#asbhogal

I came across a small town that had a hotel in it. A nice hotel compared to most I had been in and I got indoors with AC. My ear was happy for the change as the humidity was not helping its situation. There were two guys that worked on the reception and I, in my best Hindi/English mixture, explained my situation and they pointed me in the direction of a phone shop.

I got my self down to the shop straight away and explained that I needed a sim card. The guy there was great and could speak English which helped immensely as the technical speak about options of sims, tariffs and pricing was never going to work with my limited skills. we sat for a while and eventually he explained my sim hadn’t been activated because the Indian sponsor I used to register, wasn’t from Assam but Delhi. I in fact needed a local sponsor. He explained that the state had lots of extremists who register hundreds of sims in order to communicate with each other so that was the reason.

I felt like I had hit another brick wall. I sat for a while, as he served the ever growing number of customers that had been waiting and the odd few that were just sat there because a stranger had come to town and people had seen me walking through.

I was trying to think of a way I could get a local sponsor. It came to me,  I told him I would be right back, the reception guys! They seemed like nice guys, so I thought I could ask them. I got back to the hotel and sat around reception talking, laughing and joking with them, then hit them with the question. They went silent, both looked at each other and back at me and said they couldn’t… I was back to square one.

I walked back to the phones shop with my tail between my legs and told the phone shop guy they wouldn’t do it and to throw away the sim application papers I had half filled out. He offered me a conciliatory cup of tea so I accepted. We sat talking about what I was doing for about 20 minutes and talked about his family. By the time we had finished our tea, he turned to me and said “look, what you’re doing is incredible and I want to help, I will be your sponsor, I’ve filled out the paperwork already, lets go have dinner with my family and by the time its done, your sim will be ready”. He could see the grin on my face and as we started walking to the back of his shop to enter his house he told me I better like saag (spinach) because its all that’s been made. I told him its my favourite.

I was introduced to his family. His wife, his mother, mother in law, children, brother and even his brothers in laws. They lived together spread over two bungalows divided by a long corridor the length of each apartment. After spending a few hours there eating and talking, he left and came back in the room with a functioning sim card and told me that he had it registered at the local office as well, which meant I didn’t have to wait for 2 days, but instead it would be working by the evening. It was starting to get dark by now so I decided to head back to the hotel. And as I was getting ready to leave, they presented me with a gift, a tea towel and some food to take away with me. I was overwhelmed by their kindness having only known them for the afternoon, but I said my goodbyes, had some pictures taken and made a move back to the hotel. That night I caught up on news in bed, and fell asleep reading.

As I slowly came through from my night of sleep, I made my usual slow realisation of where I was and the calm serene morning was made better by the following realisation that I now had a functioning sim. Then it was suddenly sent into disarray as the whole room began to violently shake! Laying on my back on the bed I was taken aback and sat up to see the windows rattling in the frames and screams emanating from outside the room.

An evening amongst saints and sinners (Phone-Gate) …Continued

They had now been questioning the boy for hours, they had attracted a crowd from the usual people that came in the mornings, the sun was nearly up and since the kid had been brought back against his will in the early hours of the morning, he had gone from calmly denying it stood up, to having been tied down to the chair and threaten with the use of physical violence. But at a certain point in…

A speedy few weeks spent with thw family and time had flown by, my parents were returning home and a week after that my sister followed them to return home too. Little did I know next time I was to see her she would be a mother and I would be an uncle.

The hunt for a new passport proved to be a battle of wills between me and the British embassy, or more likely the passport office back in Liverpool. Just to dispel any mystery or suspense, what should have taken 6-8 weeks ended up taking 8 months. They would leave it 3 months, quoting “security checks” each time I called enquiring, before sending me curious letters to my address in Delhi, asking me questions such as why I had put my permanent address down as one in the UK. As well as why I had asked for someone else to pick up my passport for me, which isn’t even an option on the form, so I would have needed to write that down specifically. Just to let you know at no point did I have an out of body experience or suffer from any kind of delusional episode and on a separate piece of paper write this request down, you’ll just have to take my word for that.

