I have always found it easier to write words than to speak. There’s something abut writing that helps me to search for the feeling, the mood and I try to then capture that through my words.
Travel inspires writing. When the senses are alive and the mind is open to new experiences, creativity flows and words stream more easily through our expanding consciousness.
This is what happened when I travelled by road to Kathmandu in 1993. I felt as though the muse was travelling with me, and somehow as I travelled through new frontiers, I felt inspired to capture my experiences and observations through words.
33 years later, this same muse has encouraged me to publish these travel diaries and you can read them below.
To give you a flavour of my journey, I have bundled up some extracts below:
Romania (1993)
Romania is a country that inspires. It is the first real sign of a different world. Labourers are chained to the land. They scythe the long grass with sweeping strokes and pitch the hay onto haywains that creak under the weight. Conical haystacks pepper the fields, awaiting the arriving carts as the clatter of horses’ hooves rain down on the dusty road. Cows graze at the roadside, and elegant storks strut proudly in the field. The women are dressed in vibrant frocks and headscarves – greens and reds – almost enriched by the dirt. Plump and grubby, they work alongside their men, leaving their rusty bicycles to rest in the shade of dark thundery skies.
Istanbul, Turkey
Travelling across a continent, you become sensitive to change – landscapes, climates, language, fashion and creed – none is constant. It is geography that defines our culture. Often changes are subtle, hard to define. The points of change are vague. At Istanbul, there is a bridge that spans the Bosphorus, the division of a city, the meeting point of two continents, a symbol of cultural change – a false symbol. Look around you! The waves that splash the Golden Horn, they are Islamic waves in an Asian sea. A new world is already upon us.
Lake Beysehir, Turkey
Travelling overland is hard. It has its discomforts, but when the remoter places come to life, there is immediate compensation. Picture the warm sun slowly falling behind the Dedegol Mountains, shining a shimmering path across the shallow, silty Lake Beysehir. Two young boys are sharing a net, dragging the waters in search for fish. Further on, a lone man bathes up to his waist, washing away the dirt of the day in the twilight hours. The rest is ours, a vast lakeland panorama on a lofty plateau, enclosed by a protective mountain range. This is our home for the night, under clear Cappadocian skies.
Cappadocia, Turkey
An eagle souring high in a Cappadocian sky, what a sight, a bird in flight. Down below a valley – hidden by the rows of vines that cover the earth in lines. Sounds and smells of a Cappadocian clime, marjoram and thyme, the drone of bees that circle with ease, the flowers that shine like jewels in the breeze. Violet and magenta, lilac and crimson and shades that have no names save the beauty that nature gives them. Colours of a skirt that drapes around a woman, toiling in the fields, a woman, alone and alive, bent and double, gathering the grass that rustles in the wind, veiled with a scarf so pale. A valley hidden, hidden from sight save the gaze of that lofty bird in flight. Poplars and pines, conifers and cones, cones of stones, like pillars of salt in a mythical land, so smooth like soft dunes of sand. The sculpture of nature. All this I have seen, to this one place I have been.
Zanjan, Iran
We stopped to buy lunch. I like to help with the shopping. It guarantees contact with the locals in a natural setting. The town has an enormous charm. Small shops line the streets – specialist trades that are fast disappearing in my country – smelters, forgers, cobblers and carpenters. They sit outside on the pavements, busy with activity. A small crowd has gathered, and it gasps in surprise as a squat man reveals the contents of a leather pouch – two slim snakes. He offers me the snakes. I decline. Soon I am explaining a line of poetry to a man trying to learn English. Curious faces observe this man from the West.
Zahedan, Iran
We have travelled for 300 km through uninhabited desert to arrive at Zahedan, an extraordinary town situated in the heart of the Dasht-e–Lut, at the extremity of the Islamic Republic, only half touched by its restrictive culture. The town is so lively, so colourful, so busy, in contrast to the desolation that surrounds it. There is such a diverse mixture of peoples, Iran, India and Baluchistan, all merged into one unique place – truly Asia. The crowds flow through the open streets, chaos on the open streets, children running wild, crates of chickens, bleating goats tethered to poles, beards, black stubble and wisps of white, shops of gold, glittering gold, avenues of stores selling satin and silk in a rainbow of colours all flowing into one brilliant hue, open sacks of powders, nuts, rices and spices, the Orient alive.
Punjab, Pakistan
The place is alive. In the hardship of everyday existence, so much character shines through. Smiling, sweating faces flash past, packed tightly in a rainbow-coloured bus, jangling with metal beads. Boys flock around our truck, shouting and waving, jostling for pride of place. The noise of the place impresses itself on our strained ears. Musical horns and melodious pipes mix with the melancholy of the mosque in an Asian fantasy. The pace of life does not relax. The wheel of the cart just keeps on turning.
North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan
Men swarm the market streets. Turbaned or not, they weave a path through the chaos that surround them. Faces flash past, details plucked from the crowd. A man, bent double, staggers slowly, weighed down by a sack of corn, heavy on his back; chicken, hanging loosely from grubby hands, mutilated murghs, their necks sagging forlornly, snapped in two; bundles of wood strapped to the frame of a bicycle; children playing barefoot in the dirty alleys; a trail of excrement leading down to a cart, stuck fast in the monsoon mud, the shout of the driver, in vain, flies swarm around the sweaty beast, spreading to hunks of meat, rotting slowly in the heat of the day, the head of a cow, stripped of its skin, rancid and nauseating, the pungent power of the Punjab, the policeman’s whistle shrills on high.
Himachal Pradesh, India
Under the watchful gaze of the Himalayas, tumbling with cloud, a waterfall cascades down the mountain slopes, becoming a stream, then a river that tumbles under the stone-arched bridges, smashing through an explosion of green, rampant foliage clinging to every cranny, leaping forth with huge leaves, draping languidly over the open road, as the colourful linen drapes over the sun soaked balconies, crimson and violent, a feminine sign of a more open world. Monkeys look on, clinging to the branches. Men drift past, two on a bicycle. Children sit squatting by the roadside. Then come the towns, the explosion of people, so many people crammed into the dirty buses, clambering on top in the search for space, a metaphor for a nation, expanding beyond expectation.
Old Delhi, India
The faces of Delhi flow past, like a great tide of peoples, an irrepressible river of activity, the inescapable force of motion, India is seemingly a country in a state of permanent exodus, so many people walking the narrow streets, at first an indistinguishable mass of human form, yet the fabric fragments. The faces of India stand out in their diversity – individuals re-assert themselves in a flicker, and then they are gone, etched sharply in my mind.
Uttar Pradesh, India
We have arrived in Orchha. The spirit of adventure is reborn within me. I am sitting in the tower of a ruined Jain temple, over one thousand years old, in what appears to be a deserted city of sacred shrines, half hidden by foliage, the legacy of time. We are on the banks of a river, a flooded river, the Yamuna, sweeping the plain before it, drowning all in its path. It is dark, thunder rumbles angrily, lightning flickers, sheets of rain crash down from the grey expanse that has enveloped us.
You can read more in my full memoirs by clicking on the link below: