They say that the definition of insanity is repeating the same steps and expecting a different result. Eight years ago I took an overnight coach to Paris with my friend Lucy. The fallout from that horrific journey meant we didn’t speak to each other for several months. We are fine now.
Knowing how much that trip had destroyed me, I did it again at the weekend.
I got loaded at a party on the South Bank before remembering I had a coach to catch and rushing over to Victoria Bus Station. I dozed to Dover and let my head drop on a table aboard the ferry. I did the sleepyhead nod for the three hours to Paris and then I was stood on a bridge over the Seine and it was sunny and beautiful and I was free.
I’m often asked why I choose to go away on my own. I guarantee that the people who ask have never tried it. For such a small gesture, it’s so calming. I walked from Bercy all the way to Shakespeare & Co in the hopes I could stay for the night. They offer accommodation to aspiring writers in exchange for a few hours work in the shop and an auto-biography for their archive.
It wasn’t to be but I wandered through and acted bohemian. I walked all the way to Tour Eiffel. It was getting on for thirty degrees centigrade, so I decided to climb the 674 steps to the 2nd stage before getting the lift to the “sommet”. Despite not having anyone to deal with, I found everyone around me annoying. I was at the top for maybe five minutes before I felt penned in and realised it had been a mistake. I came back down and wandered off to find a Starbucks. I sat on the curb, thought about smoking and drank something cold and sugary in the name of being basic.
I walked to Montparnasse and had lunch in Café du Dome, one of Hemingway’s favourite bars, which offered a three-course meal for €48 in his honour. I asked for it before being told they didn’t offer it as a lunch service. I had some great food, a glass of wine and then a double espresso before searching for the other bars Hemingway had frequented. La Rotonde was just across the road so I stopped for “un demi” before wandering up the road in search of La Closerie des Lilas, which looked like it had ideas so far above its station that I daren’t step a foot in the door. I bought a bottle of wine and sat in Le Jardin du Luxembourg until my legs didn’t work and then I stumbled on to another bar.
As the sun started to go down, I found my way over to Tour Montparnasse and rode up 56 floors and climbed three sets of stairs to the observation deck where I got a beer and watched the sunset, surrounded by couples in love. Nothing improves a sunset quite like day drinking.
After the sun had disappeared I realised it was about time I did as well and headed down before others had the same idea. I got the train south to Gentilly where my hostel was based. I spoke to the guy on reception about the origins of my name, my lack of desire to go out anywhere that evening and my plans for the following day. I got up to my shared room and fell down on my bunk, dreaming of beautiful people in Breton stripes.
I awoke early, showered and got dressed. It felt great to be in clean clothes. I took the train up to Notre Dame and smirked at the tourists trying to get a photo at distance because the grounds were fenced off by police and security following the recent fire. I got a black coffee at the Shakespeare & Co cafe and sat outside, watching groups of tourists stop for photos.
I headed north of the Seine to meet my friend Mika for brunch. He was coincidentally in Paris for the weekend, staying with his friend Marion. I had the most incredible lazy brunch of bread, yoghurt and honey, a charcuterie board, cheese, salad and a chocolate brownie. If there is one thing that makes you appreciate taking your time, it’s a good brunch.
I left the pair of them to their hangovers and afternoon plans and walked to Musee du Louvre. Despite my various visits in the last twenty years, I had never been inside. I was told it takes three days to see everything. I’m not surprised. I got lost on so many occasions that I couldn’t be sure what I had and hadn’t seen before. I would wander past a marble statue that had become the equivalent of a tree stump and wonder if I was going round in circles. I saw the Mona Lisa, which was an experience in itself. They snake visitors up two escalators and through two rooms before you’re penned into an area for ninety seconds and have to get your photos in. It’s not that the painting itself was disappointing, just that people tend to be. I got a coffee and did some excellent people-watching and then rolled out and over to the Latin Quarter to get some dinner.
On my way I passed over Le Pont des Arts, ruminating on an old relationship where the pair of us had attached a padlock with our initials to the mesh of the bridge. It was a thing.
Over time the bridge was weighed down by the number of padlocks pinned to it so they cut the lot free and chucked it all in the Seine. C’est la vie.
