We write, and we take pictures. But mostly we write.
words and travel and stuff
Not long after our first exchange Cyclone Thane hit the east coast of India, close to where Max was walking. I managed to get in touch with him again in the days following.
There was a marked change in his mood, and the mood of the walk in general. What had looked like a relatively sedate conclusion to the first stage was now charged with a desperate energy, and also with an increased sense of purpose. But most noticeable to me was also the pain that came with the realization: helping in a situation like this is harder than it seems.
Cyclone Thane has just struck land around Chennai. I wondered if you could give a sense of your experiences of this...
Yes, I was in Thanjavur when I first heard of the cyclone, through my friend Vizzy in Kochi, and then you fed me updates. It was looking like it was going to head inland between Nagore and Puducherry within the following few hours. My route at the time was to head to Kumbakanam then towards Sirkazhi and then northwards to Puducherry and Chennai. From the reports that I was receiving I felt that I should be fairy safe, that the cyclone would be losing strength if not dying out by the time I reached the coast so I was optimistic with my route and my timetable. However, as the hours ticked past during that evening I began to wonder about the effect that the cyclone would have on the villages that will be in the path of the cyclone and the fishing villages along the coast from Nagore northwards. I had no concrete idea about any such villages; the news channels were all focusing on Puducherry and Cuddalore and other larger towns, nothing, from what I was hearing, mentioning the dangers for the villagers, but I knew they would be affected nonetheless. In that moment I decided to alter my route, to head directly to Nagore the following morning. This is a distance of some 80k and would have taken me at least 3 days to walk there. This, to me, was not acceptable. I wanted to get there fast, to help those in trouble and in need. So the following morning I took a bus that dropped me some 20km west of Nagore.
To be honest, I saw no real damage. There were bent over reeds in a few places but nothing for me to help out with. Reaching Nagore, still no signs of real damage. Heading north along the cost I was very vigilant, and didn’t slip into any of the previous stillness I had talked about.
As far as Chidambaram I saw no sure signs of the aftermath of Thane. Upon leaving Chidambaram the aftermath showed, dramatically and devastatingly. Along the roadside trees were fallen, huge trees buckled and twisted, power cables and posts dropped like dominos. Then I came across the villages and the damage was frightening. Wicker houses crushed, ripped apart. Trees had dropped on homes, on vehicles, on everything. A huge loss of food. No lives lost, thank goodness. There was one village like this after another after another. No power since it struck, no water for 3 days as there was no power for pumps. A government water tank had brought water 3 days ago but this was running dry.
I helped clear debris here and there, but I quickly realized that this was not offering much help, if any at all. I got very frustrated not being able to do anything in a constructive way. I had to find a secluded spot before breaking down in tears.
Like many people I’ve seen the effects of strong storms, of tsunamis, of natural disasters on the TV and I thought I knew what I was doing, and what I was going to do. Well, no. Being amid it is way different to watching it on TV. My emotions were at their wits end, frustration, heartbreak, and devastation, unbelievable to witness at first hand.
I thought that I would be able to help more than I did. Not in the way of saving lives – this never crossed my mind – but in helping to rebuild homes, help with crops, just be more useful. I really had no idea what to expect and didn't think too much about what I might come across.
The truth is that you can't just waltz in and start helping. There is some order in what needs to be done and how it is done and me standing there wondering what I think should be done or trying to be a part of the team doing this or that just didn't work. I was a hindrance, not a help.
When I realised this, that one cannot just help in any which way, I went and sat down and tried to figure out how I could help in a way that was useful. There I decided to get water and grain from Cuddalore.
Upon reaching Cuddalore the damage that was there was plain to see. I looked for lodgings first so I could unload my gear and be hands free to get rice, grain and water from the stores. But no stores would serve me. If there was anything to be sold it would go to locals, not a foreigner. Power was out in most places and I was unable to find lodging anywhere. So I decided to try Puducherry, 23km further north.
And when I did get what I could, yes, its like, well, where do I start!! I went back to the villages that I thought might recognize me from the previous day, three in total, and split the supplies between them.
I learned that it is very difficult to help being an outsider and the best thing to do is watch, observe and listen.
(you can read another account and see Max’s video of this situation on his Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/onestepatatime.in)
*
Another day or two passed, Max continued toward Chennai and the completion of the first stage, and, with some space and time for reflection, I had some final questions.
How has this first stage been different from how you expected it to be and what will you take with you into the next one?
The physical and emotional sides have been more intense than I imagined. I also didn't expect to receive the media attention I did, and I do feel that the responsibility I had for One Step has grown during the course of this journey.