So many months later whilst it was processing I would decide to start walking to get some kilometres under my belt for when my passport finally arrived (how wrong I would be). 

Joining me would be the budding adventurer I had met whilst applying for my passport renewal… Billy. He was a welsh guy I had met in Delhi, they are a rare breed in India and I can honestly say I’ve never met another welsh guy in India, let alone one who could also speak hindi better than me.

You may be asking why would he want to undertake such a task and I was equally curious. The truth was that many people had begun to show an interest in walking with me, with glancing mentions from different people here and there, of joining me for a few days or a week. He had shown a keen interest to walk with me and whenever I got tired of telling my story again and again to new people, deflecting their bizarre questions, he would take the reins and tell my story for me. He enjoyed it, so why not have him join me and he could make it his story as well. We set off with the idea of getting about 600kms done from Karnal to Lucknow.

The walk began and he was carrying with him in his rucksack two bottles of water, a roll mat, fly netting and a change of clothes. The first few days were ok, we managed to get a decent amount of kms done, and we would sleep in a mixture of places from camping, motels and roadside cafes. His hindi made him a success with the people of India. He was an anomaly in a country obsessed with light skinned Europeans. It was hard not to be a bit jealous to begin with. It was safe to say that even though our backgrounds were similar, both of our experiences in India could not have been further apart from each other. If I spoke Hindi people would laugh because my grammar was off, if he spoke Hindi they would give him free stuff, praise him, in that environment I challenge anyone to not feel the injustice of the situation. With that said it seemed people were willing to put up with more with him about, as long as they were allowed to talk to him we were allowed to sleep at these “dhabas” (road side cafes/restaurants/bars), wash and leave the next day. With them having exchanged numbers with billy in the hope they could stay in contact with him. (This, I would get a dose of, but not till the north east part of India, where a lot of messages sent to me would weirdly be comprised of questionable picture messages from sexually frustrated soldiers living in military camps).

DCIM101GOPRO

We met loads of people, saw strange things and I think he was glad he came, that was until his body began to entertain other ideas. Such as, does his foot really have a need for toe nails. He had got blisters during his walk and there isn’t normally anything you can do for them except let them run their course. So he was greeted with the, normal for Kieran and I, each time you began walking, the first 50 metres of pain until it became bearable and you could walk like a normal human being again. Walking behind him I couldn’t help but smile at the familiar sharp inhaled and exhale whilst swearing into the air “fuck, shit, fuck” coupled with his infamous encouraging catchphrase, which I don’t know if he knew I could hear or not, “come on, stop being such a mincer”. I think back now and smile at the time we spent together walking. He helped take my mind off the irritation that was the passport situation and watching him in what could only be described as his ideal environment, talking to people, entertaining them, shouting “Tinder?” at girls walking by and holding hands with elderly people whilst walking down the street. It’s safe to say that Billy’s India was a magnificent place to witness.

A few kms away from a town one late afternoon we were stopped by a man on a motorbike who asked where we were from, he then asked what religion we were. I told him sikh and billy told him none of the above. He replied, that because I looked like a hindu or muslim not to go through the next town because there were tensions between the two and bad things would happen. We tried to reassure him and he seemed unsatisfied by our casual attempts, offering us a lift through the town on the back of his bike, for obvious reasons we declined. But I did offer Billy the option to take the lift and to meet me on the other side of the town, he declined and we settled on trying to find a camping spot before the sun went down, instead of walking through the town at night. We found a spot just off the road into a field that had been partially harvested, leaving us a nice right angle of crops to camp behind hiding us from the road and other people who were maybe walking, but behind that about 40 metres away was a small stream that looked like it doubled as a quite well worn path. Safe to say Billy didn’t get much sleep that night, where as I slept quite well. I think I was used to sleeping in those conditions, knowing I’d need rest for the next day but the man stopping on the motorbike seemed to through billy off his stride, along with the heat, the uneven ground, the stream path and his white mosquito net, being completely visible in the moonlight.

