined solely by how hard I chose to work, how much coffee I drank and how little sleep I could survive on. 

I wrote this book myself. I edited it and proof red it two. I will do all of the sales and marketing on my own. I acknowledge that the book would definitely have been better with the help of an editor, a proofreader and well-chosen test readers. But my walk through India was alone. I accepted that out there I would stand or fall by myself. This project is the same. It is risky. It is a bit stupid. But there are no excuses to hide behind and I like that. Self-publishing is an opportunity for simplicity, hard work and personal responsibility. Exactly like the journey I am writing about. 

Another important aspect of self-publishing is that it can provide value for money, cutting out all sorts of middle men. I have priced all the versions of There Are Other Rivers as reasonably as possible. I am aware that this is only a short story and that I am not Shakespeare. But I hope that you feel it is value for money. Get in touch if you don’t and I will send you a refund. 

The internet makes self-publishing so simple. This returns a degree of power to normal people. I can never compete for the publishers’ penny against celebrity travel authors or people who have had their trips on the telly and then dashed off a hasty book. Self-publishing gives a voice to people who have an interesting story, though perhaps one that will only appeal to a small niche. I am not a famous author hidden away behind PA’s and PR teams. Send me an email or get in touch on Twitter. Tell me what you think of the book. I’ll reply in person. 

On the subject of the internet and social media, one of the hardest parts of self-publishing is informing a wide audience about the book. I would be extremely grateful if you could help spread the word about There Are Other Rivers: tell your friends or mention it online. Most helpful of all would be if you were willing to leave a quick rating and review on Amazon for this or any of my other books. I’m not looking for fake feedback – leave your honest opinion! If you already have an Amazon account this will take you less than a minute. 

I hope you enjoy There Are Other Rivers. Thank you! 

Alastair Humphreys 
England, November 2011 

Alastair Humphreys walked across India, from the Coromandel Coast to the Malabar Coast, following the course of a holy river. Walking alone and spending the nights sleeping under the stars, in the homes of welcoming strangers or in small towns and villages, he experienced the dusty enchantment of ordinary, real India on the smallest of budgets.

There Are Other Rivers tells the story of the walk through an account of a single day as well as reflecting on the allure of difficult journeys and the eternal appeal of the open road.