Practically I was not expecting to travel inland. This offered a change in climate and dilution of population that played on my motivation and willpower to some degree.
I think I can reassess my 'luggage' and make it more streamlined, and I think I need a full-time back up team in future. The team I have had have been wonderful but they have their own lives and can’t be there all the time. I realise I need to find something more permanent for the next stage.
It has been difficult for me to always film what's going on as the filming often takes me away from being natural, in doing what I would do without one hand on the camera.... Not sure if this is something different to what I expected but it is something I need to work on.
Do you feel you need to document everything on film?
I feel that I should show as much of the journey as possible, especially parts that stand out, so that people feel a connection. I feel it’s a part of my responsibility - that growing responsibility that I mentioned earlier.
I guess I do feel obliged to update as often as I can, yes, and when there is a gap of a couple of days I do feel guilty...
The reason I'm asking this is because it brings an interesting question to my mind about the nature of the walk. Is the walk the thing itself, or is it what you find within the walk that is important?
Well, it is about walking through every state. I want to do this to give equality to the help that I would like to offer. I don't want to not cross one state, as that would be rude in a way. I don't actually care about the personal challenge anymore; I just want to treat/help each state along the way to keep the balance, if that makes sense? If I wasn't able to walk for any reason then I would travel by different means just to reach out to each state and complete the mission of One Step.
So it's a very different thing than someone climbing Everest or walking the length of the Amazon mainly just because it's there and it’s a challenge?
Yes, very different. It's about me discovering India, my roots and my connection. It’s about giving aid and about bringing people together of the same mind - hence Facebook. It has been a very natural mission and discovery. It was happening without it being chased, if you know what I mean. Nature came into effect, the universe, my understanding of my roots, the charity, the people that I was meeting...I mean, it’s been overwhelming on every level possible. So, yes, I'm not walking around India simply because its there to be done, I’m trying to do something more.
I’d heard about Max long before I met him. Within the insular little bubble of the tourist town we lived in he was something of an enigma; English but somehow not quite, he seemed to have money but never showed it, didn’t make friends or mix with the crowd but appeared to know everyone all the same, and always, in the background of things, left the impression of having some influence. Physically he lived apart too, for while most of us rented rooms in villagers’ houses as close to the beach as possible, he lived in a large apartment building on the edge of town, as if he were bored by it all, or knew something better.
There were enough people who didn’t like him. He had a reputation for rudeness and an aversion to shaking hands bordering on the pathological that did nothing to dispel this idea. He had (past tense, because I’m certain it’s gone by now) a habit of not smiling, yet when he did finally smile it was bashful and childlike and changed his face completely. He was (and still is, despite the inevitable weight loss) big and tough looking, and it’s the reason kids living beside railway tracks shout “Bodyguard” at him as he walks by.
I didn’t realise he was half Indian until a year or so after I got to know him. By that point “Beachenders”, as we sometimes called the soap opera our lives descended into, had run its course, at least for me. Some of the crowd who’d built our little scene returned to London and elsewhere never to return, some settled down, more just continued their lives with my presence in them shown to be nothing more than a passing blip. I’d moved away myself, first to Delhi and then Mumbai, to try and make a life, and watched new travellers come and go from afar, with an odd mix of nostalgia, benevolence, weariness and snobbish superiority.
I stayed in touch with Max though. In fact, of all the relationships built in those days, ours was one of the only ones that didn’t crumble. The earlier revelation about his heritage had cleared up a lot of the initial mystery about him, and explained how he’d lived in Goa so easily, how he happened to run a gym and a furniture shop and other business interests, and how he’d been able to deal with locals as if he was one. But it led to other questions too. Why was he so secretive about everything? Why did he hide his generosity and sensitivity behind a tough man’s disguise? Why did he lead this double life, with almost a sense of shame about his Indian blood?
As he opened up more and more, details about his past came to light that helped explain some things. He grew up in South London with his single mother, originally from Bangalore, with his German father long gone. Mother and son (along with twin sister and younger brother) lived together with his Indian grandparents above their shop. He suffered full deafness for almost a year when he was ten and partial deafness for the years around that, leaving him to fail his 11+ exams and be placed in a "special school" for the handicapped and delinquent. He was bullied as a result, and shy and quite scrawny. Racism in London was rife at the time, and the pain of this was no doubt compounded by an uncertainty of identity, of never quite being sure where he belonged. You see none of this when you look at him now of course. You only see Max with the body an action star, and it’s this perception he's projected into the world. But he built this body later, when he was in his twenties, and beneath it all, if you know how to look, you can still make out the wounded boy and know that his rudeness is really shyness and that it’s nothing the body can ever completely take away.
