Pathan Country, Pakistan

Chapter 15 - Hand to Mouth to India

Suddenly alone, in a scenic and beautiful place, safely in Asia, in good health and at least 48 hours away from the prospect of starvation, the world caught up with me. Now that it was pretty certain that I'd reach my destination, I began to consider who was going to rescue me from poverty in India? Once there, I wouldn't be able to afford more visas for further on-land travel. I had no flight coupons and I would only be given 6 months legal stay in India itself.

What am I doing? Who am I? Who's even asking the question? I threw up this interrogation like a dog chasing it own tail, or a man digging beneath his own feet, with a shovel of insatiable enquiry. If the ego is unimportant, then what matter if it's depressed or jubilant, wise or insane? If this life is meaninglessly transient, then what matter if I sit still in the darkened room, uncomfortable and cold?

A pressure in my bladder awoke me to the fact that I needed to piss and dragged me out of my introspective chasm. I had enough residual awareness to realise that it would be tiresome clearing up if I didn't make the ten steps to the bathroom.

I could share the basic faith of the Muslims that 'there is no God but God-sure, all is one; but unlike them, I had no book to tell me how to live. What to do? Who to be? Why to be? In the solitude of the night I struggled under the weight of my freedom and for want of any better ideas, I sank down to my knees and prostrated myself in prayer. Submission. Did that make me a Muslim? It occurred to me, as my forehead enjoyed the soft texture of the carpet, that this would make a particularly powerful scene in a high-budget film version of my journey. The thought evoked a devilish grin, quite inappropriate to my devout posture. I sat up to shrug at the comedy of life, rescued from the unresolvable by the ever-springing fountain of humour. I reached for my blankets and recharged in the protective shadow of sleep.

After two pleasant days and soul-searching nights, I decided not to abuse the hospitality any longer. It was time to move on towards the mountains in the North that were said to be awesome. I managed to get three kilometres up the road before being called over by the local bureaucrat of the area and invited for tea. We sat in another well-cultured garden, with hundreds of dragon-flies performing physics-defying gymnastics, upon a wind that rushed and roared up the valley, heralding the conquering intent of the approaching winter.

By assuming my very best manners and middle-class accent-useful to be able to pull these things out of the hat, at times-I received another free lunch and was invited to the home of the assistant, Noor-u-din, who lived in a village somewhere up the road.

The working day ended by about 4pm and I followed Noor-u-din over to the pick-up truck that waited for us. It was the communal taxi service. I joined about 20 men in various standing, squatting and all-out clinging postures in the front, back and on the sides. If one rides, they all ride and there was no such thing as no more room.

I grinned sheepishly at the collection of beards about me who, characteristically of people in this area of the world, insisted on knowing how much I'd paid for my green foam sleeping mat. My baby-faced, scraggly look was a little out of place amongst these stout farmers and it would not have taken long to spot the odd one out.

Gradually, access to oxygen returned as the men got off one by one at the stops along the way; until it was just myself, Nooru-din and the driver. We then stopped by the cornfields and we all gathered armfuls of the harvested corn plants to hoist into the back. They tried to dissuade me from joining in the manual work but seemed cheered when I mucked in. After the last load was stacked I turned and smiled to see the poetic figure of Noor-ua-din kneeling down to pray in the middle of the field with the steep mountain wall as a backdrop. I lay with my back on the corn as we got going again and stared at the stormy puffs of cloud, turning pink in the evening sky that shrank as the valley narrowed to either side.

We reached Noor-u-din's village. While he chatted to a friend a whole crowd came out to witness the foreigner who just gazed at the clouds for Allah's sake! I then discovered the nature of Pathan hospitality as I was taken to an empty barn, a short distance from my host's home. A wood-stove was lit for my warmth and a meal of dal and chapattis brought to me. I realised that I wasn't going to be allowed to see any local household culture. That had been one of the chief delights in Iran-hanging out with a family alleviated the strain of being alone. Here though, it seemed that their interpretation of the Qur'an was such that it was unacceptable to have a non-family male in the house where one's wives and daughters are kept.