So India was a hard slog. Every day is a crazy blend of traffic, curious locals and excruciating heat. Out of Kieran and me, I was the one good with heat, but the heat in India is some other beast. I found myself at times having to stop every couple of kilometres just to get out of the sun, consuming ungodly amounts of liquids to no relief. India is a harsh country.

On the road to Delhi, I was able to go through Amritsar, one of the few holy places for Sikhs in India (another being in Pakistan). The Golden Temple (The Harmandir Sahid),  I entered and stayed for a few hours, having some food and walking around enjoying the sights and taking a few pictures. The Golden Temple is exactly that, a golden temple placed in the centre of a large manmade lake of holy water, many people come to visit from around the world to bathe in the waters and pray in the temple there. I stayed in Amritsar the night and was back on the road in the morning

DCIM101GOPRO

DCIM101GOPRO

  The only thing I had to keep my mind busy was the thought that 400kms down this very road, friends and family would be in Delhi to greet me. The sandals I bought in Lahore had started to eat their way into my feet by now and stops were becoming a frequent burden. Not wanting them, but at the same time my body screaming for them as the sun took no prisoners and cared not for my painful feet or arms and face burning throughout the day.

Days later, after constantly being moved on night after night from peoples land, I would out of sheer exhaustion and lack of sleep, find myself having to bargain with hoteliers for rooms on the side of the grand truck road, some regal, some squalid. Anything to just be indoors away from the constant barrage of noise, smog and most of all just to get a few hours asleep.

This would become a trend throughout India. The land everywhere if not owned and being guarded was built upon and impossible to camp on. I would engage in conversations with people, even sit down and have tea with them in the hope that they would allow me to use their land to camp on, but they would look at me like I was crazy, only replying with a “not possible”, usually followed by casual directions to a hotel nearby. I would explain I didn’t have enough money for that and then came the question I would hear a lot whilst in India, “then why are you here?”.

People had told me, and I had looked forward to, the experience of India being one of, ‘coming home’. I’ve never had much connection to India, whilst I am of Indian decent, both my parents were born in Africa and I hadn’t grown up making trip to India like other family members. But they assured me that once Id got to India I would be ok, people would be nicer and things would become easier. It couldn’t have been more further from the truth. I was completely treated as an outsider, my lack of language, whether Punjabi or Hindi, strangely enough worked in my favour sometimes. Indians from other parts of the country thinking I was merely a dark-skinned Englishman and congratulating me on the small amount of Hindi I knew. But in other places people scorning me for not knowing a language I was never introduced to or needed to use, calling me “one of those”.

It was a long hard slog to Delhi but eventually after what felt like a difficult few weeks I had arrived and a few days after my family would be arriving. The first time I had seen them since Kyrgyzstan. It felt like a lifetime ago, so many things had happened since then. The harsh winter in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, more mountains in Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Was I glad to be seeing them yes, but on the other hand, how would I feel being around them, I didn’t know. I didn’t feel any different but would I have known if I was?

I walked into the elevator of their hotel, on the way up I stared at myself in the mirrors lining the four walls and took in the sight of a long haired bearded man who definitely didn’t look the same as when he had last seen them. I approached the door and knocked, at once my mum opened the door and screamed, taking a few steps back as if I had snuck up behind her and grabbed her. She immediately started laughing and my dad also made his way to the door, hugs and smiles all around whilst mum told me that I was going to need a shave

@asbhogal at the Pakistan / Wagah border #borderwalk #theborderwalk #solo #wateraid #mcsuk #sony

During this car wash, which I was personally expecting to go wrong, as everything else had so far, there was only one moment where I thought the gig was up and they had worked out that that I was not indeed Pakistani. One of the workers cleaning the car came up to me as I sat and asked me for something, obviously not being able to understand, I looked at him in silence and then shot a glance to…