Into all of this came the walk, which is the reason I’m writing this now. I’m pleased to say I had something to do with its inception, although I admit I don’t remember the conversation we had at the time. Apparently he was talking about doing something for charity, a walk perhaps, and into this I said flippantly: “Well if you’re going to do a walk why don’t you just walk the whole of India?” Sure, most people would dream of doing it, but not many would follow it through.
Looking back I realise he’d been itching to do something meaningful for a long time, trying to find something bigger than himself, something that would help other people while helping him find his place in the world. He’d tried something on a smaller scale a few years earlier, a garbage collection initiative in South Goa, but that had fallen apart when the shopkeepers wouldn’t put up the necessary (very small) amount of cash they were each required to give to make it workable.
When he told me about the walk the first thing I thought was “he has the willpower and the determination, but how will he survive the food?” You see he drank coffee in the morning and ate western food all day long. In fact, for as long as I’d known him he’d refused to even touch Indian food. Knowing what I do now it seems another pathology, another rejection of the days above his grandparents’ shop. And so the idea of him eating rice and dal and idli was ludicrous.
But, like I said, I never doubted his determination. And as the idea took shape and became a reality, and the necessary preparations forced him to sit down to poori bhaji and chai in the mornings (alongside the copious amounts of paperwork required for registering a charity), his Indian side began to grow and grow and gradually work its way free.
The walk itself is as simple as it is ambitious: 20,000km through every state of India. At first I believed it was only the walk that mattered: breaking some record or being the first to do it, or doing it because it was there or because he was restless and didn’t want a 9-5 life. I thought the charity bit was a noble addition to the main event, but I was wrong about that. The way he explained it the walk was never about him.
But it was about him. It was (and is) a way to reconcile a side of his nature with the whole, a side that has been submerged and irreconcilable for so long. He came to Goa (which is forever India-but-not-quite) and he clung to the edges for a while, peering across the border into his motherland, secretly weighing up the odds. Now he’s let go. This isn’t unique of course. Plenty of NRIs, half Indians, OCIs, PIOs and plain old white travellers have come to the motherland to “find themselves”. Each one tends to believe his or her story is unique. Max has never said this; he's never fallen into the trap. But, regardless of the cliché, it’s true. It’s him discovering a part of himself in a place that’s a part of him; it’s there in him wanting to help the needy, sometimes naively, often bravely, but always sincerely. And it’s there in him wanting proudly to belong.
*
So, jump forward almost a year. I’m on the way to see him early in the morning on the day he’s due to start the walk, November 1st 2011. Panaji, the Goan capital city – in truth a half-beautiful, half-shabby coastal town, depending on where you stand – is very, unseasonably, hot. Inside his hotel room the AC is turned on full but Max is sweating still, dripping with sweat in fact, the perfectly formed beads visible on his forehead waiting to drop. You can almost hear his stomach churning. You can definitely see the rabbit in the headlights of his eyes. He’s packing and repacking his bag, moving things around, picking things up, putting them down again. It’s not that he’s panicking. The fear is there, sure, and the faintly comical sense that he’s only just woken up to what he’s doing, like a boy waking up from a nice dream five minutes before his exam. But really he’s just tired of waiting and all he wants to do now is walk.
We decided to go for a walk around the block then, and that was good for him. We talked about other things, bought some cigarettes and tried to find coffee. When we got back to the room I took a couple of photos. He was supposed to be going to a certain place alongside the Mandovi River very soon where the press and supporters and the charities he was supporting would be waiting to send him off. We joked about skipping it all, just getting the backpack on, going out of the hotel and walking in the opposite direction, down an alleyway, the Hollywood option of joining the highway and becoming a wanderer, spotted twenty years later wearing nothing but a loincloth and a flowing white beard, not knowing his own name. But it wasn’t an option, and the walk was not just his walk anymore.
I think that first day was the hardest. He’d used up so much adrenaline by the time he hit the road that he was exhausted right away, and by the time he reached Margao in the evening he was a wreck. It didn’t help that the walk started close to midday, with the sun beating down on a hot, polluted highway, full of tourist taxis stopping to ask him if he wanted a ride. It was a false start in many ways and it wasn’t until he left Goa – his comfort zone – that it really started to come alive.