I have a rule when I’m travelling that I don’t have to be vegetarian if it’s going to be a bother. It doesn’t make sense to be vegetarian in France. I’m not going to eat foie gras, but I can’t ignore the allure of escargot. Those little garlicy boys know what is up. I sat with a beer and some snails and my book and felt like I had found the peace of mind I had been waiting for. I didn’t want to escape myself but the series of situations I always seem to find myself in. I didn’t have to consult with anyone or deal with anything. I could just sit and shut the fuck up for a moment and enjoy being in my body and in my book.
I hired an electric scooter and tore down the bank of the river until I got back to Buchy where I abandoned the scooter outside a cinema and caught a screening of Hobbs & Shaw, trying to pass the time before my coach home. It was subtitled in French so I was laughing at a different time to everyone else who read the punchlines before they’d been said out loud.
I then found the least offensive-looking bar in Buchy Village and sat out by the curb, drinking beer and stuffing chips in my face.
I got to the bus station with time to spare and found over seventy spots for coaches to pull up. I ran down the line, and found where my coach was supposed to be, but everyone shrugged at me when I asked what was going on. Somehow, the coach wasn’t where it was supposed to be or I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I turned around and noticed a girl wearing a huge backpack who looked a little lost.
‘Are you going to London?’ we asked each other at the same time.
I spent more time with Kayla than with anyone else over the weekend. We sat in the bus stop waiting for an update until one in the morning when a bus finally arrived. My ticket was for a different bus company so we came up with a cunning plan. I would put Kayla’s oversized bag in the hold while she argued our case with the driver. I then told her about my ridiculous plan. I needed to be back in London the following morning because I had to be at work at 9am. I had walked 50,149 steps in two days. I was half-cut.I had nine hours to get home. She laughed at me.
Somehow there were still two seats on the coach. The driver let us on having only seen Kayla’s ticket. I promised him a drink when we got to the ferry, which I then realised was a bad move for a coach driver. We sat together on the coach and talked about travelling and family and hostels. Kayla had flown over from Brisbane and spent three months in Europe. She was heading to London to housesit for a family friend and was looking forward to understanding what people were saying to her. It was nice to talk to someone and to remember what it was like to be so young and carefree. She had some great stories.
We sat in the Food Court on the ferry and talked about cage fighting and shots and kids swearing. We slept on the coach intermittently and I woke up to watch Brockley and Camberwell go by before we crossed the mighty Thames and pulled into Victoria.
I couldn’t believe the difference in temperature as we stepped down off the coach . We said goodbye and I ran down the steps and into the underground. I got the first Circle Line train I could and pretended to listen to music (because my battery was dead) until I got to my office for 08:56, smelling of garlic and coach stations and a love for a city that was not my own.
Ten years ago I was hungover. Not much has changed. On this particular occasion I woke up on a sofa in the basement of my friend’s student digs in Cambridge. Stale smoke sat up in the air along with any plans I had for the day. Ben, the aforementioned friend, wandered into the room and chucked a DVD at me.
“You should watch this” he said, “it’s definitely a bit of you.”
The DVD wasThe Darjeeling Limited, the fifth film by dolly shot-loving, The Kinks sound tracking auteur Wes Anderson. It’s a film about family and loss and the most beautiful set of luggage you have ever seen in your life. I sat in rapture for two hours. As soon as the film let up, I started it again, watching with the opening short Hotel Chevalier the second time around. This was the start of my love affair with Anderson but also the seed of an idea about one day taking a train ride across India just like the Whitman brothers did in the film.
A couple of months ago I started planning a trip to India. It was to be the first time I had travelled alone. As such, I wanted to make sure I included everything I had ever wanted to do while in country. Amongst those was visiting the Taj Mahal, the BeatlesAshram and staying in a hut on the beach. I also realised I could live my dream of taking a train journey across the country. After a bit of research I found the twenty-seven hour journey from Nizamuddin, East Delhi to Goa.
I was told by some of my well-travelled friends (thank you, thank you, thank you) that it would be worth me sparing the expense and going First Class. This meant access to sweet, sweet air-conditioning as well as getting fed. I had some difficulty booking the ticket and had to utilise someone in my office with family based in India (thank you Peter).
I left my AirBnb with plenty of time and found my way through the back streets to the train station. The road outside was so full of taxis and tuktuks that it looked like they had been abandoned in the wake of a natural disaster. I wandered into the station and felt a lot of sets of eyes fall upon me. A number of friends asked why I would get the train for twenty-seven hours when I could fly it in under an hour. Why do I ever make my life more difficult? It’s always for the story.
I took a footbridge over the first three lines and came down onto Platform 4. There were a lot of people waiting, hiding in the shade offered by the overhead cover running along much of the platform. Again, people seemed to wonder what this white boy was doing there.
I found a board where the reservations were printed out on long streams of old-style printer paper, the kind with perforated edges that prints one page in seventeen minutes. I checked every list and couldn’t see my name. I would have to chance getting on the right carriage and working it out from there.
I walked the enormous length of the train (I’m going to be a man and over estimate it as being about six-hundred metres). I got to the front, expecting the class to go up as I went and was faced with the cattle class. I had walked the wrong way. I checked the time and started back in the opposite direction. All along the platform was a buzz of movement. People were loading . Luggage was moving. There were supplies too, being dumped by open doors to be hoisted up into the bulk of this behemoth that would take me some twelve-hundred kilometres down the coast of India.
I made it to First Class and found my way to Cabin A. I slid the door open and three Indian men reclining on their bunks looked up at me. I saw everything in symmetry, as Anderson would have shot it. I looked down at my ticket; an overhead shot, the text in Futura Bold, The strains ofJoe Dassin’s Les Champs Elysee playing only for me through the headphones burrowed deep into my ears. I smiled and jumped up into my bunk.
The ceiling was so low that I couldn’t sit up fully. I took my flip-flops off and placed them off to one side. The train started on its way out of the station. I watched the remaining people waving us off and moving along. Nizamuddin continued on without me.
A member of staff served us cartons of Chach, a spiced buttermilk drink. I expected it to taste like the basic bitch coffee order of choice, the Pumpkin Spice Latte. It did not. It tasted like a creamy curry sauce mixed with milk. It was not good. I am so polite that I finished the whole thing, gagging at intervals like it was being forced upon me as a form of torture.
We were served masala tea and soon after we were brought trays of spicy tomato soup in a tiny red thermos with cutlery and breadsticks and seasoning on the side. Everything sat at parallels and I reminded myself to thank the props guy in charge of making this adventure as close to my imagination as anything I had ever lived. Shortly after, we were brought more food; a tray of four dishes covered over with foil and a wedge of something folded up in the middle. I opened them up like it was Christmas Day. Different curries – some lentil, others vegetable and rice. The foil in the middle unwound to present me with a stack of roti. I chucked everything on a plate and mopped it up with the bread.
I sat back on my bunk and looked at the little bag I had carted through Delhi just for this journey, a replica of the Whitman’s luggage – a satchel with the number 8 on the side, made by Very Troubled Child. It looked perfectly at home.
I praised the gods of good Wi-Fi for the connection at the AirBnb that had allowed me to download podcasts and films before I set off. Despite my excitement of the journey itself, I would need a lot to keep my mind engaged for so long. I spent the rest of the day watching Netflix’s Maniac, listening to Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcasts and writing up the notes from the previous days in the tiny leather bound notebook I was carrying with me.
Dinner was very similar to lunch. It was getting dark outside which was for the best otherwise I could have worried I was stuck in a loop. I had soup and then four little dishes of curry with rice and roti. My new friends (who I had not spoken a word to and who all had fabulous moustaches) left me. There were other stops along the way. It turned out it wasn’t a non-stop 27 hour thrill ride through to Goa.
I was moved into another room. Apparently there had been a mix up. A very angry Indian man had refused to share a room with me, probably because he found me so alluring that he didn’t think he would be able to keep his hands to himself through the night. I was moved into a two-berth cabin with a younger guy who was chilling on his bunk and watching films. I liked his vibe.
I climbed into my bunk, put Temple Of Doom on and promptly fell asleep – “no time for love, Dr Jones”.
When I woke up it was because a man was knocking on the door to bring me tea – the best way to wake up. I sat up, stretched out and realised I had slept for eight hours plus. The gentle rocking of the train had done all kinds of favours. I felt rested and happy.
We were brought breakfast, a vegetable cutlet with some spiced vegetables as well as cornflakes and two slices of bread – a meal fit for a king. I scoffed it all down and stared out the window before putting Temple Of Doom on again to try and work out how much of it I had missed. It turned out that it was the vast majority of it.
I was brought another tray of curry for lunch. I appreciated it but I was kind of done with curry, the same curry. I was starting to get stir crazy. My friend got off at Trivum and I started thumping my hand on the seat as a drumbeat and singing to myself to save myself from going insane. After a hearty rendition of Hardest Button To Button I went for a wander. I discovered it was possible to lean out of open doorways and look down the entirety of the train. It was only when I did this and nearly lost my face as we disappeared inside a tunnel that I realised there were some occasions when travelling on your own wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Aside from the fear of going missing and nobody noticing, I thoroughly enjoyed the journey.
I took a moment back in my cabin to reflect on what had happened. How amazing it was that I got to take this trip, to do it all on my own terms and to really understand what it was to be trapped with just myself for company. How fortunate I was to be able to afford to ride the rails and sit in the too-cool air conditioning and be brought delicious food on a near constant basis and live it up like Lady Muck. I was lucky. I was happy. I was so happy.
When we pulled in, I got off and realised what a number the air-con had been doing on me. It was 34 degrees and muggy outside. I stumbled out of the station and got a cab, onwards, to Palolem beach, Goa.
Note: It was only later that I was told by Akshay, who I stayed with in Goa, that not even Indians eat the food on the train and that I must have an iron stomach. Those of you who have followed my previous writing adventures in the Philippines and Peru will know that is certainly not the case.
It is often only once you are clear of an experience that you are able to recall it for what it was, as a whole, and with absolute joy. That is how I feel about backpacking around the Philippines with Clarissa. It was the best of times, and then, for a little tiny bit, it was the worst of times. Now we are back and everything is in order and it is the best of times again.
We flew overnight from Heathrow to Hong Kong and then on to Cebu airport. The Philippines is made up of over seven-thousand islands. We had two weeks. We would have to island hop at a rate of five hundred islands a day if we were going to do them all.
Q: How big does a bit of land have to be before it is an island?
A: It can still be smaller than a football pitch or an extra-large pizza.
Cebu City is nothing to write home about, except that is exactly what I am doing, so I guess I have to. In the way that The Beautiful South sing that it could be Rotterdam or anywhere, Liverpool or Rome, Cebu City could be anywhere, anywhere alone. It’s tall and it’s dirty and there are enough air-conditioned 7Eleven stores for all the backpacking white kids to get their toasted sandwiches and bottles of Hooch. We stayed in a hostel that seemed to be entirely populated by muscly guys in backwards caps and nip-slip inducing vests and their bleach-blonde, cup-of-tea-tanned girlfriends. They all talked the same way and had no idea about anything. It was quite nice to sit and listen to idiots. I hadn’t done so in hours.
We slept in bunk beds, using our towels as bedding and were up early the next morning to get down to the ferry port to try to make it to somewhere more interesting. Somehow we failed to get the ferry we wanted, to Dumaguete, and wound up waiting out the next one to Bohol by having breakfast in a local café. We swatted flies away and elected to sit at the table in front of the fan so we could attempt to survive in the humid new world we had found ourselves in. Brunch was an omelette and a delicious sparkling lemonade called Sparkle.
The ferry from Cebu to the Talagaban port on Bohol took under three hours. We took the cheap seats up on deck and somehow I managed to sleep, awaking to find my neck stiff and in need of WD40. We didn’t know anything about Bohol, having left our Lonely Planet in the company of an illustrated guide to the films of Wes Anderson and a signed copy of Simon Pegg’s Nerd Do Well. That was thousands of miles away on my bookshelf. We decided we would just follow the crowds.
When we got off the ferry, the taxi drivers kept asking us if we wanted a ride to Alona Beach. If that was where everyone else was going then we figured we might as well. We took a forty-minute trike ride across the beautiful island to the Tip Top hotel (that was the name of it, not the conditions in which we were treated) and we swam in their pool and wandered down to the beach in search of dinner as the sun set. I was mercilessly attacked by mosquitos as we sat with beers and vodka and pizza and pasta, hardly the veg and rice combo we were expecting of our trip. Afterwards we hit some of the bars along the beach and Clarissa took it upon herself to name all of the feral cats and homeless dogs we spotted. We were offered tattoos, massages, tequila and who knows what else. We decided to take up the offer to go on a tour around the island but when we got to the tourist office, drunk, they told us they were closed and we needed to come back in the morning. We booked another night at Tip Top and fell asleep despite the buzz of the air conditioner.
The next morning we joined all the other white people in Bohol on a mini bus tour. We thought we had just signed up to go to the Chocolate Hills but actually got a lot more for the £8 each that we paid.
The Chocolate Hills are worth the trip, a series of alien-looking mounds in the middle of nowhere. It’s a bit of a tourist trap but you have to expect extreme ends of the spectrum in the Philippines. We rode for two hours, with a brief stop to try and sell us tickets to see the biggest python in Bohol, before we got there. We trekked up two-hundred steps to parry away selfie sticks. It was hot and we were closer to the sun and arguably, to God.
Once you’ve got “the shot”, there’s not really an awful lot else to do, and the turnaround for viewing the Chocolate Hills is close to that of reheating a casserole.
Our next stop was a bamboo bridge. It looked cool but the tips of our flip flops got caught in the loose, woven reeds. Locals overtook us while casting the stink eye and I wondered if we were supposed to stand on the right like the escalators on the underground.
We took a river cruise with lunch. Our meals were limited by our decision to become vegetarian. There was a buffet, from which I was able to get some rice, noodles and fried vegetables. Everything else was dead animals. I also ate some watermelon, which may have just been a garnish. We were served iced tea while a pair of tiny Filipino girls who had taken both barrels of a shotgun loaded with make up to the face played covers of Ed Sheeran and The Carpenters through a blown speaker. The sun beat down on the green of the river and I watched a group of boys fishing off the bow. We pulled up alongside another barge where children danced and played ukuleles and their masters made international gestures for “give us your money now”.
Our next stop was a church or museum that we refused to go into in case we instantly burst in flames. It was worth taking the trip to see what was on offer. Bohol was cute but there were still a lot of other places we wanted to see. We didn’t want to get stuck in one place.
We booked a flight from Cebu to Puerto Princesa and arranged a car to pick us up at five in the morning so we could be at the port in time. We went back to the beach and tried to explain vegetarianism to a waitress before being served anchovies. We looked like fussy and preposterous idiots. We got a buzz from buy-one-get-one-free cocktails in a reggae bar.
The next morning we got up, got dressed and headed to the port. We slept on the ferry as terrible karaoke versions of even worse songs played loudly on the static-blessed TV above the seating area. We woke up in Cebu. It was eight in the morning and we didn’t have anywhere to go or anywhere we needed to be until our flight that afternoon. We decided to go and get breakfast in the mall and ended up stuck there all day.
For some people, the idea of being trapped inside a shopping centre for a full day is the stuff of dreams. I am not one of those people. We spent the first two hours sucking Wi-Fi up in the “Travel Centre”, a weird corridor with USB sockets and showers. We then sat in a supermarket café drinking watermelon-heavy tropical juice drinks full of pulp, sap and pips. The mall opened and people threw themselves under the up-rolling barriers like there was a 50% off sale on weird behaviour. We explored everywhere before realising we should have taken a bit longer about it. We searched for breakfast and ended up chewing mushrooms and eating garlic-coated spinach with noodles and iced tea.
We watched the Cebu chess competition and then booked tickets to see Guardians Of The Galaxy 2. That’s what you do when you’re in Asia right? Go to the cinema? The film was great. I only cried a bit.
Afterwards I needed to replenish vital liquids I had lost because of my stupid feelings so went to Starbucks, refuge of the white person travelling. Our barista was very excited that we were from England. I told her I was in Harry Potter and she gave us the Wi-Fi password. I went to the bathroom and two small boys mimed playing basketball which I think was a comment on my height. I felt like I was Gulliver on his travels. The people of the Philippines are very small.
We got a taxi to the airport and had to switch out layers of clothing to make sure our bags, which were small enough for carry on, were under the weight limit. 60% off my bag was taken up with snorkels. We didn’t need an awful lot else.
I was amazed at how quickly we were out of the terminal on the other side. We literally walked out the door. From there we took a trike to our hostel to change for dinner. The driver proudly told us that there was a new international airport opening that week.
We tried to book the underwater cave tour of Puerto Princesa, the only reason we were in town. We were told we would not be able to do so until the following day. We decided to go out for food and plot our next step. We got a trike back to the centre of town, which was a crossroads. There was a loud tiki bar and very little else. We ended up back at the restaurant next to our hostel, trying to explain that we didn’t eat meat, or fish. We were then offered crab. The plus side was that the beers were cheap.
We decided we would get out of Puerto Princesa, and head north to El Nido. We had been told it was full of tourists. What difference would we make? The difficulty was in getting there. It was about six hours away by road and we had no transport. We managed to book a minibus for the next morning. I should have realised that for the price there was no way it was a private hire. I think we paid 2,000 pesos (£30.00) for the privilege.
The following morning we were up, packed and ready before 9am. We had our complimentary breakfast of eggs and coffee before waiting for our lift. They were late. I sometimes forget that not everybody is as uptight about time keeping as I am.
Eventually we were all loaded into the van. We drove for fifteen minutes before stopping at some kind of human filling station where every other seat was given up to a butt. We sat there for half an hour, without the engine and the air conditioning running, while women in rags offered us bags of apples, waiting for our driver to be ready. We drove for a couple of hours, long enough for me to fall asleep. It was raining when I woke up. We pulled under a wooden awning. Water ran along gutters and splashed down heavily in designated areas. Motorcyclists pulled in to attempt to dry off. In the tradition of Asian people wearing t-shirts with random English phrases on them, one of the motorists had Damp on his shirt.
We continued on. Eventually the rain stopped. We dropped some people off. We picked up some more people. The average number in the car remained the same. We pushed rice paddies and farmland and headed up into tight mountain passes before coming back down the other side and into El Nido.
The driver let us off and pointed roughly in the direction of our guesthouse. Either someone else’s luggage or the rain had soaked through Clarissa’s bag. As soon as we got to our room she had to unpack everything and hang it outside. There were crosses on the walls and psalms in wooden frames. The Wi-Fi password was JESUSCHRIST (All capital letters-no space). I waited to burst into flame.
We walked to town. There were beautiful bronzed people in vests and flip flops everywhere. Some were drunk. Some had accents. There were stalls and bars and a beach. We explored. We bought spring rolls and pasta and pizza from a restaurant on the beach. We had cocktails and beers and decided to get a trike out to the other beach to watch the sunset. We got a lift with a man who told us his name was Police. He looked like Rufio from Hook. He said we would wait for us. There were thousands of trikes everywhere. I doubted I would ever see him again.
We climbed down to the beach, had beers, swam in the sea and the sun went down. This was what travelling was supposed to be about. I felt more relaxed than before. When we got to the top again, Police/Rufio was waiting. We got a lift back to town and decided to get blind drunk.
We had every cocktail on the menu. We ended up at some hideous Ladies Night at a bar on the beach. I remember scowling at someone who told me to smile. I remember dancing like Vincent Vega in Jackrabbit Slims. I remember shouting in someone’s face about Bohol. The next thing I knew I was back in the guesthouse and my head was spinning and there was Jesus Christ on the wall and JESUSCHRIST in the Wi-Fi and I was being sick. Clarissa joined me. We yin-yanged over the bowl and she passed out on the floor. I went to bed and returned to be sick moments later, stepping over her unconscious body. I repeated this four or five times and then passed out. I woke up and threw up in the sheets. Clarissa was in bed. She told me to go to the bathroom. Women make a lot of sense.
The following morning the phone rang and broke my mind. When I picked up the receiver I was told that breakfast had been served. I put the phone down and passed out again. Half an hour later there was a knock at the door and our breakfasts had been put on the table outside, surrounded by Clarissa’s clothes that were still drying. We stumbled into the light and I slowly forked pancakes This was holidaying. We decided we should probably leave. We checked into another guesthouse up the road and took our hangovers to the beach.
We all know that it is important to stay hydrated. My friend Emma shouted “hydrate or die” at me for a week while we were in the Sahara desert. I am going to blame the hangover for the fact we walked the length of the beach before settling down under some palm trees. I swam in the sea, snorkelled for a bit and then stretched out to tan up. The next thing I knew I was burnt. I was burnt and dizzy and still hungover and very thirsty. We hobbled back until we found a café to get some food. My legs started to change colour. My back did the same. It turns out that spending a long time floating face down in the water like a corpse does wonders for tanning. We eventually headed back to our guesthouse and I napped until the evening. I started to feel really ill, worse than the hangover. I still don’t know if it was the hangover or food poisoning or good old fashioned sunstroke but the next few days went by in a blur. I couldn’t get up or do anything. My stomach hurt and I lost my appetite and I got really pathetic and needed my mummy.
