Sufis, Lahore, Amritsar and the Sikhs

Chapter 16 - Hand to Mouth to India

As a result of a couple of punctures-a regular feature of mountain drives-it was dark by the time I arrived back in the city. It wasn't long before a conductor had pulled me into a bus and an hour of shunting through traffic later, we came to the university. It was my plan to try and find someone I knew there, or else just sleep out in the campus grounds. But I was befriended at once by a big, black medical student, called Farooq. His hulky body stretched even the most expansive of the traditional long kameez shirt and baggy shalwur trousers, though his plump-cheeked schoolboy manner suggested that he'd be at a complete loss in a fight.

He fed me and let me stay in his room for the night, after an enjoyable few hours of getting stoned with some guys who had lived half their lives living in England. They felt more dead than alive here and spent the majority of their mental energies in calculating the most effective schedule to kill time. They couldn't understand why I was bothering to visit a country this dull. When they asked me how I'd like the mountains there didn't seem to be any words to describe what had passed.

I was tired. Tired of the world and the people in it; tired of guys trying to shove me into buses to Lahore; tired of maniacal truck drivers and 40 hour journeys; tired of side stall wallahs trying to sell me snacks; and really tired of shitting canal water, eight times a day.

So I hid away in the university for about a week, hanging out with people of education who could express themselves in English (my Urdu only being at primate level) and who were more than willing to house and feed me in exchange for the entertainment value I merited. Travelling hand-to-mouth didn't mean that I was only taking from people. In all the situations I found myself in I was effectively an ambassador of another vision, an alternative perspective on life. I must have answered half a million questions during these months (most of them the same) but each sprung from a genuine curiosity and so deserved an answer. I always had the responsibility on my shoulders to give hope and cheer to those that I met, regardless of my mood. In places where not much ever really happened, I'm sure that I'm still mentioned in conversation:

"Hey dad! Do you remember that dirty English guy who spat at us when we tried to sell him samosas?"

The campus grounds were rowdier than i expected with the horns of the college traffic but there were wide, grassy areas where the birds made melodious song at twilight and I treated the whole place like a kind of a holiday camp.

In these days, I would skulk in the library, reading Sufi poetry and Tales from the 1001 Nights like this one:

The king returned from the battlefield, where he'd been fighting for weeks in disputes about territory and shouted to his jester to bring him a glass of water. The fool brought it to him and watched his lord enjoy the drink before asking him:

"O my most majestic of Sires, what would you have given for that glass of water, if there had been none to bring it to you?

"About half my kingdom!" The king replied, leaning back on his throne.

"And supposing, O great and glorious King, that some mishap occurred in the functioning of your royal bladder-what would it be worth to you to be able to release the liquid then?"

"Again, I'd say half my kingdom!" The king laughed, wondering where this was taking him.

"So my most wise and esteemed Majesty, is a humble fool to suppose that this kingdom of yours, over which you fight such long and bloody wars, could be bought for a glass of water and a sloshful of piss?" The king wept at the truth of this.

One day the king decided to reward his jester and began to elaborate on the wonderful titles, gifts and lands he would bestow upon him. In the middle of this, however, the fool simply stretched out his legs towards the king in what was an unbelievably rude gesture of disrespect. The king was furious and shouted:

"Fool! You had better to be able to explain yourself, or else you'll lose your head within seconds!" And the fool replied:

"Well, I only meant to say, your Majesty, that if I were to reach out my hand to accept all these fine favours from you, then I should no longer be able to stretch out my legs."

This last story rang some bells for me. Because I was often indebted to the people who helped me out, I often had to take a lot of shit in the process and had to keep my mouth shut. 'There is none so miserbale as the traveller for he may never open his mouth' runs a Yiddish proverb. If people were going to share their hard-earned resources with a lazy hippy like me, then it was only to be expected that they'd rub it in a bit.

The poor of the world usually seem to find some way to get by but most of them first have to endure humiliation at the hands of the more privileged; you can make a buck collecting rags on the street but no one will respect you or consider you an equal. I was beginning to understand the value of financial independence.

The students were like all unmarried young men in Pakistan; bored, frustrated and tense. There were female students in the university but it was dangerous to talk to any of them, in case their families took exception and decided to bend some of your bones in the wrong direction to make their point. Still, it was naturally the main orientation of the thought and activity of my friends and they engaged in protracted eye-contact rituals as a preliminary to actual conversation. They would also devote whole evenings to going out to public exhibitions where they might see some chaperoned females, to whom they might be able to slip their telephone numbers-and god help them if they were caught.

