The road to Bodmin Moor across Lady Down, with Brown Willy in the distance (click to enlarge)

Written on 14 May 2003, 5 years ago.

• View a map of this day's walk
• Distance walked today: 14.5 miles
• Walking time: 0810-1630
• Weather: Sunny but windy
• Total distance so far: 92 miles
• Percentage of walk done: 8.3%

Bodmin Moor has an image problem. There aren't many places ending in 'Moor' that keep the cockles warm, but Bodmin Moor is one of those whose very name conjures up images of beasts, ancient legends and desolate inns in the middle of nowhere. In the sunshine, though, Bodmin Moor is a pussy cat, and luckily I had sunshine all day today. True, there was a savage north wind that whistled through the rock stacks and made my ears throb, but given the unpredictability of Bodmin's weather, I got off lightly.

The moor is split in half by the thundering A30 as it cuts from the northeast corner of the moor to the southwest, and when it comes to tourist attractions the northern half most definitely pulls the short straw. The southern half boasts the most impressive rock stacks (the Cheesewring and Stowe's Hill); the best legends (Dozmary Pool is the lake where the Lady of the Arthurian Lake reputedly handed over Excalibur); the best folk story (the Hurlers, a rock formation near the village of Minions, is apparently all that remains of a team of men who were frozen in granite for the heinous crime of playing sport on a Sunday); the best hermit story (Daniel Gumb, a self-taught mathematical hermit, lived in the Cheesewring, where he carved his name and Euclid's 47th theorem into the granite); and the best religious story (in the 1930s the lonely and obviously loopy Reverend Densham of Warleggan Church preached to a congregation that was made out of cardboard).

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Our first view of land after a month on the sea; incredibly, we could smell the Gambiers before we could see them (click to enlarge)

Written on 13 May 1997, 11 years ago.

The journey to the Gambier Islands was as near to a living hell as I have ever been. I had never been sailing on the open ocean before, and I discovered early on that there'd been a reason for that. I hated it.

The final stages before leaving involved shopping for supplies – a total of about NZ$1400 at Pak 'n' Save, in eight baskets, covering us for five months for items that would be expensive in French Polynesia, like canned food, and about three or four months for everything else – and finishing off all those little jobs that had to be done. I'd spent a total of about four weeks on the boat, painting it when it came out of the water, working on all sorts of jobs from stripping plastic off the rails to fixing electrical switches in the bathroom, and by the time we finally got out of Whangarei, I was getting pretty impatient. There's always too much to do on a boat, but four weeks was getting ridiculous. Luckily the immigration man was very understanding, and didn't give a hoot about my lack of visa.

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Indian bureaucratic power trips can make you feel completely insignificant, but rise above them and you'll win in the end (click to enlarge)

Written on 13 May 1998, 10 years ago.

Did I mention the Toy Train? I sure did, and I thought at the time that it would be my last train story, because up until this point my experience with Indian Railways had been moderately painless. Until Siliguri, that is...

The three of us, by now thick as thieves, took the jeep down from Darjeeling to Siliguri on Tuesday 12th May, hoping to be able to book a train ticket to Varanasi on the overnight train. I knew that the train would almost certainly be full for that night, but having had no real problems with booking a ticket before (except for Bhopal to Gorakhpur, but that was due to Rama's birthday) I reckoned we'd be all right for the night after.

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Darjeeling is one of the few hill stations that's entirely built on a slope (click to enlarge)

Written on 12 May 1998, 10 years ago.

Darjeeling is one of India's most famous hill stations, renowned of course for its tea. Most of the hill stations I've visited – the Cameron Highlands, Kodaikanal, Dieng and so on – are situated in valleys, with a pleasant town centre surrounded by hills studded with beautiful residences. Not so Darjeeling: this hill station lives at an altitude of 2134m on a west-facing slope, which makes it easy to work out which direction you're facing, but it also makes exploring feel like a workout on a step machine.

The town itself is fairly large. From above, Darjeeling looks like most Indian dwellings, with rusty tin roofs, ugly black water tanks and washing draped just about everywhere, but the slope manages to remove the claustrophobic feeling normally associated with most closely cropped and crowded places. Walk up the hill and you can look down on the whole town with views down to the deep valley floor below, and if the weather is clear you can see the western Himalayas dominating the horizon, with Everest just visible as a deceptively diminutive peak among the closer mountains.