I followed his progress all the way through Karnataka and Kerala by text and email and his Facebook page. Then, after he left the southern tip of the country and was heading back up toward Chennai on the east coast in late December, I managed to arrange an email interview with him, sending a bunch of questions that he wrote up and emailed back to me over the next couple of days. Here it is:
The first thing I wanted to ask is how you’ve adapted in general to life on the road.
I’d say that while my body's rhythm has accelerated due to the daily walks I feel that my heart has slowed down and I’ve become calm in my mind and calmer generally within. Even though the pace and environment is tough externally my thoughts drift in and out of me, they go like gentle waves. I have more of a feeling with things, which settles me; there’s no need to rush, although I do still walk at a fast pace if there’s distance to cover. I’d say that although the sun blazes down and I’m still in a constant sweat, I don't feel it anymore.
How have you dealt with the various injuries, bites, strains and pains that have no doubt come your way? Have you discovered any local remedies or advice?
I’ve been lucky with bites; I've have had no bites other than the odd mosquito. I keep indoors when I can during mosquito time at dusk and if outside I keep away from sitting water. For swollen feet, which I get when I walk over 35km, I place my feet in a bucket of hot and then cold water as advised by many locals. Mustard oil, also advised by a local, helps to soothe my feet after the buckets.
With injuries, strains and pains I massage the area if I can get to it and stretch the area around it by simple stretching movements. I monitor the area as I go from day to day and decide how best to deal with it. There’s a possible trapped nerves that needs to be endured until I reach Chennai. The list of 'injuries' is as follows: swollen feet, blisters, left eye infection causing mild loss of sight, sore hips / shoulders in general, right thigh (that nerve), bruised toenails (decline walks and railway lines).
Do you like your days?
I like my days and I don't like my days! I first liked getting up to walk with the sunrise but now, as the days have worn me down, I have trouble getting up at 5am and want to stay in bed. But then, when I do see the sunrise, it sort of wakes me up and I am always glad to be up.... I think that since leaving Kanyakumari the tempo, the effort and the unknown is much greater. Before Kanyak I knew I would get food and drink pretty much whenever I needed it and a bed as I was walking through populated areas. Now, since Kanyak, that's changed. The roads are endless, the sun is ruthless, there is hardly a soul around except those that I take pics of, literally. It is a lonely road and it is really hard to keep motivated. I scream and shout at myself half of the time just to keep it going, to keep to the pace knowing that I have 50km to go before hitting the next place where I might or might not find a bed.
Before Kanyak I was meeting so many people, so many ideas came to life through these people and I loved getting up to see what the day would bring...the opportunities where I could help someone, a family, an orphanage etc. Now it has flipped a little; it is more focused on me getting through each day, almost survival of my will and determination.
What do you think about?
Thoughts seem to pop up from nowhere. The mission is always there in the background of course. But I think about my mum a lot, about her life in India, about my grandmother’s life in India. It seems more real now; I can taste it rather than just imagine how it might have been. I can see them in reality, doing the things that their stories told. My nan always liked milky, sweet tea, for example, and this is chai, but I didn't put that together until this walk. Also so many families running little shops, chai shops, sweets, soft drinks, I see how it translates to the Indian shopkeepers in the UK. Something that I was ashamed of because of the racism but now I get for what it is, if that makes sense.
I think of life, of nature, of being as one with all things. I get angry with all the trillions that have gone in the past to alleviate poverty but poverty is still rife.
I get angry knowing that India has the largest deposit of black money than any other country yet it also has such a high percentage of poverty as well.
I drift into silence, into nothingness a lot. I almost cry when I’m in this state of no thought.
Do you miss anything?
I cannot say that I miss much. I miss intimacy - not sex - intimacy in holding hands, in a kiss, in a hug... I miss having a friend to talk to when I am suffering or when I am excited. I miss sharing moments.
When you first enter a new town or village what do you look out for? What's your general routine and how do you go about finding a room? What are some of the rooms you've stayed in like, best and worst?
I can tell when a town is coming up from a few things: the odd rickshaw that becomes a few, the web of electricity cables, then a school, a higher population. A railway station is also a good sign. As I first walk down the main street I look to see down the side streets, how far back they go. Then I check for a bank, banks do not get put there without the need. I then look for a shop to get a chai or anything to start a conversation - they usually speak first, like where are you from etc, then it gets to me walking and looking for a place to sleep. I have had places that are infested with ants and cockroaches, shit on the washroom floor or smeared on the walls! In these I can't sleep and this has an effect on the next couple of days of walking. Other times I will spend more for a decent room if there is one - I need my sleep, I need to feel comfortable to some degree just for my health.
Have you picked up any new habits or rituals?
