Travelling and Extension

Dear all,

For five weeks now I had been in tortoise mode - living only with what I could carry on my back. Nearly every night I was in a different bed, with a slightly different noisy air conditioner, sleeping companions on rotation, a variety of hopes and aspirations for the next day and consistently excellent food.

At first it was difficult. My companion annoyed me, or the noise from the aircon kept me up, or I'd spent the day with people I wasn't fond of. In my haphazard movements and absent minded wanderings I'd forget to pack things and leave things behind - to date a phone, two hats, a pair of sleeping shorts and a Danish sweater, of which one hat and a phone have found their way back to me. Sometimes I'd miss my friends, my ex-wife, just one beer after work.

But then I realised a month had passed, and England had receded far into my mental horizon, with the exception of those people and pasts poignant and pointed enough to push themselves in my present thoughts. I was a man with "single-serving friends", to use the phrase from Fight Club repeated by one traveller, a phrase that immediately presented itself as apt. I was "seeing the world", and like the view from a window of a fast train, nothing remained long enough to become familiar, accepted or dull. The impressions I received on a daily basis were unpredictable, bewildering and exciting in their variety, and slightly addictive, especially when mixed with the many stories of unvisited countries passed on by the many fortunates who seemed to have spent the past few years seeing the distant and alien - Bhutan, Chile, Burma, Mongolia, Georgia. With my possessions in storage, no job, and no partner, everything seemed possible. To qualify that slightly, travelling in any country I chose seemed possible. Very little else could be guaranteed.

Tortoise mode was easy. Just as easy as doing a day's work, cooking a meal, watching TV on my 42" TV then going to bed to sleep on a comfortable mattress in a room of a suitable temperature. It was even much simpler than such a life. I didn't need to go home. There was no deadline for return I had to meet. My affairs had been dissolved yet everything that mattered most would still be there when I returned. I wasn't home sick, besides occasional longing for a cup of coffee and a chat with an old friend. All I needed to do is continue paying my storage bill, £110 a month.

I had read and talked about the Mumbai to Chennai leg on the truck in China. Cleverly and helpfully trucks have a brochure in the bookshelf and its possible to book further overland trips whilst you are on your current one. It's especially easy to simply not leave a truck and to cancel a flight from Mumbai to Heathrow.

Mumbai to Chennai would consist of more India, a country I had only just begun getting to know but which I felt confident would be a source of endless fascination to me - especially their religions and their relation to it. I knew the itinerary would include many beaches, the kind of tropical beach and tropical repose I tried and failed to find with my wife in Malaysia the previous year. Weighing it all up there were many reasons to continue travelling and no reason to stop.

I had one reservation - the random selection of twelve people on my next truck. If I didn't like them or get on well with any of them, as I had with a more than sufficient number of people on my last truck, then I would have to make do for five and a half weeks. I decided to take the risk.

Stephen