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The Toy Train to Darjeeling (click to enlarge)

Written on 12 May 1998, 10 years ago.

Noel Gallagher once wrote, 'These are crazy days but they make me shine,' and he was spot on; India is crazy, but it sure as hell makes me shine. Despite my extensive experience even the railways are totally insane: take the train into Darjeeling, for example. There are no traffic lights on the railway line from Siliguri to Darjeeling; instead, a lone man stands in the middle of the humid jungle waving a red flag. This fits in well with the whole Toy Train experience.

For the train from the plains up to the hill station of Darjeeling is no ordinary train, it's a tiny steam train locally known as the Toy Train. Taking eight timetable hours to screech its way up the 80km to the most famous tea-producing area in India, the journey is a combination of ancient technology and the seemingly archaic Indian way of doing things: at one point we sat on the tracks for what felt like ages, waiting for a group of five workmen to mend the track ahead of us, which had washed away in the rains.

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The Old Inn, St Breward (click to enlarge)

Written on 12 May 2003, 5 years ago.

• View a map of this day's walk
• Distance walked today: 11.5 miles
• Walking time: 0900-1500
• Weather: Blustery showers, some sun
• Total distance so far: 77.5 miles
• Percentage of walk done: 7.0%

What a lovely day's walk this should have been, and once I've managed to filter out all the pain from the memories, I'll look back on it with fondness. From Tregolls Farm I weaved a short distance along the lanes before joining the Camel Trail at Boscarne, which took me to within a mile or so of my destination, St Breward. 11.5 miles is just the right length for an easy day's walk, but not with the blisters I got from yesterday's idiocy. I should have been delighted to set off on the easy walk to St Breward; unfortunately I wasn't.

Even the hiker's high didn't help this time, as the blisters were too sore. Perhaps I should have taken a rest day, but Tregolls is a farm and nothing else, where at least St Breward has a pub. So throwing caution to the wind I winced my way down the lanes and onto the Camel Trail.

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On the way out of Truro you pass under a large viaduct (click to enlarge)

Written on 11 May 2003, 5 years ago.

• View a map of this day's walk
• Distance walked today: 21 miles
• Walking time: 0900-1800
• Weather: Cloudy with sunny intervals
• Total distance so far: 66.0 miles
• Percentage of walk done: 5.9%

If I end up aborting this trip early, then this is the day I'll blame. Today I completely screwed up my route planning, but I didn't realise until too late and now it's created my first major hurdle. I have serious blisters, and they mean business.

This stage was supposed to be one of the easiest on the whole walk, a 13.5-mile jaunt from Truro, through a wood, along the A30 and to the industrial town of Indian Queens, home to Cornwall's china clay mines. A flat 13.5-mile walk should take just a few hours, especially in today's perfect walking weather, and I slept like a log last night in my Truro B&B. The spring in my step as I walked past Truro Cathedral early this morning was for once unaffected by my heavy backpack; at last I felt I'd found my stride.

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A tin mine south of Porkellis (click to enlarge)

Written on 10 May 2003, 5 years ago.

• View a map of this day's walk
• Distance walked today: 17 miles
• Walking time: 0815-1550
• Weather: Sunny intervals
• Total distance so far: 45 miles
• Percentage of walk done: 4.1%

The most remarkable thing about today's walk is how lacerated it has made my feet. Whenever I've walked I've developed an unhealthy obsession with blisters, and at last that obsession has something to work on; I'm the proud owner of a small patch of raw skin on my left Achilles tendon and two blisters on the underside of my right foot that are so deep below the skin that they're thankfully unbroken. They are, however, bloody painful to walk on, and when I walk – or, to be more accurate, hobble – it feels like I'm standing on a couple of drawing pins.

It could have something to do with today's route, which took me from just north of Helston to the centre of Truro, and therefore to the centre of Cornwall; all except about a mile of today's 17-mile hike was on tarmac, and tarmac is really hard on the feet. Or it could have something to do with the fact that I walked 17 miles yesterday as well, which would have softened up my soles, ready for another pounding today. Then again, it could also have something to do with the awful night's sleep I had last night; I think my money's on the latter.

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Looking back towards Penzance (click to enlarge)

Written on 9 May 2003, 5 years ago.