Not only did the students tread carefully around courtship behaviour, it was also highly imprudent to voice any unorthodox thought that might be regarded as un-Islamic-something that would probably merit an immediate expulsion from the university, at the least. Farid, a thin and awkward graduate, was one such intellectual who lived in constant fear that it would be discovered that he was not a Believer. In our conversations he emphasized the trouble that would befall him should I betray his confidence. He was probably the only feminist Pakistani that I met and it was a comfort to meet another dissenting island in the great ocean of Islam.

Not that all the students were ardent believers, though. Every morning at 5am someone would do the rounds of knocking at each door of the hostels announcing that it was time for prayer, calling out the reminder that 'prayer is better than sleep' -the general response seemed to be 'Oh no, it's not' as sleepy heads mumbled excuses until the attendant moved on.

The only drawback to being around people of able and eloquent minds was that there were the inevitable few who would make conversion attempts in pious efforts to correct my life. The Qur'an commands its followers to spread the True Word and, puffed up with this spirit of righteous evangelicism, pimply adolescents would sometimes lecture me as to the evils of my ways. I wasn't impressed. It seems to me that the whole conversion (the clue is in the first syllable) trip stems from insecurity, doubts gnawing away at the foundation of their own faith. To see an example of someone living another way of life was just too much for them to bear. In a more barbaric age they'd have been happy to execute me rather than evaluate their own tinny argunments.

It was bloody rude. When he had finally exhausted my patience, I told a Somalian student this and with waving arms and a reggae rhythm, he responded:

"What, man? I have to tell you! I mean if I see someone walking down a path and I know there's a lion there-I've got to tell him, right?" But the point was, that he'd never been down any other paths and had no idea of what a lion looked like. I didn't travel for three months on the mercy of Fate to be lectured to by these self-important prats. Some were indefatigable.

"There must be something wrong with your life, for you to be living like this!" I was told by a Russian exchange student who seemed particularly offended at my hand-to-mouth existence. He was a recent convert to Islam so I could forgive him his enthusiasm but not his condescension. I think I might have threatened to punch him on the nose in the end just to make him shut up-but I'm not sure as someone always got me absolutely bombed every evening.

The drag with living with medical students was that they kept leaving scary books lying around. One day, I made the mistake of picking up one on the nightmare world of parasitology. Ten minutes of morbid reading convinced me that I'd never touch food or water in Asia again. I'd been drinking local water and apart from mild inconveniences I'd been lucky so far. What to do? No way could I afford bottled water and you can't use purifying tablets forever.

Suddenly, my whole route lay ahead of me as a treacherous obstacle course of hepatitis, cholera and giardia bacteria; tapeworms, cysts and amoebas all waiting around the corner. I burned a five rupee note in offering to whatever god might be responsible for the health of poor travellers-Captain Cook, maybe. The students were all very nice to me but it was tiresome to hear the way they'd continually run down all their countrymen who were not at university, calling them 'backward' and 'ignorant' as though they had to apologize for them. It was also these educated that had the strongest urge to emigrate to Europe, having heard some exaggerated stories from a relative living in Manchester or somewhere. They dreamed of the easy sex and big money that would surely be waiting for them.

Were it not for the immigration laws and passport restrictions, I have an idea that most of Asia would be on the long and dusty road to Europe. The whole issue is very mixed-up and at the thought, I'm reminded of an old Palestinian I knew in Brighton. Whenever he saw a right-wing politician he'd approach him saying:

"I come from Palestine and I want to thank you very much for allowing me to stay in your country for the past seven years-during which I've not worked a single day! I've written home to all of my relatives and told them how the government here will give them a place to live, pay the rent and give you money each week for doing nothing! They'll all be coming soon!" He rarely got the chance to actually finish his monologue. His maniacal grin and insufferable spiel generally proved too much for the average bigot in a suit.

I decided to get on with things and re-entered the city on a hot and smelly morning. I had to move on to Islamabad to get my visa for India and I whipped out the traveller's cheque I'd kept for the embassy fee. It had been stuffed into various pockets, shoe soles and crannies of my bag in an effort to keep it safe on my way. I'd succeeded but at a cost, as although it could still be recognized as authentic, it was covered in creases, holes and tears and the colours ran in washed out stains. It had very clearly not travelled in the normal fashion.

