This other Ollie

I’m consumed with the desire to write. I write for three or four hours a day – at least. If I’m not writing one blog I’m writing another. If I get tired of one project then I move onto the next – and so on. You get the idea – I’m writing a lot. This is exactly where I wanted to end up when I set off from England three months ago. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point. I’ve had to do a lot of soul searching and I’ve experienced a lot of frustration in the meantime. It feels great to finally enjoy such engagement with something I find as fulfilling as writing – long may it last.

Sometimes though, I wake up in the morning and wonder if I have it in me to keep it up. I felt like that today. After two weeks of intensive blogging, in which I sought to pull together all the disparate threads of ideas and experiences and emotions from the previous three months, I finally published twelve blogs, some 20,000 words – and immediately I felt deflated. "What am I going to do now?" I thought to myself. "I'll have to go out there into the world and start living it again - I’m not sure I can do that!"

Now I’m not saying I’m a glass is half empty person, but thankfully the weather in Manali is miserable. Today it’s cold, mist obscures the mountains as it drifts down the valley in a kind of damp torpor and there’s a downpour every couple of hours. If the sun was shining it would be hot and I would be out there soaking it up in order to look as brown as possible when I return to England, but it’s not, so this morning I glanced out of the window, decided that the day would remain dank and wet, switched on my computer, opened a half-finished blog and within minutes I was completely consumed.

I came up for air when I hit a crossroads with my theme. Unable to decide which idea to explore next I realised that hours had passed. I blinked a couple of times and left the world of words, slowly coming back to the real world, the world of rain. I reviewed what I had just written. I had just spent half an hour writing and then honing one paragraph which ended up being only 134 words in length… oh but what a paragraph! I don’t know what people’s general impression of my writing process is - but one thing it isn’t is straightforward.

In a roundabout way that’s what this blog is about – my writing, it’s style and it’s process. Perhaps it’s not the most interesting subject under the sun but as I’m stuck indoors all day and night either reading or writing I’m not having all that many other experiences which are worth writing about. What else is there? What do backpackers do all day? This is what I do: Read, write, eat, sleep, piss, shit, wank and treat myself to an episode or two of The Sopranos before bedtime. That’s it. That’s my life. It doesn’t sound very exciting does it? I’m not exactly “living the dream” right now am I? I’m not even meeting people. I’ve become a recluse!

I’m sorry, but other travellers piss me off too much, like the aging hippie who was sat next to me in the internet café writing about throat chakras while chain-smoking cigarettes. Then there was the middle-class English rasta wannabe who told me he’d been in India for only two weeks and proceeded to lecture me about how to treat the Indians, presumably because he had dirty hair he felt that made him more qualified than I am on the subject of dirty countries. Oh, I’d almost forgotten about the girl (English again – how embarrassing) who only gives money to blind beggars because, according to her, they’re the only ones who aren’t trying to rip you off. Yes, unbelievable as it might sound, people like this do exist and they currently seem to be crossing my path in throngs.

Yesterday I spotted a girl sat alone on the patio below my window. She looked a bit lonely and forlorn and I considered engaging her in conversation but then thought better of it; she looked vaguely American and I didn’t want to risk it. Later, in the hotel restaurant, I noticed she was sat with a young English couple who seemed very nice and polite. This assumption about their relative niceness was never confirmed because the poor dears couldn’t get a word in edgeways, the American girl was sat holding court between them telling what sounded to me like frat-party anecdotes in an annoying whining nasal boom which reverberated around the room. You may think I was being over-sensitive, but she wasn’t just annoying me – I spotted a group of Israelis flinching and getting twitchy a couple of tables away.

No country seems to embrace it’s cultural stereotypes more enthusiastically than America. Why do so many Americans talk so loud? It’s weird, and it’s a bit embarassing for the significant number of them who travel who are genuinely cool people and pitch their voices at a normal volume.