• View a map of this day's walk
• Distance walked today: 17 miles
• Walking time: 0845-1520
• Weather: Sunny intervals
• Total distance so far: 28 miles
• Percentage of walk done: 2.5%

Today I had my first proper day's walk. My 11-mile jaunt from Land's End to Penzance was really just a warm-up, for today's leg was 17 miles, the average daily distance I need to cover if I'm to reach John o'Groats in a reasonable time.

Starting from Penzance under a cloud-speckled sky this morning, I prayed to the weather gods not to be unkind. One of the myriad weirdoes at the Youth Hostel had warned me that the weather was about to turn nasty, but I should have known better than to trust someone with such a casual approach to halitosis; the weather turned out to be perfect for hopping along the Cornish coast, which means that somewhere in the not too distant future lies my first drubbing at the hands of Cornwall's famously temperamental weather... just not today.

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The Principal Dance looks uncannily like a procession at a wedding (click to enlarge)

Written on 8 May 2003, 5 years ago.

• Distance walked today: n/a
• Walking time: n/a
• Weather: Sunny
• Total distance so far: 11 miles
• Percentage of walk done: 1.0%

It was when the B&B owner laughed down the phone at me that I felt my carefully crafted plans fall apart like a chocolate teapot.

'A bed for tomorrow night?' he giggled. 'In Helston? I'm afraid there's no chance of that at all. Tomorrow's the Furry Dance.'

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Posing by the Land's End signpost before setting off for John o'Groats (click to enlarge)

Written on 7 May 2003, 5 years ago.

• View a map of this day's walk
• Distance walked today: 11 miles
• Walking time: 0945-1430
• Weather: Mainly sunny
• Total distance so far: 11 miles
• Percentage of walk done: 1.0%

I never intended to get caught up in something as blatantly uncomfortable as walking across Britain, but back on the sandy beaches of Ghana it had seemed like an excellent idea. That's absolutely the last time I make a life-changing decision when I've enjoyed one too many cold beers in the sun.

Personally I blame West Africa. In October last year I flew out to Senegal for what was supposed to be a year-long trip across Africa, but after three months things were going downhill rapidly; the malaria pills were frying my brain, the travelling was really hard going, I kept getting distressingly ill, I missed my partner Peta terribly, and beneath the brave face I kept putting on, I just knew I had to go home. I'd spent four years planning that trip and giving up wasn't easy, but inspiration struck on the beach. 'I know,' I thought. 'Instead of travelling across Africa, why don't I walk from one end of Britain to the other?'

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The Janaki Mandir in Janakpur, the birthplace of the Hindu goddess Sita (click to enlarge)

Written on 6 May 1998, 10 years ago.

My immersion back into India came earlier than expected: Janakpur is an Indian town in all but geography. Sitting a few kilometres from the Indian border (where only Indians and Nepalese can cross) the town is a pilgrimage site for Hindus, a bustling market town and Indian in everything from the smell to the scenery.

It was glorious walking through the mayhem again. I explored on foot, as is my wont (people rarely sidle up to you and start crazy conversations when you're hurtling along on two wheels) and soon found myself wandering through fields, past pools and around temples, all brimming with people washing, hawking, doing laundry, carrying large bundles on their heads, and generally getting on with life. And in the middle of it all is a mighty strange sight: the Janaki Mandir.

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I replayed the afternoon's events in my head, round and round like a film, but without the happy colours of your average Nepalese blockbuster (click to enlarge)

Written on 6 May 1998, 10 years ago.

Seeing a dead body is one of the most unnerving sights on offer: whenever I think of Hobart in Tasmania, I think of two pale, bloated bodies washing up from a sunken car in the dock, trailing frothy white vomit on the black water. Worse than this is to watch someone die, to go from alive to dead in the blink of an eye, a pleasure I have yet to witness. But surely the worst sight of all must be to see someone still alive, but dying slowly and desperately in front of your very eyes, without a hope for survival; this is why fatal cancer and AIDS are so frightening, because there's no hope. At least a bullet in the head is quick.