It was maybe for this reason or more likely due to the similar appearance of my person that I had trouble in cashing it. From the moment I walked into the only money-changing place I could find that took TC's, the owner looked me up and down with a contempt that he didn't try to conceal.

"Passport." He barked. He compared the two signatures and saw that on the cheque was just the initial of my first name, whilst on the passport it was written out in full. "This is not your cheque!" He said.

I tried to explain, suppressing my surge of annoyance and he demanded that I prove my signature on a piece of blank paper-now who can make the same perfect signature twice?

"This is not same signature! this is not you cheque! I cannot take it!! He muttered in surly tones.

"Are you calling me a thief?" I cried, grabbing it back.

"No thief! This is not your cheque!"

"Then fuck you! You call me a thief! You're a pig and a dog, too!" I shouted in a fiery explosion of rage and I stormed out. Immediately, that I was outside in the street again, I started laughing. How could I be so ludicrously bad-tempered? I put it down to the amounts of chilli I'd been eating. It was no way to deal with that kind of problem as I completely blew the chances of either of us saving face. Yet again I proved myself to be a clueless klutz in Asia. It's always a far better approach to make the guy feel guilty by reminding him, 'Why do you talk to me like this? Aren't I a guest in your country?'

Furthermore, though things seemed civilized, this was still Pathan country and it's definitely not a good idea to stir them up as they're prepared to take things further than most. I was reminded of this as I bumped into a Danish guy in the street, called Martin, who had cycled all the way from Europe. Despite this he looked like your average choir boy, baby-faced and blonde with scarcely a bristle on his rosy cheeks. But his toughness resided within, a reserve that had won him the respect of the Peshawar locals. His story went like this:

"Man, you should have seen what happened yesterday! I was just getting out of one of those little minibuses and a French girl was coming out behind me-I heard her scream and I turned around to see that this Pakistani guy had put his hand around her breasts. Well, I started beating him up, when this shopkeeper comes running towards me, puts his hand down his trousers and pulls out a gun! Then, before I have time to think, he puts the pistol in my hands and shouts:

'Shoot him!'" Martin raised his eyebrows in reflection.

"Now, that was going a bit too far for me, you know and so I said to him 'But I'll go to prison if I kill him!' This shopkeeper just smiles with a shake of his head and says proudly,

'No,no-this is Pathan country!'"

"So what did you do with the guy you were hitting?" I asked.

"Well," Martin chuckled, "there wasn't really much left of him by that point!"

I took a bus to Rawalpindi, the twin city of Islamabad and re-entered the Punjab. The bus got there in the evening and I spent the last of my money in getting a cheap hotel room; praying that someone would accept my cheque in the morning.

I awoke at 7am and walked the bitterly-cold streets. The thick grey clouds above seemed reluctant to release the day. I drifted largely unseen, due to my disguise of a grey shalwur kameez-wearing these, most people took me for an Afghani with my lighter skin colour and left me alone.

Men sat around huge Karom boards (the Asian version of pool), flicking the discs towards the pockets whilst only twenty metres away, a young guy off-handedly slit the throats of chickens. He tossed them into a dustbin, where they squawked and rumbled against the sides until their life ran out.

There was no trouble with the cheque at American Express and I dashed out before they could change their minds. The money was enough to buy my India visa and leave me with about 20 dollars to play with. The rest of the day was spent buying books and little dainties of food to cheer my spirits. I did my best to revive the feeling of being a prince in my particular kingdom where I could have anything on display. I didn't need much, just a few luxury tastes to convince myself that I was amongst the favoured. A brief holiday from being forever skint.

I'd fucked up my timing for the embassy which was conveniently open to foreigner's applications for one and a half hours each day. So for the afternoon I took a minibus to Gorlarsharif, a Sufi shrine where I was told I could get free food. This place was on the outskirts of town and was a beautiful palace of marble white with a towering minaret that could be seen from miles away.

Passing a coin to the guys who asked for alms at the entrance, I left my decrepit boots outside and stepped into the main area of smooth and cool white tiles, with ceramic pillars making an avenue around the perimeter. A wide open courtyard housed the tomb of an exalted Sufi saint. Around the shrine, there was a constant display of prayer and kissing of the cloth draped on it.