This, I would learn later, was typical of the Pathan people. Their attitudes towards women being the most extreme and restrictive (or should I say 'protective'?) of any of the places I'd seen. Already, it had been difficult to ignore the fact that nearly every woman wore a dress in public that covered her from head to foot, with a thick, webbed veil over her face. It must have taken years of practice to learn not to walk into trees and over edges. I was sick of the repressive attitudes towards femininity and so much did I hunger for female company that I was half-way to becoming the kind of threat that Pathan customs were supposed to prevent. But I was able to control myself-no doubt aided by the sight of the rifles that the Pathans liked to carry around with them.

This was par for the course. Every overland traveller rejoices to hear the call to prayer upon entering Turkey, as they receive the first taste of the Orient's magic. Though gladdened by the traditional hospitality of Iran, patience begins to wear thin after all of the pathetic conversion attempts made upon you. Then the wayfarer runs into the thick end of Pakistan Islamic custom, deeper in the petty oppression than ever before and there's nothing he can do except wade through it.

At any event, I went four or five weeks in this period without even speaking to one female. That kind of deprivation does strange things to a young guy, I can tell you. After the meal, I stood outside beneath a very dark and starry sky, watching the whip of distant lightning that cracked and flashed further down the valley. Noor-u-din however, could not understand why I was enjoying the display.

"Night-time-no view!" He informed me and once again I was blown away by the utter indifference local people in this part of the world seem to have to the beauty that they live in. The sea is generally seen as just a large and convenient toilet (many Indian beaches have a shit line, as well as tidal marks); the mountains are large rocks that make it harder to get around and 99% of the men would sooner look at a cheap piece of pornography, than a spell-binding sunset or dawn.

To be fair, this is probably more symptomatic of the last half of this century than any inherent insensitivity to Nature. All of Asia has swallowed the Material Dream of the West with great, greedy gulps-knocking down bamboo in favour of concrete, abandoning herbal knowledge for the instant magic of modern medicine and discarding the slow wagon of the spiritual search for the motorbike of the three-second orgasm.

I assured the nervous Noor-u-din that all was well and he left me alone-that rare luxury on this continent. He woke me six hours later and after determining that I didn't want to stay for an extra five days to join him on the long trip to Lahore with him to deliver his apples, he put me on another pick-up truck. Again I squeezed in amongst twenty bearded men. I was feeling pretty ill but i was at least better off than the three chickens who were thrown down beneath the boots of all the pasengers.

An hour later, we arrived in whatever town it was. I promptly started to walk down the one-road town, sticking out a futile thumb at the few passing vehicles. Given the distances involved on the route I needed to take, I was being hopelessly hopeful. The photocopy of a map that I had didn't convey the reality of the road I'd be taking, nor the passage on it.

A petrol garage owner beckoned me over to partake in some chai. He gave me a pretty thorough interrogation , including an examination of my passport to verify my story. This is just the kind of thing to which you have to submit sometimes, without getting too caught up in reactions of personal pride and stuff. It was worth it too because he ended up giving me 100 rupees and arranged for me to travel with a friend of his who was taking a truck up and over the mountains, down into the plains of the Punjab.

We were due to leave in the evening time and as I couldn't see anyone smoking dope, it looked like it was going to be a very long day. It didn't help that I felt miserably ill and matters didn't improve when I succumbed to the temptation of some sweet goo on a stall that had probably been sitting there for days.

It wasn't easy to find some amusement in this town whose economy was presumably based on the traffic that passed through this major trade route and by the livestock trade that I guess was the older focus of commerce of the place. There was only so much food that I could eat and I tried to make lunch a more feasible option by getting a bit of exercise and walking around to the edge of town.