Halfway between Janakpur and the Nepal-India border the bus blared its horn and swerved to the right, not unusual behaviour in this part of the world given the number of potholes and slow trucks that need to be overtaken. From my window seat on the left-hand side of the rusting vehicle I was idly staring at the passing scenery, the distant cloud-shrouded Himalayas providing a backdrop to farmers' fields, bullocks pulling ploughs and women carrying bundles of sticks on their heads. But as the bus swerved onto the right-hand side of the road I saw what had caused the driver to punch his horn. In the middle of the eastbound carriageway, a woman was dying.

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The posing sadhus in Durbar Square (click to enlarge)

Written on 4 May 1998, 10 years ago.

A lone white man ambles through the square, looking lost in the way that only tourists can manage. Durbar Square is bustling, but in his mission to take in the atmosphere he's committed the ultimate sin and the touts aren't going to miss a minute. 'Rickshaw, mate, cheap price'; 'Picture? One picture?'; 'Something to smoke...?'; 'Money change, you make money change?'; 'I am very good guide, sir, many things to see in Durbar Square'; 'Just looking, sir, just looking, very good stones'. In Kathmandu, you learn to look occupied all the time if you want to avoid hassle, and he'll learn quickly.

Kathmandu's Durbar Square is a strange collision of worship and wheeler dealing. The pagodas of the scores of temples in the city's cultural centre provide steps for people to loiter on, trading gossip and hatching deals and schemes. For the rickshaw-wallahs it's a place to catch trade, and for the street sellers it's a Covent Garden without licences or regulations; and as if the mayhem caused by milling crowds and street vendors isn't enough, it's also a busy thoroughfare for taxis, bicycles, motorcycles and porters with their huge baskets of goods, bound for some other dusty corner of the city. If Kathmandu has a heart it's here, the source of pulsating arteries that speed off in all four directions of the compass.

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The market next door to Durbar Square (click to enlarge)

Written on 3 May 1998, 10 years ago.

In Kathmandu I floundered, suffering from a lack of motivation that I hadn't known since Bangkok, and yet again the reason was the same: I was getting bored and wanted to get into India. My days centred round battling with the Nepalese email system, wandering aimlessly through various shady suburbs of the city, and killing time in numerous cafés with numerous novels. But I wasn't miserable: I was far too apathetic for that.

It's always interesting, this drifter's equivalent of the dole; because the whole nature of travelling requires self-motivation, it falls down around your head when you lose interest. I found myself wandering through the city, not even turning my head to look at the strange sights, because to me the strange sights no longer felt strange. The dead goat rotting in the gutter was mere street clutter; the half-crazed saffron-clad madman, clutching his trident and dancing in public was, well, just another sadhu; the near misses of rickshaws were familiar pedestrian obstacles; the rampant colour of a Ganesh temple was simply another aspect of another building; the stench of rotting rubbish was just part of the atmosphere; the hassle of the touts was but a fact of life: nothing surprises when apathy strikes. I do, however, have three main remedies for the apathy blues, discovered after long periods of aimlessness in Asia.

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Coconuts can occasionally be seen floating in the ocean, and once they land, they sprout, like this example on Makemo; it's all part of the play (click to enlarge)

Written on 1 May 1997, 11 years ago.

On the Pacific, my dreams seem to become numbed (and by 'dreams' I mean aspirations rather than REM sleep). For some reason, my usual concerns – destination, cash flow, cultural experience, maintaining a reasonable social life, wishing I'd been around in the sixties, the normal sort of thing – become both irrelevant and disconnected when I'm surrounded by sea for weeks, with no contact for so long. The desert was never like this, because however desolate the outback might be, it's teeming with folklore, wildlife, mountains, gorges, strange plants and, above all, amazing people and settlements. The Pacific is totally different, and although I wasn't expecting the sea to be anything like the desert in terms of psychological effect, it's surprised me to feel so detached.

So what if I've got so-and-so dollars in the bank? It's no bloody use to me in the middle of the ocean. So what if I meant to write a letter to blah-de-blah? There aren't any post offices halfway to the Gambier Islands. So what if I haven't showered in two weeks, and all my clothes are smothered in salt crystals? There aren't any people here to meet anyway. The situation is like no other: if it wasn't for the daily radio contact, the whole world could disappear, and we wouldn't have a clue. (In fact, I arrived at the Gambiers knowing that the UK had had a General Election about two weeks before, but I didn't have a clue as to the result. It took quite a bit of effort to find out, too.)

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