It was a relief to hang out in such a peaceful place and I got chatting to a visiting Pathan pilgrim. He disappeared for a minute and came back with a warm hat for me, before pointing out where I should go for the evening dinner that followed the sunset prayers.

Around fifty men sat on the floor, facing one another (the women ate separately, of course) and we were each given two nan. These had to be broken up and folded into small triangular shapes to scoop up the dal from the shared bowl between each pair. Not easy and it made for anxious eating as only about half the dal I scooped up seemed to reach my mouth. I had to resort to using my spare nan as a safety net.

It turned out that one could stay for three nights in the place to make the most of the pilgrimage. I was just getting comfortable on the string bed in a dorm with ten other men when the manager came to personally greet me and insisted that I come with him. Much to my protest, he gave me a room of my own and brought in a tray of green tea. When he produced a cake, my solidarity for the guys in the dorm began to weaken and I decided to humbly accept my lot. It was a nice room, after all.

He left me with a book to read about the Sufi saint, to whom this place was dedicated and I read the biography of this devout ascetic. He'd begun to pray five times a day while still a boy and had spent all his life sincein study and contemplation of the Qur'an and the Sayings of the Prophet. He didn't drink tea, listen to take spices in his food. So where were all the swords through the waists?

The next day, I was introduced to the current spiritual guide of the shrine and I was made to feel what an honour this would be. My brash English manner, however, shattered all appropriate etiquette as I strode forward and held out my hand to shake. I think i was suppoed to bow or prostrate or something. Before he knew what he was doing, the great pir responded by extending his hand. I grabbed it with a hearty squeeze and suddenly had the urge to find a sink and wash my hands.

We had about thirty words in common so we could be forgiven for the lack of dialogue and I stepped aside to allow two local women to approach. They came onto their knees straight away, trailing copious and cheerful dresses upon the ground. They paid homage with bowed heads and humble offerings of praise. One tried to make him a present of sweets, an offering that met with a disdainful refusal and the other donated twenty rupees which he accepted without a word. He then bade them leave with a slight dismissive flick of the head.

This was all pretty nauseous but I needed the hospitality and so I withdrew to my room before i said something that would get me chucked out. I'd lay money that this guy had never known what it was to need twenty rupees, having almost certainly been groomed for the position of a scholar and saint from birth-with a silver spoon in his mouth since day one and a golden shit pot from day two.

Apart from this oasis of calm, the city was typically loud and obnoxious and for me, Pakistan was fast running out of redeeming qualities. The embassy game didn't improve matters and seemed designed to make life as hard as possible. Civil servants. Self-service, naturally.

When I finally managed to arrive on the correct day and at the correct time, the heavens broke loose and rained upon all the visa applicants waiting outside; not so bad for us small group of foreigners who gave our forms in at a separate window but for the Pakistanis hoping to visit India, it was a complete nightmare. They stood against a wall in a queue of about two or three hundred and all tried to shelter under a sheet of newspaper or an overhanging bush. I met one guy who had waited from 8am to 5pm the previous day without reaching the window and had to return again today, no better off than before.

I met a couple of Europeans who had cycled all the way and one or two others who had come by motorbike. I finally understood why locals were always asking me: 'Where is your bike?'

Inside the Consulate, we had to pay for a fax to England that would determine if we were wanted criminals or perhaps political enemies of the Indian Government. In addition, it was sprung on us by a smarmy and uncompromising official that we would need a letter of recommendation from our home Embassies - what the fuck? A cold sweat broke on my forehead as I learnt that the cost of such a letter was £35. I hadn't seen that much money since Vienna.

The traveller's embassy is not generally the oasis of sanity and assistance that one might imagine. In smaller countries you might meet a vice-consul who wil bend over backwards to help you but where they see a lot of tourists you'll only recevie any help if you have an impressive series of letters after your name. The British Embassy in India once had a sign up to prevent any of their citizens on the verge if dying of hepatitus from soliciting assistance. It said: "No one with hippyitus wwill be granted entrance". Thus I decided against telling the British consulate that I was a wayfaring pilgrim, living in poverty to complement my search for a simple spiritual sanctity.

"I'm in the most terrible fix!" I began explaining in my most well-mannered English to the clerk on the other side of the reception window.