Here, I found the area where the shepherds brought their flocks of sheep and goats. I sat in the shade, digging the sight and no longer conscious of who was bringing me pots of excellent green tea. It was nice to watch the lean and bearded types in dull jerkins and scarves, as they tried to keep their animals distinct from the other groups and simultaneously conduct business with the other odd trader. The preliminary bargaining discussions that certainly wouldn't be completed today.

Time moved slowly. I had nothing to read and felt too ill to play my clarinet or make any notes. Wherever I stopped, twenty people would gather to see what for many, may have been their first foreigner. These were the kind of long and dull days that comprised the less romantic parts of the journey and they seemed like a complete waste of my time-who'd want to spend their precious hours here? I dreamed of California and girls with bronze flesh in mini-skirts and rollerboots.

The only guy of any real interest was the petrol pump manager-a mustachioed, energetic type who looked into the distance when he spoke. He'd travelled around within his own country and announced himself to be a dedicated communist. Accordingly, we had wildly irrelevant conversations about politics, that would never have any bearing on the place in which he lived but allowed us to lift ourselves into the large picture for a few pompous moments.

7 O'clock came and went. My driver didn't show. At the insistence of my communist friend I made the mistake of eating a little. My stomach worsened. With reassurances that my lift would materialise eventually, I crashed out in the office and woke a few hours later, feeling indescribably unwell. Straight after, my truck appeared and the clock on the wall read 1am. I seriously doubted if I could make the journey in my sick state-but I was darned if I was going to wait around in this town for another day. I crawled into the cabin where the two old drivers sat, together with the two sons of the first.

Crowded or cosy, depending on the mood, our first few hundred metres began with jolts and bumps over the pot-holed road and unpleasantly enough, continued that way-'On the Road, Again' de dum, de dum - but Canned Heat never had to deal with this.

We stopped for breakfast just before dawn and only just in time-I flung open the cabin door and dashed out into the bushes to fertilise the land with what first light revealed to be strange green liquid. I immediately began an emergency fast. I scooped together what I could of the fenugreek powder that had burst inside my bag and swallowed it, hoping that that its constipative powers were what they were supposed to be.

The trouble really began a few hours later, as we crawled through the winding mountain passes. The land had become colourless again and matched the blandness of the communication in the cabin. My new companions were determined to get the most out of their grumpy English freeloader.

Of course, they were blessed with the expressive gesture of enquiry, innate to everyone in Pakistan, consisting of a sharp, friendly poke with the fingers, which then sprawl in the motion of penetrating several anuses at once-the final position of the hand appearing ready to hold either the contents of your life or a large pair of testicles. So often was I approached with this gesture by strangers in the street, that I toyed with the idea of carrying around a small dagger, with which I could then sever the hands at the wrist and thrust it down their necks, shouting 'There! Does that answer your fucking question?' I wasn't rally making much spiritual progress at this point.

I knew around 30 or 40 words in Urdu at this point and nothing in Pashtun. But mere facts weren't going to prevent the driver from delivering lectures to me in his tongue. Perhaps I'd miraculously learnt the language in the half hour that had passed since his last load of questions. I shouted back at him in English-in these situations you have to maintain the illusion that you're holding your own.

Favour was restored when I accepted his offer of charas: the resin hand-rolled from the marijuana plant. He leant over with a cackle to squeeze my cheek with his thumb and finger. My spirits were sufficiently restored by the excellent smoke to sing a few songs for them, including "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" I think. They were all pleased to have a jester on board, however cantankerous he might be.

Generally, one driver slept whilst the other took the wheel and they'd exchange places every eight hours or so. In the meantime, the two sons and I would fight for the comfortable seating. The mystique surrounding me as an honoured guest wore off towards the end of the first day and I was close enough to their age to be regarded at best as an equal.

The younger of the two sons was constantly bullied by his father, who shouted at him and then cuffed him sharply around the ears. The kid bore in stoic silence, internalising the hurt. His dad would then relent shortly afterwards, trying to cheer his son up with jokes and affectionate pinching of the cheeks. None of which would elicit any change in the features of the boy, who as a result of all of this was quite an unpleasant youth.

The elder of the two sons had an easier time and suffered only from having been weaned to early in infancy. He incessantly popped boiled sweets or cigarettes between his lips all day.

The second morning brought us down to the green plains of the Punjab and we'd been in constant motion for 30 hours. I was sick of the sub-continent already. Just as it had all seemed so far away when I was in Turkey, now it all seemed too close. I was fed up with the smells, the sickness, the stares and the ignorance and I wondered how I could ever have imagined living here. There was nothing glamourous about this whole trek. I now knew it was possible to get from A to B without any money-and so what? This trip now seemed to be proving something to everyone but myself but it was me alone who was having to endure it. I felt like I'd been given a ticket for the wrong show.

Nevertheless, we had a few good moments in the truck: the best of which came when we broke down at the end of a 200 metre-long major bridge and we held up the entire flow of East-to-West inter-state traffic-good timing guys! The crew all jumped out to deal with the problem and I scooted off in search of a map to see if this would be a good place to escape from my tormenting benefactors.

Suddenly, there erupted a huge row and I saw my driver scrambling back to his seat, an angry policeman with a rifle close on his heels. The cop wanted him to pull the truck over to the side but my Pathan friend recognized a baksheesh-trap when he saw one. He started to wheel his vehicle away with sharp twists of the wheel and a priceless look of schoolboy caught-in-the-act fear on his face. The policeman swung his rifle around to target the escapee with the more realistic threat of the butt but he was already pulling away. I began to sprint down the opposite side of the truck, shouting to the other old man to hold the door for me as he swung in.

His hand had barely hoisted me up before I had to do the same for the two sons who came bursting out of nowhere. We all united in the thrill of our defiant mischief and, thanks to the absence of radio technology, we got through the other checkpoint without any fuss. On other occasions, my driver would simply pretend not to see the officials who furiously waved at us from their little offices where he was supposed to fill in forms and pay a toll.

The incident brought us together for a while but by the time we reached the city of Faislabad, we hated each other's guts again and I came very close to actual fistfights with the two boys. Curiously though, it was the kind of antagonism that simply vanished once we left the tiny world of the cabin and melted into the larger context of the bustling market town. I guess it brought us back to some kind of normalcy, warped as we were after 40 straight hours of being on the road.

I went up with my driver to the office of some bureaucrats whose office overlooked a large courtyard where arriving trucks manoeuvred their way into offloading their crates of farm produce. These guys seemed to be his bosses and they administerated the fruit and veg markeet below.

At length, I gathered that we had reached our destination and that I was going to stay the night on the floor of this third-story room. The officials engaged me in small-talk about my life and I reeled off the appropriate answer with my mind in neutral gear, just humming at the bare minimum.

My driver didn't return at the hour promised and I began to imagine that the whole escapade had been a ruse to strand me here, whilst he made off with my bags which I'd left in the truck! Everything seemed to point to it and I rued my naivete with a fury. I'd never be pyschologically able to make the return journey in search of my clarinet, my only item of value.

Just then my driver resurfaced with a kind smile and twinkling eyes that denied the memory of the devil in the driving seat sending me insane with cross-examinations in Pashtun. I put my paranoia down to the excellent dope and warmed in heart to this nice old guy who soon had the bureaucrats laughing and merry; their favourite raconteur had showed up again. I began to suspect I had simply lost my sense of humour in the past couple of days.

Sleep came as never before and I awoke with a new-born eagerness and excitement about being in the sub-continent. Even as the pre-dawn call to prayer sounded, shouts and cries of activity floated up from the marketplace below. When daylight came, I slipped down to find some breakfast; my stomach now healthy and hungry. I was feeling rich with the 100 rupees in my pocket, given to me by the communist at the garage some eons ago.

