When or Whether to Hang Up your Shoes
6 November 2025Together with your framed photos of highlights of the Journey. and call it a day. It must be a question that haunts many true Pilgrims as they contemplate leaving the Road with its unique challenges and return to the World they left, and it most certainly haunted me across a long post Pilgrimage period characterised by an iterative process of to-ing and fro-ing charted in Continuing In the Spirit here. But my early experiences of being ‘back’ all support the view that you can never ever really return after such a journey. All that has changed is the physical context…
The Power of Pilgrimage
“No man is rich enough to buy back his past”. This quote, attributed to Oscar Wilde, is one of several aphorisms adorning the wall of my dental clinic here in Kochi. The poignant truth of it is undeniable. As with…
Continuing In the Spirit
The last two posts published here – Return to Source (5th April 2023) and Pilgrim’s Return (29th March 2023) – reflect the loss of energy and direction that increasingly characterised the years that followed from Nepal 2021, and, earlier, the…
Return to the Source
The young Ganges and distant Gangotri glacier We all need to return to the source sometimes. It’s where you can reconnect with those deeper aspects of yourself that life and navigating it can disconnect you from. What better way of…
Pilgrim’s Return
In my final post of this travel blog ‘Works Still to Do’, I was preparing myself to return to the UK to resume university project work, the work I had been engaged upon for much of the latter period of…
Works still to do
“Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat, only thou and I and never a soul in the world would know of this our pilgrimage to no country and to no end. In that…
Roadrunner. Before the Road to Salvation
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…
Pilgrim’s progress. Highlights from the Road to Salvation
I arrived into Delhi on 19th November 2019 and spent a few days there adjusting to the immense change in my circumstances. The last time I had been in the country was back in March of that year, and that…
Leaving Rishikesh
It’s time to leave Rishikesh. For these last few weeks I have realised that the work I came here to do, in whatever capacity, is done. I have documented life here since my arrival at the beginning of April, and…
Chota Char Dham. Pilgrimage in the days of mass tourism
Sahdev Rana, my trusty driver and guide (1) and I left early Friday morning to drive to Gangotri, source of the Ganges and one of the famous Chota Char Dham Pilgrimage destinations sacred to Hindus. We had been here before,…
Rishikesh for addicts
It’s 1st May today and this marks my fourth week anniversary of arriving here from Sri Lanka. May Day traditionally marks the first day of summer and throughout the UK Morris and maypole dancers will be celebrating with the time…