"As I was travelling between Faislabad and Peshawar my bags were mislaid when someone opened the luggage hatch at the side of the bus during one of the stops-by accident or purpose, I really don't presume to know-but the real embarrassment of the whole affair is that my money belt was in the bags that were lost!" And I babbled on for a while like an aristocrat on amphetamines, standing close to the window, so that my torn and holed boots couldn't be seen by the patient clerk on the other side.

I was taken through to the interview room where I repeated my story to an older official. To my astonishment he responded in the warmest possible manner, assuring me of the recommendation letter for free and asked if there was anything else they could do for me, such as contacting friends and family in England. I was tempted to ask for a cheeky loan but reflected that I might someday be really in need of it and so reserved that option for the future.

I ran back to the Indian consulate and submitted the form just in time. I spent the next three days playing clarinet and making yoga in my room, wondering when the manager would finally throw me out-but then I was given the visa and boarded a bus for Lahore on the same day.

I arrived in Lahore around about getting-dark time and after a lot of hassle, found the YWCA (there were no rooms at the YMCA), that any foreigner could safety stay at for fifty rupees a night. A couple of grinning guards at the gate made me write down my name and time of arrival and I marched up the gravel path with gardens to either side. I met up with a whole load of other travellers who came here rather than risk the horror stories of robberies, rapes and police stitch-ups pervading associated with the other hotels in Lahore.

I stood in the hostel gardens, enjoying the moonlight shadows and singing to myself a song by The Specials.

"Just because you've got nobody, Doesn't mean that you're no good."

"It gives you a pretty good clue, though!" Piped up a voice behind me and I turned to find Jaurice, the French wit whom I'd not seen since Quetta.

Soon we were all laughing and joking in this large house that didn't seem to be run by anybody, catching up with each other's stories of travels in the wild. As a result of keeping the more pyschedelic side of my mind closed for so many weeks, my imagination and sense of humour now went into complete hyper-mode for the next couple of days, joking, piss-taking and fantasising about the future with abandon.

Jaurice had been up in the freezing Hunza valleys in a brave last romance with his girlfriend, who'd now gone on to China to take up a job in Peking as an English teacher. Whether because of this or just general ennui, Jaurice was weary of travel-happy though he was to be escaping the Muslims, whose conversion attempts he'd endured for seven months since starting off in Egypt. The thought of India daunted him a little, though, as he'd been there before and knew what to expect:

"How do you keep from going completely crazy there, Tom?" He asked me as if I was a priest in a confessional box. "I mean, the Indians really get on top of you after a while." He sighed and shook his head with regret.

"I don't know why we travel-I think maybe we're just running away from life in our own cultures, where we can't cope. I tell you, I'm just sick of the endless schedule of bus journeys, hotels and special places to see-okay, it's nice for a while but then I just begin to think, 'What are we doing here?' You know? I've got to do something different soon-I think I'll just fly to Bangkok and get a job in a bar or something." His voice had a weariness to it that he'd not revealed before and I wondered if the comedian has tears in his eyes when the curtains are drawn.

We dug Lahore a little the next day, visiting the museum where the famous fasting Buddha had its home. A truly austere-looking statue with all of its ribs painfully evident, I bought ten postcards of it to send back to friends as a wry indication of my fortune and fate.

I teamed up with a guy called Steve, who looked the archtypal English country gentleman, with an arable ginger mustache and scarecrow hair. He had, in fact, spent most of his youth hanging around on New Age Traveller sites, smoking cheap dope and absorbing non-conformist influences from the fringe. He'd done the East Asia tour by making money in Thailand where he was hired to take a Thai businessman with a false British passport to Japan-the Thai couldn't speak English and so Steve was employed to do the talking for him. It all went off smoothly as to every question that the customs men fired at Steve's client, he replied with:

"Oh ho! Yes sir!" The one expression he had mastered and which seemed to see him through okay. We rode on the top of the mini-bus to the border and Steve hid all of his cash, for we'd heard that the officials were very corrupt. They weren't very friendly, either and when the Pakistanis learnt that Steve had some dollars, they offered to give him an exchange rate to Indian rupees. Steve refused and the policeman said:

"Okay. You not change-I not let you through. You can come back tomorrow." What to do? At least the rate was reasonable. They ripped apart all that we owned and much to their disappointment, found nothing untoward. The Indian side was much more relaxed with a polite though thorough Sikh on the desk. On the form, we were required to state our means of support and I declared that I had £700 in traveller's cheques-fortunately, they didn't ask for proof.

We strolled triumphantly down the Atari road that linked the two countries that have been at each other's throats since Independence. The distance was clearly a lot less effort for us than for the blue-hatted porters on the Pakistani side who carried huge loads to the border, where the burdens were transferred to a team of red-turbanned Indian coolies. The sight would have given a chiropractor a headache. These guys were creating wholly original spinal ailments, supporting loads on their heads that men were not meant to carry.

Before letting us through the final gate to the promised land of India, the Sikh on duty enquired if I wanted to sell my green foam sleeping mat. I couldn't help but laugh that the very first thing that could occur in this land of merchants and frauds was to be approached for a cash-in-hand transaction!

Steve and I took a cycle rickshaw to the Golden Temple; heartplace of Sikh faith. We rolled slowly along the road and felt like the arriving British Raj. The old man on the cycle puffed and sweated as he pulled our idle loads. His bony legs went up and down with a heaving effort that made us feel guilty for being so heavy. The clicks and whirs of the chain and wheels were drowned out only by the whizz and hum of the mopeds that overtook us with automated ease. But we didn't care for we had arrived and felt on top of the world. We were the bold new champions of the noble cause of hedonism; our banners painted in huge smiles across our faces. So what if we had to get out and help push when we came to the hill?

. The Sikhs are a splendid people with enormous hearts and courage that make them as fierce and daunting in battle as they are kind and generous in time of peace. And this was the place, the centre of their pilgrimage and man, what a place! We entered the massive complex and met with the unbelievable visage of the 30 ton Golden Temple, sat slam in the middle of a huge square lake, accessed only by a two-lane walkway that led to the centre of the place. There we discovered that the song and tabla music heard through every waking and sleeping moment of the next few days was being played live. It was no problem to take a seat against the rails to just absorb the shanti contentment that abounded here, the peace beyond understanding.

Even better was the handful of sweet semolina that they gave you as you returned from the centre-to reaffirm the potential sweetness of life on Earth, I guess. We'd chew on this and then just waltz around the tiled walkway that bordered the lake. The centre carpet warming our bare feet, our tranced steps in time with the endless Punjabi song and our minds got lost in peaceful dreams.

When hunger overtook us it was only a short walk to the 24-hour free food hall and as we waited our turn, we'd squat down outside with businessmen, sadhus, families with uncontrollable children and Sikh warriors bearing pole-axes and swords (one guy even had a morning-star -the small spikey metal ball swung from a chain on a short metal pole.).

When the current session ended the hall would empty in a clattering exodus of satisfied pilgrims, carrying their plates and cups to the washing-up area. Then we'd all bustle inside and scramble to find places to sit on the long rows of thin carpet that were arranged so that each line sat back-to-back. Down the long walkways came the guys with baskets of chapattis and buckets of dal which they dolloped out by hand. Before eating, we'd be led in a Punjabi Grace and the communal chant put an exquisite edge on our hunger. Aromas of hot food drifted in from the kitchen.

There was not a veil in sight anywhere in the complex and as Steve and I chased pieces of lentils around our plates with scooping shovels of chapatti, we often had the distinct feeling that we were being sized up as potential marriage material. We looked up and sure enough, quite dazzling young girls were returning our gaze with bold, saucy smiles. Their mothers were egging them on and to hear clusters of pretty maidens giggling and tittering was like feeling the first spray of rain upon our faces on a hot summer's day.

The Pakistanis now seemed like some cultural relic of the Dark Ages. One old Sikh chap with full grey beard, rocked with laughter when I told him of the taboos regarding women in the Pathan territories.

"Crazy, no?" He cried with gleaming eyes. It was hard not to agree. India is at least equally as prehistoric in its regard for women but in the Golden Temple an easy going vibe prevailed. At all times the air was filled with the intoxicating song of the Sikh holy books that made our time there seem like a dream. Each day new arrivals came in with their dusty packs, eager and enthusiastic and others departed after their three day stay, calmed and content.