I had to jump from each island of a paving slab to the next, avoiding the foot-deep mud. When I came to the main courtyard, the air was thick with the smell of cheap cooking fat that deep-fried everything from samosas to sweet battered gunk, looking incredibly suspicious in bright green, red and yellow. Everyone rushed around at a frenetic and crazed pace, attempting to get as much done as possible before the sun rose and made work that much more oppressive. Coolies ran by with flat circles of wicker lids on their heads, which supported impressively large sackloads. They used the force of momentum to bend the laws of gravity that would otherwise have crushed their necks. They commanded absolute right of way. Crates of fruit stood about in rectangular stacks with youths sitting on top. They guarded invisible distinctions between lots and munched apples procured from their charge.

Around some of the stacks, business had already begun and frenzied auctioneering took place by each pile. The supervisor stood on top to take the bids from the tooth and claw merchants below, whose shouts and arguments mingled with the hum of generators and the various banging and hammering noises that came from all sides.

A poor family searched through the piles of the discarded corn leaves, gathering the pieces that had been missed-typical of the efficiency of the Indian continent where nothing salvageable goes to waste. Near them, a fat dal-and-rice wallah sat on an elevated chair and held imperial sway over the people that he deigned to serve bowls of steaming food.

I watched one coolie take a break from work to have a glass of chai. He removed the head scarf used to soften the loads and sat down on a large mound of corn leaves. In between sips of hot chai, he stared thoughtfully off into the distance. A wistful reverie was expressed in the wrinkles on his face and the tired light of his eyes-features that in themselves told the whole story. When he finished his glass, he put his turban back on and moved off for his next shift.

There was a lull in the middle part of the day until the new deliveries arrived in the late afternoon and evening, prompting a new rush of speculation and striking of swift deals before the iron could even be heated. It was all fucking madness. It was sense. Chaos or order-use what words you like-it was Asia and I remembered why I had returned.

It turned out that my driver and his crew were not going further North but were returning to the hills where we started. I guessed that their whole lives followed this pattern of 40 hour drives, interspersed with break-downs, police confrontations and lots of dal, chapattis and chai at the roadside places with rope beds to sit on.

Then they'd get a couple of days off to go to the brothel and test the strengths of their livers with illegal brew. What a fucking life. These people had never been given a tenth of the attention, opportunities and stimulus that I'd received and I felt almost guilty about the annoyance and ill-feeling I'd borne towards them. Easy to be a Buddha, when you're well rested and fed.

My driver then further outdid himself, by buying me a bus ticket to Peshawar. A little later, I was flying through the night to the North, at what seemed lightning speed compared to the slow-worm pace of the truck. We arrived in the early morning and I jumped straight out of the bus, ran past all of the touts and into the first hotel that I saw. I flung my bags down to the side while I bolted into the toilet without a word of explanation.

Peshawar was supposed to be a fascinating mix of cultural and racial identities but the only real evidence of that were the poverty-stricken presence of Afghani refugees who had come to the city in great floods. To their credit, they didn't wear the sorrow that they must have felt at being estranged from their war-torn homelands where Muslims shot one another in the Name of God. Their pride betrayed no sense of self-pity at being poor and I had fun sharing a joint with a couple of young Afghans in the park.

Then I played at being English sahib, sitting under a tree with a newspaper and a pot of tea. Within minutes, I had another crowd of twenty onlookers, all keen to talk to the foreigner. I say, old chap, can't a fellow get a spot of peace around here?

The general vibe was friendly and inquisitive and this was true of most Pathan people, whose sense of hospitality was very close to that of their national pride. People would frequently come up to me in the street and ask:

"Do you have any problem that I can help you with?" So by looking lost for a few minutes, I could generally get my food and shelter problems sorted out. I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of them though and an American friend of mine would later put it this way:

"A Pathan would peel the skin of an enemy with a razor blade without a moment's thought or concern-but he is simultaneously quite capable of going into a complete tizz if his daughter grazes her knee."

