Thank you for making it this far!

The sun sets and the boy goes home. But I stay on the beach staring out to sea. The first stars begin to shine. The evening air is warm. So much has happened since I began chasing these journeys down the never-ending road. I haven’t done all that I want to. But it feels good to at least be on my way. These are the best days of my life. Out here I am free. I know what I am doing. I am good at it. I am happy. I am really living.

I give thanks to the river too, for guiding me through new experiences and for reminding me what I hold dear. I owe it to myself, whatever happens, to cling tight to those things. It is time to return to England. Life is going to be different this time.

You will have your reward, so long as all you want is a bucket of water.

“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... He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”

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 with a golden blaze of sunlight. Towards all that I will discover tomorrow on the road. And I realise that I did not come to India for anything as simple and lovely as this wonderful scene. I came here for other things. This is merely a bonus. I feel a surprisingly large sense of satisfaction. This is my lucky day.

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 rules? Where are the arbitrary boundaries in this search for a difficult life? They move and shift like sandbars. I’m not sure they stand up to rational scrutiny. I suppose they are defined by what feels right at the time, to me and me alone.

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. Keep running until nobody else is willing to keep running. I’ll never be the fastest but I’ll never stop. Winner takes all. Who perseveres wins.

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. Just one small little ride. Just this once. Nobody would care. I think about doing the rest of the journey by public transport. It feels easy to justify...

A little time alone, afraid or forlorn is a worthwhile price to pay for feeling stronger, smarter and more alive.

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 earned; ideas can be mulled over. I can appreciate the motivation of the pilgrims to Mount Kailash who prostrate themselves with each stride.

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 flowers and memories.

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, “the broken roads and footpaths, the brown gasoline-and-kerosene haze adding an extra sting to the fierce sunlight, mixing with the street dust and coating the skin with grit and grime; the day-long cicada-like screech, rising and falling, of the horns of the world’s shabbiest buses and motorcars.”

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, about my age, is running down the road towards me. She is wearing a red and orange sari. It is rare to see Indians running, particularly women. I like the way her gold bracelets jangle and the self- conscious look on her face as she runs. I smile. She catches my smile, grins back at me, but keeps running. Two people on the same road at the same time. Our lives meet, but in opposite directions and then we pass out of each other’s life for ever.

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 honest answer.

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-looking baby several times beneath the water. A dozen men sit cross-legged in prayer round a small fire. Each has a coconut, broken open as an offering, puja. I breathe in the sea air, look forward to the next time I smell it, and begin to walk.

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 time. This doesn’t happen when life’s normal routine is ticking over. But I do have to caution myself to travel slowly. If I rush my journeys, one eye on the clock, eager only to tick off miles, countries or sights, then I’ll accumulate lists, but I won’t learn much. Truman Capote would dismiss it out of hand: “that’s not travelling, that’s moving.”

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 stand where a boy is stirring a sizzling pan.

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?

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 combination of crocodiles, pollution and my impatient obsession with ticking off miles dissuades me. I snatch occasional respite in scraps of shade. After a few more hours I am beginning to suffer.