Perhaps it was due to this relaxed atmosphere that on my way to wash in the bathroom, I received a full-blooded sexy wink from a Sikh girl who could not have been more than fifteen-she turned around excitedly, to see if I had caught her signal but I was so freaked after so many weeks of deprivation from female energies, that I collapsed on the spot in hysterics. I hope that I didn't hurt her feelings too much as she was a sweet little thing - but this was not Thailand and there were way too many well-armed guys around to make that point with the ends of their daggers. Still, it was still nice to have these shining beauties around to fill our late night fantasies before giving in to sleep.

The Sikhs were in some ways similar to the Pathans. A quick glance at the history shows them also to be a ferocious race of warriors that evolved to meet the threat of the invading Muslims. I'd rather face a hundred lap-top carrying English commuters than a single Sikh in blue battle-dress, carrying a sharpened toothpick.

But like the Pathans, they're determined that their guests should not lack for anything and they have a natural disposition to providing welfare to the less fortunate, in order to strengthen the communities they've founded. They're often the butt of jokes in India and have a reputation for being a bit dim. This disdain probably stems from jealousy, however, as they're one of the wealthier sections of Indian society. they stick together and take pride in working hard. In all of India you will never see a Sikh beggar.

The focus of the Sikh religion is on the happiness and fulfillment of people in this life, rather than the usual con-trick of other faiths where the believer's rewards are in some pie-in-the-sky Paradise or auspicious rebirth. In every city in the Punjab they provide a sleeping area in their temples and at least one free meal a day for those who wish to come. Of course, there's a limit to how much help can be given and you're only allowed to stay for three days, which is deemed enough time to rest, recuperate and put you back on your feet. Three days is in fact the accpeted lwnght of stay in traditions all across the world; ranging from ther desert camps of Arabia to bourgeois homes in Germany, where the saying is that 'guests are like fish-after three days they both begin to smell!'

Naturally, within the Temple we had to pay respect to the values and traditions of our hosts-but it was easy to forget as when our Australian friend, Brendan, commenced to shave Steve's head in the middle of the courtyard. Only as the attendants came dashing up with outstretched arms of panicked protest, did my friends slap themselves on the forehead in a 'Oh, of course' realisation that the cutting of hair is forbidden among the Sikhs-that being perhaps the most obvious feature to be noticed about this folk where all the men wear long beards and stash their hair up under their turbans.

We kipped down at night-time in the area reserved for foreigners and it was good fun to meet up with other freakish travellers who got by without the use of guidebooks (and the accompanying demeanour of spoilt brats). The people I met here used their creativity to write their own movie plots, living whatever life they liked to live. We sat around exchanging Asia travel stories, each anecdote sending fresh sparks into the fire of experience, kindling our burning urge and seek out the jewels of one-off incidents that are booned upon the intrepidly curious.

The funniest story was that of an Australian girl, whom I called Baby Roo on account of her tiny figure, pretty mouse-like face and fuzzy, tumbleweed hair. She had come out travelling with the fierce determination to do things differently and had recently spent six weeks living almost entirely around the Indian railway system. She'd discovered that if she squashed into the lowest class of carriage and nestled somewhere in amongst the human jam, then she was rarely asked for a ticket and travel often became free. She further cut costs by sleeping in train stations, sometimes getting thrown out of the waiting rooms for being the freeloader that she was.

Her entire travelling luggage was even less than mine, coming down to one medium-sized, brown handbag with a couple of plastic bags hanging ragatat from the sides. The contents of all this consisted of a change of clothes, a bed sheet for a sleeping cover and, until recently, her travelling essentials in this miniature survival kit had included two cacti plants (sharp ones, mind) and a stand-up portrait of Barbara Streisland. She used to get these out and establish her personalised mini-environment any time, any place.

She'd reluctantly abandoned this practice, because two German guys had laughed at her and she suddenly got worried that people might think that she was weird. In her spare time, this angel would buy chai at a small stand on the street and charm the shopkeeper until he'd ply her with the coconut sweets that she'd coveted all along. I was amazed to see someone who had absorbed the weirdness of this country with such speed and ease. She was clearly an India-freak natural of outstanding talent.

Nevertheless, we were now in Tourist-Land. India has become a hugely popular destination for straight-laced young travellers on a limited budget. Some of them tend to make the disastrous mistake of bringing with them the haughty expectations of their own cultures, with the result that they embarrass themselves time and time again.