The only offensive side to life, were the guys who worked for the buses, both local and national. Whenever I passed the bus stand, I could count on at least twenty guys hooking my arm and asking: "Lahore?" Before trying to pull me into a bus bound for that city. It never bloody occurred to them that a foreign guy walking around without luggage, might have some objectives in mind other than travelling on their bus for half the day. I was quite convinced that if I let them take me to Lahore, then upon arrival the same guys would pull me into another bus, shouting: 'Peshawar?'

Sometimes I would grab one of these touts and gave him the whole harangue that there was more to life than going to Lahore and did he really think I hadn't been asked ten times already? But then I'd see his smiling face, not understanding why I was so angry and I'd realise I'd just lost my cool yet again.

The local bus crews weren't much better either. The vehicles had a system whereby the driver would spend all day trying to leave behind his conductor who was forever hopping in and out of the bus or hanging halfway in between. He'd shout and implore pedestrians to join them, all the time urging the metal beasts along with slaps on the side and shouts of 'chalo!' (='let's go!')

At any rate, it was easy to find small adventures which illustrated the charm of the people here. On the Sunday afternoon, I found myself strolling with some small Afghani kids to the park for a cricket match.

They had one bat and two stumps and soon found some other boys who had the other pieces of equipment to make a match. They more than anyone took me at face value and had the tact to hide their disappointment when I lost my middle stump on the third ball delivered. Humiliated by players half my size, I withdrew to observe the general cricketing activity that took place throughout the park. The very small were relegated to bowling practice in the corners, using the trees for stumps; whilst the older kids played small-level games. They shared bats and used balls ranging from professionally-bound leather to tightly-wrapped bundles of rags.

A street picture from a Pakistani city would be pretty much indistinguishable from that of an Indian town. The bazaars bulged out into the crowded streets with colourful anarchy and food stalls lined the sides of the roads, selling everything from fried rice to chopped papaya.

Unfortunately, I had to be careful when eating from these side stalls because much of the food had been sitting around for half the day, exposed to the mandibles of large, disease-bearing flies. I'd occasionally get paranoid when eating something that felt like it had been reheated too many times. Then I'd rush off to eat some hot chillis to kill any unfriendly bacteria.

The streets were congested with weird vehicles, piles of dust, dirt and rotting vegetable heaps which the endless crowds daintily stepped around. This certainly looked like India but the differences lay in the character of the people themselves. Here no one tried to cheat me for a rupee, whilst with the Indians you have to fight for every last coin. Muslims have a much clearer-cut code of action than many Hindus and it's in this sense that religion is definitely a positive force. Us intellectual dilettantes are used to sizing up and judging other cultures and religions, debating bits of metaphysics and philosophy until the pubs shut.But these guys work about twelve hours a day on average and when they.ve finished they don't want to engage in discussions about morality and good conduct. Their holy books give them 'and here's a morality that i prepared earlier'.

The locals were very giving with their pots of tea and spliffs and I tended to just drift about the streets, chatting and chilling with whomever I bumped into, whilst trying to avoid anyone from clinging on too much. There were some dark influences around of course, as just 100km West from here, were the unpoliced tribal territories where you could buy anything from grenades to tanks. Less orthodox Muslims produced heroin, in their contribution to one of the biggest businesses in the world.

After a while on the road, you're pulled around by the winds of fate to the extent that you begin to develop an intuitive understanding of when you're in trouble and it would be a good time to leave. It can sometimes be a struggle to maintain the balance of being on your guard and being open to new meetings and adventures. After having been fed and housed by other people for most of the year, I'd formed a deep trust in the fundamental goodness, knowing that 99% would do right by me.

