The Great India Blog Email

For those of you who didn't receive my recent group email, I need to quickly explain something. This blog started out as an email which grew far too long and personal to send and realistically expect people to actually read so I decided to publish it here instead. It's a relevant addition to this blog because it reflects my insecure state of mind at the time of writing, and as I point out right up front, I enjoy nothing more than being embarrassingly honest about my insecurities and I want to produce a blog which reflects all of my experiences - even personal ones.

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Hello folks!

You know by now that my group emails can sometimes be fiercely personal and embarrassingly honest. This is because the medium I find it easiest to express myself in - the written word - distances me from the people with whom I'm communicating and therefore I can become rather blasé about what I say, almost to the point of impropriety. It's also because this is the kind of person I am, I suppose - a bit weird and confessional.

There's another reason I write like this, one that I have begun to comprehend during the last 12 months or so. There are a handful of people on this mailing list - travellers I've met fleetingly and friends I have known for years - who have communicated to me that they relate to many of the ideas I express in a very direct and personal way and that they appreciate my honesty and enjoy my style, to the extent that they are sometimes moved by my words. To learn that something you have written has brought someone to tears is very challenging... not that they were bored to tears I hasten to add although I do understand that this is a problem for some of you!

So, the question of appropriateness aside, this is the reason I try to express myself forcibly and honestly in my emails and my blogs and this is the reason I want to tell you that since I last emailed you I've been having a strange, challenging and somewhat confusing time.

If you have the opportunity and the inclination to dip into the multitude of blogs I link to at the end of this email you may get the sense that I've felt somewhat confused for the entire duration of my trip... and you wouldn't be far wrong. I must have supposed - naively - that travelling again would bring everything into focus and provide me with a clarity of purpose that seemed to be lacking from my life during my ten month sojourn in the UK.

I appreciate now that maybe I'd be confused wherever I was in the world, that I'm suffering from a sort of post-modern mental flu which is caused by having too much freedom to choose and not enough reality to ground me. Of course I know I do have stuff to ground me - I have a close family and good friends on two hemispheres and boxes of possessions gathering dust in a garden shed waiting to be housed once more... but this isn't what I'm talking about.

My life is easy. I have no worries. I have no responsibilities. I have no direction. I float on the wind. It sounds good, doesn't it, but the grown-ups amongst you will no doubt recognise that this is no way to live your life. Responsibility grounds you and gives you focus and intent. Happiness has to be worked hard for to be attained. Community and fellowship is the result of years of commitment, care and trust, friendships have to be remade again and again and, despite ideas to the contrary, cannot be put down and picked up again on a whim.

I'm not on a downer, exactly. The truth is that yesterday I was severely disappointed by someone I've met here in McLeod Ganj and this has called into question my whole basis for decision-making and undermined a lot of my confidence in myself. Recently I've been asking myself why I'm bothering to make new friends when I already have so many who are brilliant. This recent episode has sort of proved this point.

This mood-swing email is quite typical of my state of mind of late. Many of you know I can be very reflective, I often think far too much than is good for me and this causes me to be frequently circumspect, even though I know I am fortunate indeed to be out here exploring the world. I'm exploring myself too, every day, and the geography of my heart and my mind is not as fixed as that of the Indian subcontinent, hence the reason I'm feeling a bit lost right now.

If you recall the content of my last email you will know that I was brazenly advertising the fact that I was having the time of my life - I was "living the dream" and so I was, but these moments are fleeting. In one day you can feel as though everything is in your hands, it's all going your way, you're the luckiest man alive and the future holds infinite promise... then the next day arrives and reality bleeds in and suddenly you're floundering about - what you thought you knew about yourself and your companions is undermined - like putting all your weight down with confidence and unexpectedly losing your footing on a steep hill. Suddenly you're sliding...

I say all this by way of an introduction to these blogs. I believe that this is the oddest and most personal collection of blogs I have published. I have struggled to create a sense of balance in them - by this I mean I think that overall the tone is a bit negative, and I'm reluctant to give you this impression because I've had such an amazing time over the last three months. Don't expect too much in the way of drama - my adventures in Australia, Thailand and India have been modest in scale while my adventures inside my heart and mind have been monumental, I think.

The beautiful bodies of Bondi Beach

A snorkel and a muse

Backpacker hell

What a wanker

Australia from start to finish and beyond... from a certain point of view

An interlude in Thailand and a big brush with nature

Bangkok burger break

Mumbai hotel hell

A short term on Palolem Beach

Pahar Ganj

All my ducks in a line

I'll be back in the UK in 3 weeks! Two sets of friends are getting married, my mum is organising a family reunion and I'm looking forward to travelling up and down the country visiting some people I really care about. All this, I think, is excellent - good, grounding stuff for a man who is beginning to realise what's important and what's not.

I hope you enjoy the blogs and the photographs.

Love and light (as the hippies say)

Ollie xxx