On this occasion, it was the turn of the Swiss to be ambassadorial buffoons for the West. Around about midnight, two rather stiff-looking girls rose from their beds in a huff. They marched to the other side of the plaster partition to ask the Sikh attendants if they wouldn't mind 'talking more quietly please' as some people were 'trying to get some sleep, thankyou-very-much'. At the other end of the room, we cracked up in disbelief - it was the accepted paradigm that we ought to be grateful for receiving a free bed in the first place! What was next? Room service? Those people would never have made it overland.

Now that I was in India, I had to get myself some decent-looking sadhu clothes, the orange and saffron colours that this brand of religious renunciates wear. I wasn't a sadhu, of course, as that would mean going through a whole process of being accepted by a guru, learning complicated mantras and a whole load of initiation rites that might include attending my own funeral to renounce my previous identity.

These customs ensure the integrity of the tradition, as no one could pretend to be a sadhu by just wearing the appropriate colours, growing dreadlocks and scrawling a few Shiva lines on their forehead with ash. Unless they could answer the secret questions that another sadhu would ask them-they'd be found out immediately for being beggars on to a more respectable way of hand-to-mouth living. The sadhus are generally regarded with respect in India. It's a facet of Hindu philosophy that every man should eventually renounce his former life, distribute his money to the poor and devote his remaining years to the pursuit of self-realisation. But the word 'sadhu' just means 'practitioner'. So, in effect, any one who makes their meditation practice the focus of their lives deserves the title as much as a grumpy old guy smoking chillums around a fire in a Himilayan temple.

My reasoning was that if I wore orange, then I'd have less questions asked of me and it would hopefully be apparent to others that I had no money. Somehow i had to try to mark myself apart form all the other backpackers. In my search for a good cloth shop, I rediscovered the joy of side-streets, an aspect of India I'd forgotten all about. Steve and I delighted in becoming hopelessly lost in the alleyways that were thick with religion, commerce and general chaos. Retail operated in different zones; in one area the air would be thick with hanging scarves, lungis and sheets and then a few hundred yards away we'd clink into the hardware stalls, with pots, pans and cauldrons glistening in all directions.

Altars made their homes in ancient trees that had merited enough respect to be built around, rather than through. Data streamed in a dense and invisible river from all sides. The street space that existed was still fought over by fierce traffic as the smaller vehicles wheeled through in skidding bursts, braking every half-minute when a cow came strutting through, gnawing at anything resembling vegetable matter. That would be followed by a procession of chanting and singing Krishna devotees, playing instruments and burning incense in the Indian version of song-and-dance men.

It was our misfortune to be caught up in Diwali, the HIndu Festival of Light. It sounds nice but seems to be nothing more than an excuse for every child old enough to stand to get hold of obnoxiously loud and dangerous fireworks to be let off at the feet of anyone walking by (especially jumpy tourists, who fly into a delicious rage at the least prompting). On the night itself, five of us sat on a lawn outside the Temple, eating masala spaghetti and feeling pretty nervous about being in the middle of a war-zone. The fireworks became more and more random, with a minimum of colour and a maximum of sound.

Then Brendan, with his remarkable talent for attracting tricky situations that belied his slouching, easy-going manner, suddenly outdid himself by producing a last joint he had remaining. We debated whether it was safe to smoke it, given the numbers of people around. You weren't supposed to smoke anything within a few hundred metres of the Temple-but in the midst of all this gunpowder and noise, who would know or care anyhow? We looked up and down with conspicuously hunched shoulders and paranoid tilts of the head, as full bearded Sikhs hung about in the distance carrying their ceremonial halberds.

"Wait, Wait-that guy with the axe over there is looking... No, it's okay, he's moved on."

"Okay, we'll just wait for that policeman to go round the corner,"

"Right, do you think it's safe now? Yeah? Okay give me some cover, so that I can light up."

And just as we were about to smoke, a great shadow loomed over us and we all turned around with stomach-wrenching fright. Standing two metres tall was a Sikh warrior in majestic blue battle dress, with one hand on an enormous sword in its scabbard. With his beard and turban he was utterly ferocious and for a long and dreadful moment, it flashed through all of our minds that he might chop off all of our heads with one mighty stroke.

It turned out that he was concerned about some rupees lying on the ground and thought that we might be gambling. He left and we all breathed again. Trying hard to be undismayed, we lit and finished the joint in record time, barely holding back our hysterics.