Sometimes I got paranoid in Peshawar, especially if the dope was too strong and then I'd look up through a smoke-filled room to realise that I was hanging out with some very dodgy people-but then I could always check my instincts by looking into their eyes. If I didn't like what I saw, I just picked up my things and left without a word of explanation- that was the freedom I had and it was my greatest defence. A student I met gave me 100 rupees to catch a bus up to the mountainous Swat valley, the birthplace of Tantric Buddhism; though the orange cloth had long been kicked out by the sharper sword of Islam. I'd heard that the place was beautiful and I reckoned on a couple of weeks of meditation beside babbling streams and jagged rockfaces.

Not long before dark, I caught a minibus and smiled as we soon began to climb up, up, up. The journey was made murderous by my troublesome insides and we arrived just in time at the town of Kalam. I stumbled out with my cloth-style bag (now shredded in many parts) my blanket and small backpack containing my horn. From above came a shout and I saw a hotel manager on his balcony. I dashed up the steps to use the bathroom and prevent an embarrassing disaster. I apologized to the man, explaining that I couldn't afford a room and just needed to use the toilet-his reaction was brilliant:

"No money? No problem!" He said and handed me the key to a double room. That was the kind of thing I couldn't imagine happening in India and was one of the most endearing things about Pakistan. Here, people could step outside of their everyday money-making roles to deal with you on a human level, thus increasing the timeless riches of the soul, rather than the piles of rupees that disintegrate in the first rain-storm.

The morning came against all odds, so cold had the night been and revealed a small, quaint village with charming wooden houses and bridges, that forded a loud and gushing river of turquoise, bounding down from glacier sources. These icy giants peaked their heads over the valley and hinted at a land of snow that would soon be upon these people.

The delicious aroma of woodsmoke floated in the street. The men went about their business with blankets wrapped around their shoulders. Women were not to be seen. The few that dared step outside appeared as shuffling figures of cloth. Kalam was more conservative than the big cities and I couldn't imagine the women seeing unmeshed daylight here for a couple of centuries yet.

Tourist season was well and truly over. All of the many, many guesthouses and flash hotels stood empty. Development had not been slow off the mark here to entice the lucrative tourist industry and a few nights stay in the monstrous resorts on the edge of town would easily match the monthly salaries of most of the men living in Kalam. That was pretty horrible to see and I was pleased to be spared the obnoxious presence of American tourists, wielding video cameras and thrusting 500 rupee notes like daggers at the simple mountain folk. These I knew, would be the kind of travellers who fly everywhere, block up toilets with toilet paper and who continually whinge about the lack of hot water baths, satellite television and hot dogs with pepperoni.

The money brought in by tourism often does more harm than good. The prospect of wealth seduces people who were previously content with a simple life in Nature into the pursuit of material riches. Families begin to argue about rights to land that was previously considered worthless and jealousy grows towards those who are sharp enough to profit-They in turn become paranoid and possessive about their wealth. What price can be set on peace of mind?

I had enough rupees for a couple of days up here, if I ate meals of nan, apples and walnuts, all stuffed with the freshness of the valley. I made lunch by the turquoise brilliance of the river in a secluded meditation spot. The water played a collage of sounds as it skipped over the rocks and began its epic journey to the sea. I resorted to my usual game of trying to focus on each individual voice of the river, each gurgle, thump and gush singing its own tumbling water song of the narrow mountains.

But on this occasion the more I listened, the more agitated I became. Instead of the desired peaceful trance, I became more jumpity and anxious than before, as though I was being delivered a lecture that I didn't really want to hear. Minutes passed like hours and in the brilliance of the noon sunshine, everything seemed too stark and real.

I tried to break myself out of this mood by walking up river and into a forest of tall and thin trees. The leaves created a hypnotic filter effect of light on the shaded area, carpeted with soft, green turf. The trees were too tall for it to be possible to view the bottoms and the tops at the same time and I suspected that the two might not be connected at all. The turf undulated in smooth sloping dips and rises and I tried to enjoy the whole fairyland effect, hoping to hear the songs of merry elves in green jerkins. But here time hung still and ominous as the frozen shards of sunlight that filtered through the canopy. A sense of pensive foreboding prevailed and I began to flick nervous glances over my shoulder to see what might be stalking me.