If passing next to a banyan tree I will place my right palm on it for a second before moving on. I will always place my right hand on my heart in greeting, a namaste as well… I’ve never liked handshakes anyway. I always pay with my right hand now. Now I drink chai, not coffee. I will always show the human subject of a photo the photo and ask their approval and if it’s ok, or ask before taking the shot. I will pause at the morning puja, let the music of it in; let the meaning flow before continuing to walk as I touch my heart with my right hand. I will always want to touch someone that I have spoken to, like to brush them on the shoulder, in thanks, to feel their energy, to pass it between each of us. I don't always do this though, it’s a feeling.
And any new food or drink?
I haven’t discovered anything new so much as been reacquainted with my mum’s cooking! The samba, the chutney, the poori and so much more that’s normal for everyone. And chai has become a morning ritual.
After Kanyakumari you’ve left the coastline, something you hadn’t originally planned to do. For so many people the coast gives security, comfort, direction. Now the weather has changed, the people are fewer. Do you feel any nervousness about this?
Yes, I was nervous about leaving the coast. The shoreline was my friend, I knew which way to go and I could pitch my tent on the beach if I needed to in relative safety. Now I’m in open range with not a clue which way to go except north/north east. I feel like I am in a wilderness - the Wild West almost with little ghost towns popping up here and there. However I’m getting used to it, even if still a little apprehensive about what’s out there...
This season I've started teaching yoga at the Yab Yum Resort in Asvem, North Goa. The photo below is of the beautiful shala. I'm tempted to say "my" beautiful shala, but it's useful to remind myself it's just on loan. One day though it would be nice to build one from scratch.
Most Diwali fireworks come in a standardised packaging: Extremely fair girl who could pass for Indian but actually isn't (ie Katrina Kaif) smiling out of the box with the wind blowing in her hair while a big colourful explosion happens behind her - it's something subconscious about sex and death perhaps, about finding a pretty girl and blowing her up into the sky.
So it was with great delight that we found this different, altogether more rugged, type of marketing device, an intriguinging mix of the sacred and the very profane.
Over the last year we've been updating text and photography for two Thomas Cook guidebooks: Goa and Delhi, Agra, Rajasthan. Both were released last month. You can pick them up at Amazon of course, but better to go and support your local bookshop if you can and buy in the flesh.
A teacher friend of ours, Karolina Zakrzewska, expressed interest a couple of weeks ago in a getting a few portfolio shots of her yoga practice. After some discussion we decided to try something different: instead of making the asanas the sole focus of the shot as is usually the case, we decided to turn them into just another element in a wider Goan landscape, incorporating the rising sun as much as possible. As the shots went on, a kind of Hindu pop-art aesthetic developed, with the lurid, over saturated and sometimes surreal paintings of Krishna in mind.
Ten years ago, more than ten years ago in fact, all alone at the age of 18, I was on the Goa-Manali trail, in the last great days of the party scene. In Goa the 10pm loudspeaker ban was in force, so we partied until 10 then waited for the message to arrive with the location of the secret party, and charged off to that location on our bikes, sometimes to dance most of the night, sometimes to get shut down again by a police raid. In the mountains, later in the season, things were much the same. There was the famous (in my mind at least) three day Jalori party, a few kilometres hike from Jalori La. Foolishly I went up there with nothing but a tshirt on, and spent the most painful night of my life trying not to freeze to death while the party raged all around me. A giant bearded Norwegian hippy tried to convince me that my inner fire could keep me warm, if only I sat with him reciting mantras. Suffice to say that didn't work on me. I trecked back to the pass and caught the morning bus back down the mountain, riding on the roof, dodging tree branches.
Anyway, one day, I'm not entirely sure which one since they all blurred together, I met Jens from Denmark. He always carried a sound recorder and said he made music, and spent lots of time recording both nature and man.
Long story short, about two years later in London he sent me a cd of his eponymous album, Rumpistol. The last track, Hey Man, the one that's now posted above, contains the fruit of one of those afternoon recordings. Listening to it I can clearly recall that room at Vaschist, overlooking the snow-capped mountains, sitting on the bed repeating the phrase he wanted us to say. The voice at the start belongs to a friend, Haruka, who wandered through the world and vanished, so listening to the track keeps her alive for me. Especially since, without her, I would on many occasions, in Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Chandigarh and Vaschist, been lost.
Now years later Jens has his own record label (Rump Recordings) and has released many more records himself. His/Rumpistol's latest EP, Talk to You, released this May, shows how far he's come.
We write, and we take pictures. But mostly we write.
We write, and we take pictures. But mostly we write.
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