But I digress. Where was I? Oh yes - I’m turning into a recluse! After just over a month in India I think I’ve finally found my niche – of one. Apart from a handful of conversations with the Indian boys who run the hotel I’ve been closed off to everybody. I admit, it would be kind of helpful to have someone to bounce ideas off, someone to check my spelling and my sanity just so no mistakes or slanderous comments slip through the net of self-censorship and end up on the internet causing offence, but apart from that, I’m sorted. This is a holiday away from people and although I know cabin fever is lurking just around the corner, right now I’m completely content and totally balanced – I think.

I have to admit that to a certain extent this is all bravado – I have found it perplexingly difficult at times to meet people and make friends on this short excursion to India, and I have been lonely as a consequence. Initially this troubled me, and then I worked out why – or invented a reason why – and I started to feel much better.

I’m stuck inbetween two traveller subcultures. On the one hand we have the late-twenties one-last-blast-before-settling-down posse who frequently travel with their partners and who subsequently alienate themselves and others. On the other hand we have the mid-thirties don’t-know-what-to-do-with-my-life- might-travel-forever crew who are only a couple of steps away from joining the ranks of the forty-something oh-fuck-it-lets-have- another-chillum-and-forget-about-the-whole-thing contingent. I’ve realised that these are not my kind of people. I’m part of the relatively scarce second-time-around-what-the-fuck-am-I- doing-here collective. Oh, I know I could compromise for the sake of a bit of companionship but I reckon I’ve become quite an awkward bugger in my old age and frankly I’d rather be on my own.

I’m rambling, I know, but that’s what I do. I was supposed to be talking about my writing and instead I embarked on a tirade against travellers in general and specifically every single traveller I’ve encountered in the last few days. This is very useful though because it perfectly illustrates my point – the point I had planned to make by now but which got lost amidst all this bitter isolationist cynicism… the point, in fact, that I plan to make NOW.

This isn’t me. The person who inhabits these blogs is not me and the ideas I elaborate on are not mine. The individual who swears, curses and criticises, expresses ignorant opinions, reports badly researched facts, talks about wanking and ladyboys’ cocks – you know, the hippie hater – it’s someone else. The bloke who moans about his insecurities, screams at Kashmiri travel agents and has absolutely no success with the ladies, it’s another Ollie, someone I invent and reinvent every time I sit down in front of my computer and start writing.

This sounds like a bit of a cop out so let me qualify… of course it IS me, my point is that it’s only a representation of me – and not always a very accurate one. It’s like I take one aspect of my personality (the bit that gets annoyed by brash, loud Americans, for example, or the bit that can’t take soap-dodging hippies seriously) and enlarge it until it fills the page, until it becomes a characteristic which is larger than life and a hopefully a bit contentious. I’m simply experimenting with my blog persona – and having a lot of fun in the process!

The Ollie who, in this blog, rants and raves about other travellers is reminiscent of the main character in William Sutcliffe’s lowbrow India backpacker comedy bestseller "Are You Experienced?" which I finally read recently and can claim to some dubious extent to have been inspired by. It’s a silly book but it doesn’t pretend to be anything else and it cuts right through the bullshit that so many travellers in India seem to be steeped in, so it’s an acerbic and welcome addition to the canon of India literature.

Please don’t take me at face value. I love everyone, honest. Half the time I’m just playing the devil’s advocate. If I’m belligerent it’s because I want to stimulate debate. If I’m vulnerable it’s because I want to encourage the idea that it’s okay to share your insecurities. If I’m telling a joke it’s because I want to be funny. It doesn’t necessarily mean I AM belligerent, vulnerable or funny. Many people know me as a quiet chap, someone who doesn’t feel particularly comfortable in the centre of things, the kind of guy who prefers to listen rather than talk and hear other people’s views rather than voice his own opinion. This being the case, I suppose my writing represents a channel which allows me to provocative in a way that I rarely am in more conventional walks of life.

And just for the record I don’t hate all hippies – just the ones who come to India.