All creatures and plants of the woods pricked up their ears in apprehension, as a lilting rustle of leaves warned of the swooping flight of huge air elementals that rode the wind on the hunt for free souls. I scanned the area for somewhere to hide but to no avail and so I just stood rigid and rooted, hoping to pass for a deformed sapling. The breeze parted for me as it rushed past, probing and stroking my body for any signs of life, wrathful and hungry. The ghosts of the air knew of no fixed abode and charged on to wreak havoc and terror in new glades and valleys. Severed from the nourishment of the Earth, they were shaped into bitter carnivores with the senseless fury of an army that's lost its banner.

Gradually a calm restored itself but nothing in Nature smiled or glowed. All sank under the veil of the condemned on death row, every living moment an expansive agony to be endured until the final mercy of the Executioner's swinging axe.

When I moved again my bones creaked and cracked and my blood began to sluggishly circulate once more. I was draped in a weary mantle now worn by the whole woods. The plants, the trees, the insects and I, all lurched in a passionless limbo, our inner fires quenched by the devouring cries of the winds that echoed yet, bemoaning with a piercing howl the bitter misery of some nightmare realm that had spilled over from some perverse overlap of the worlds.

Some time later, some children saw a young wanderer drift among the fringes of the forest; his clothes ragged, his hair all blustered and his eyes wild and forlorn. In my low moments, I wonder if he walks there still.

Further down, I met a teacher who wanted me to come and see his school. I had no remaining will to refuse and was taken to see thirty young boys and girls recite in sweet chorus, the rote lesson the teacher recited. I sat unmoved and unable to communicate, depressed by this backwards education. The children all filed out to attend their next lesson with a retired army serviceman who was going to teach them drill.

The teacher insisted that I should stay for dinner and wanted to employ me as an English instructor. He was a nervous and soft-hearted man, whose anxious eyes told the story of his immense loneliness. He told me of his great heart-ache, that came from his affection for a thirteen year-old girl whom he used to teach. She had been his pupil for two years, during which time they had developed a strong platonic bond before she'd been transferred to another school. He desperately wanted to see her again but knew that if any of her family ever found out, they would surely shoot him at once and with full community support.

He felt that the world was tragically unfair and he couldn't understand why other people didn't make the effort to be as good and conscientious as he tried to be. Sometimes, he felt like he should end it all and he looked to me to give him the words of wisdom to put his heart at rest.

The sight of someone deeper in despair than I dragged me out of my melancholy. I tried to give him every reason for living though as we faced each other at the opposite ends of the bed on which we sat, wrapped in every available blanket for warmth, it was hard to find many convincing arguments-what did I know? Maybe suicide was the best solution.

I headed back to my hotel that night in a weird state of mind but I resolved to give Kalam another chance in the morning, knowing the way that first impressions of a place are liable to be fickle and influenced by fatigue.

The morning was grey and dreary and even the desert would have been preferable to this place. It was still cold at noon and the clouds lay siege to the spirit. It all seemed so unreal that I wanted to take a sledgehammer to the whole thing and shatter this morbid illusion. I made a quick farewell to the teacher and caught the next mini-bus back to Peshawar.

I changed buses in Swat and ate a couple of bowls of beans cooked by a little old guy on the street in his massive wok-like cauldron. He made flexing muscles with his arms to indicate the nourishing value of his food and as I chewed, he thrust a bag of snuff under my nose. I thrust it away in exaggerated disgust that set the whole gathered crowd laughing and, with the fresh chilli in my blood, I began to sweat and laugh, too. A deep cackle roared and raged inside and without, purifying and dispelling the dismal gloom of Kalam. Colour returned to my world.