Before the Road to Salvation, there was always a road to somewhere for me, as journeying has pretty much always been my life’s imperative, perhaps as in the words of the song ‘I’m a roadrunner baby’. That said, much of this travel was consequent on the work I did across most of my life, which revolved around the archaeology and later anthropology and ethnohistory of the Andes. As South America had long been the land of my dreams since I was five years old, or travel to other exotic ethnographically colourful locations, it was fairly written into my stars that journeying would always be a key dynamic in my life. And journeying with a deeper purpose too. It was never ever about ticking destinations off bucket lists for me; my roadrunner instincts were ever about something else. Given so much of my life and work has been focused on the epicenter of South America, specifically Ecuador, with occasional forays into adjacent Peru, and once even Colombia, then rather inevitably this has also been the epicenter of formative influence of my journeying life, although other destinations have certainly if occasionally played their part too.
In pre Salvation days, image mattered to me in much the way that it does everywhere with everyone, except that I was rather less a slave to the fashion of the day and more to my own style. As a young graduate student I set off into the Ecuadorian coastal wilderness armed only with a large machete and notions of the intrepid explorer, where I spent weeks working on my own in the barren salt flats and mangrove swamps earning me the nickname ‘mad woman of the mangroves’ from the local people who lived and worked in the region. I wore my hair long and was clad in old jeans before the days when this became the prevailing fashion which, being filthy most of time owing to the heavy excavation work I was doing, also persuaded people who saw me that I was a hippy, attracting cries of “Sucia!” (dirty) from passing cars ( I also had to hitchhike back from site too).
No matter, it was all in the higher cause of my then sacred work, which in those days revolved around the archaeology of South America in much the way the earth does around the sun.
As time and life wore on my self image changed with them, generally reflecting a personal modification and take on whatever the prevailing fashion of the day was. Instead of raising eyebrows at my torn dirty jeans and long unkempt hair, I now raised eyebrows by always turning myself out for site in smart clothing and wearing makeup, in the days when field archaeologists most definitely didn’t. That by itself marked me as ‘odd’ and non conformist in a way that was, well, very much non conformist and definitely uncool amongst fellow academics of the day.
In later years I abandoned archaeology, to spend time out back in the world of creative arts and writing, a foray that resulted in a major exhibition of paintings and photographs (Voyages et Images) and two novels, but still revolved around my travelling life. Indeed the whole art exhibition ‘Voyages et Images’ celebrated it. My historical novel ‘The Lady of Seville’ drew upon extensive research I did in both Spain and South America, whilst ‘An Indian Affair’ was built around research I did in my first ever trip to India in 2009.
Time and self image progressed, and in more recent years this voyaging was accompanied by a hat, a Panama hat to be specific. Right up until my long stay in Rishikesh during 2020 I had a version of this same hat that had come to define my look during those years. As part of the rites surrounding my Pilgrimage, I eventually consigned it to the Ganges, in the way of other of my personal identifiers. Parting with aspects of one’s former identify is a part of the pathway of Self realisation after all.
In those days I wore my hair differently too, styled in versions of a bob, which made the wearing of a hat much easier. As I grew out my hair gradually from early 2018, to the length it is now, wearing stylish Panama hats was no longer really feasible anyhow. So now in some ways I have come full circle, be it only in hairstyle.
But probably all this journeying has ultimately been about the same life purpose anyway though, which is to say the highest spiritual goal it eventually became formalised into in 2019, to now. Each life stage and the journeys made in them came to evolve me as a person further, perhaps in the way that a caterpillar sheds its skin on its way to becoming a butterfly. Travelling this way always puts you in touch with your deeper self, and that in part is what Pilgrimage is all about.
I have recently given up Facebook, which had always been my intention since culminating the Indian Pilgrimage in November 2020. Social media is that preeminent architect of image as we all know. Making a brief trawl through earlier posts, I came across one from the time I was travelling on the north coast of Peru, some seven or eight years ago. A friend had commented, not in any critical way, that I lead an enviable life and I suppose to outside observers it must seem that way. In those days I would check in at whatever airport I was starting my journey from together with the ultimate destination, generating those impressive trans global arcs. Another friend once said he always associated me with these immense arcs from one side of the world to the other.
Yet this high profile travelling to distant exotic locations hides an important truth. It has come at the cost of what most people count as a normal life, more especially since 2019, when I gave up all pretensions to keeping a home and associated possessions, or aspirations to a continuing career.
Do I ever regret any of this, and the sacrifice of what most people do value as important in life? Mostly not. Mostly! There are perhaps understandably times when the full force of all that has been given up comes back to test one. For that reason, the goal must always be higher than that sacrificed, it must be worth the cost and it must be true. By this I mean that ‘grand gestures’ or actions undertaken for anything other than that highest cause will never be able to sustain the duress of the test. Your humanity will undermine you. What I gave up for this was actually a worthwhile life and all the things that go into that: home, friends, family, career, nice possessions, a partner even; all those things that are counted as making a good, certainly a normal life. To the outside world I realise that I might seem crazy, maladjusted, obsessive, mainly perhaps just ‘weird’. And there are usually people you know who, with grim satisfaction laced with a certain schadenfreude, sharply remind you in those susceptible human moments, when the value of all you have let go of comes back to haunt you, that, well, was your choice! Or “you’ve only got yourself to blame!”
I don’t think I have ever sought sympathy, perhaps even understanding for these life choices that must seem so stark and quasi suicidal even to the outside world. It is the path of the renunciate after all, which is not in any way fashionable in our modern world with all its consumer imperatives. In countries like India it is something long understood, embedded in spiritual tradition as part of the pathway of Sanatana Dharma, although now, with the inexorable advance of modern global culture, it is less sought and less respected perhaps than once.
In these travel blog posts I have generally avoided specific mention or discussion of my beliefs because I accept that many people reading them do so for interest, for the adventures, the zany narratives and astute, sometimes humorous life observations that go with these. They do not necessarily want any accounts about my spiritual experiences, or the framework of interpretation that I employ to understand these. In our secular materialistic world, many people eschew discussion of what is generally still understood as ‘religion’, oft dismissed and despised by the educated rational modern mind as the cause of the world’s problems and better consigned to the irrational and irrelevant recycle bin of history.
Yet not to own one’s deeper and real reasons for living as one does and making the life choices one has is also a form of dishonesty, encouraging, as it does, a false view of that life which, however apparently exotic and entertaining, is also too readily dismissed as hedonism, or irresponsible escapism. If those of us who have different beliefs and life objectives don’t own up to them, what sort of example are we setting? I have never been an evangelist in anyway, seeking to convert unbelievers to my views, yet in life all of us depend to some degree or another upon inspiration or example. God knows, legion are those that promote worldly notions of the estimable, you cannot avoid them. From birth through childhood and onwards our perceptions are shaped by the images that the commercial world directs at us. By the time we have reached adulthood we are all effective addicts. And now the very concept of what is sacred has been parasitised to serve this world and its value system.
This is what this journey of renunciation is all about. It deconditions you and puts you back in touch with those timeless truths. You might be in the world, but that world no longer has any power over you, to define who, how or what you should be. That is moksha, the path of liberation, freedom. But, as I have sometimes stressed, real freedom of this kind is the most expensive thing you will ever have. Because you will pay for it with everything you have!