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There Are Other Rivers
Alastair Humphreys walked across India, from the Coromandel Coast to the Malabar Coast, following the course of a holy river. Walking alone and spending the nights sle...
Author's Note
Here’s what this book is not: • A book about India. • A chronological account of a coast-to-coast walk across southern India. • An epic adventure tale. So what ...
Introduction
The alarm clock has just taken me on a journey. A journey that passed in an instant but which took me from one world to another. A journey from the magical world of d...
The Walk
This book is not a chronological narrative about walking across India. I did that as I went, sharing my experiences through Twitter. It’s like adventure haiku and a fe...
Dawn
I walk quietly past the night watchman, bundled in blankets and snoring on the floor. I step out of the lodge. I’m out into the world. I have begun. Dawn will come qui...
Flabbiness
There are three stages of flabbiness in life. Each is more restricting and stifling than the one before. They creep insidiously over me like vines until it takes one h...
Go
An urge builds in me, a voice in one everlasting whisper, day and night repeated until I just have to go. It doesn’t really matter where I go. All that matters is that...
River
River “Don’t you dare take the lazy way... Whatever you do, it will be you who do.” I push through a bamboo grove to the river and sit beneath a teak tree. I write my ...
Routine
Every day on the road includes many tiny routines.
Sunrise
I follow a meandering little road through green sugarcane fields. The broad river, my river, is on the right, flowing slowly in the opposite direction to me. Enormous ...
Escape
Escape “For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one...
Simplicity
I wanted simplicity. Simplicity of purpose and to travel as light as possible. I wanted to pare life down to the basics again. India was a crash diet for me after the ...
Alone
I love the continual exposure to new people, new faces and new ideas. And I appreciate being forced to make my own decisions and accept their consequences. I have to t...
Snapshot
All the clichés about India are true. Clichés always are. But there is so much more. There always is. India: so vivid and loud. Energetic and mad. Charming, ingeniou...
Morning
The task now is simple: blast out as many miles as I can manage before it gets too hot. I am earning my lunch break. The river teases me, tempting me to swim. But a co...
Curiosity
Go somewhere new, try something different and life fizzes with questions. What will happen? How will my life change? How will I change my life?
Food
After eating curry every day for weeks I am sick of it. So one day, when I smell a different aroma, my taste buds explode. In greedy excitement I follow my nose to a s...
Learning
Travel far from home and even mundane, ordinary events become out of the ordinary and fascinating. Knowledge and exciting fresh perspectives are thrown at me all the t...
Landscape
I run my hands through the warm river water as it mingles with the sea. This is a pilgrimage site for Hindus. A father mutters prayers and dunks his shining, surprised...
Joy
There is nothing complicated to this: travelling the world and living adventurously is a lot of fun. When people ask, “why do you do this?” there is no simpler or more...
People
Most of my memories of people are from the briefest of connections. Moments that flash through the gulfs between our lives and simply connect on a human level. A woman...
Noon
I’m irritable, impatient, out of love with India. Walking immerses me so deep that at times I feel I am drowning in it all, in the India described so well by Naipaul, ...
Religion
If I have a daughter one day, I will call her Jasmine, I decide. But no, these are my scented memories, my time. She must be free to choose her own life, her own flowe...
Pilgrimage
Walking is both slow and difficult so it makes for powerful thinking time. Slow is good. With slowness and effort comes anticipation and clarity. Rewards have to be ea...
Quest
A little time alone, afraid or forlorn is a worthwhile price to pay for feeling stronger, smarter and more alive.
Afternoon
The afternoon feels like an eternity. A motorbike stops and offers me a lift. I decline. Then another one does. I am so tempted. I consider cheating. Nobody would know...
Challenge
As we ran up and down I knew we were all hurting. All I had to do was refuse to stop. The theory is easy. The reality also becomes quite easy once it is habituated. Ke...
Struggle
Is it as simplistic as seeking pain? Why drive when I could walk? For the struggle. So why walk when I could crawl? “Seek pain, pain, pain!” cried Rumi. What are the r...
Sunset
Arriving in the town, I sit by the river to watch the last of the sunset. What a day. I am exhausted. Just another day. I stare towards the sun, along my river flowing...
Freedom
“But the word timshel – “thou mayest” – that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open... Why, that makes a man great...