Clarissa had to tell me I was being pathetic a number of times before we were able to move past it. We decided we needed a change of scenery so checked into Double Gem, a place that was at least three times more expensive than anywhere else we stayed in the Philippines. For that price, a young man carried my bag to my room and there was a complimentary toothbrush. We relaxed in the pool and heard the most hilarious exchange.
A couple swam past us. I presume they were a couple but he was clearly gay. It’s difficult to tell. A lot of Filipino men seem to be gay. Kind of like the British. As if they wanted it to become a hilarious anecdote, he turned to her and said “How are you feeling? Still itchy?”
We looked at each other incredulously. She looked at him in horror. We have repeated it as a catchphrase every day since.
The next day, with my head clear and my bottom no longer a risk, we headed out on an island hopping tour. Not only did we have to pay over the odds for the trip because we were staying in a swanky pad, but we also had to pay a Riverboat Fee for pollution or something. Watch out for that. We were joined by a Filipino mother and daughter, a guy from the US and a young German couple, who may or may not have had a Fritzl-like relationship. I couldn’t possibly say.
We headed to another beach. There were palm trees. There were a lot of boats and therefore a lot of people. I tried snorkelling but was constantly worried about coming up only to be smashed in the head by a passing boat. It was like something out of a Hollyoaks episode. The next beach was teaming with people. Some couldn’t swim and kept their life jackets on, even when sat on the sand. All around of us, young locals tried to take selfies. A couple of them tried to sneakily take photos with us. It’s the most obvious thing in the world. I hadn’t experienced anything like it since Peru. Eventually we conceded and posed for these photos. We then wondered what they possibly did with them. What was the point of having photos of white people?
Somehow the crew were able to put together lunch for the seven of us using just whatever they had on the boat. Of this, we ate rice and mango. The fruit was so good that I couldn’t have wanted for anything else. I followed it up with cup after cup of Coke. Why does Coke taste so much better when you’re overseas? That’s rhetorical. It’s because they don’t have to abide by our silly laws on the contents of fizzy drinks.
Having filled our bellies they let us back on before we jetted off again. Five minutes later we pulled in beside a cliff, they lowered the ladder and we had to swim to the next bay as there were so many other boats. The cliff right-angled and we followed it in. There was a small opening in the rock face that people were crawling through. This was the Secret Lagoon. With scraped knees and banged heads we made our way inside. There were sheer walls all around us and a small bay where people safely paddled in water up to their knees. We queued to come back out again. It wasn’t all that secret and it wasn’t all that exciting.
We snorkelled with fish drawn to the boat by the leftovers that the crew threw over the side. Clarissa was overwhelmed by the numbers of fish. She has a thing about creatures that flap – butterflies and pigeons and the like. It turns out that the thought of the fish touching her was too much. She quickly got back on the boat.
We were dropped off at the north end of El Nido where there are great chasms and rocks to kayak in and around. I let Clarissa sit up front and steer. We only collided with one other boat before we worked out what to do. After that we were an Olympic-grade rowing team. We swapped over and she commented on how the skin on my back was falling from me like carved meat from an illuminated kebab van. My legs were peeling too.
Kayaking was great. By the end of it the pair of us had decided we would invest in one when we got home and take it out in the Estuary. People talk bollocks when they’re on holiday, don’t they…
We got back on the boat and stopped in another bay. We all went swimming, including the Fritzl girl and the two Filipino women. After a couple of minutes I heard one of them screaming and flailing. Without a thought for my own safety I swam over and held her up while the crew found their way over. I thought I had saved the day. It turned out that her legs had stopped working which is not a real malady. She was in a life vest as well. It really put some perspective on the ridiculous things I panic about.
We got back to our shore. There were crabs and starfish in the crystal clear water. We picked up our bags and headed onto the next place to stay. I felt a bit like a hermit crab, constantly crawling along in the sand with a pack on my bag, searching for somewhere shady, my tiny bug eyes and pincers scanning the immediate area.
We found a place right by town which meant we could go out for another dinner I couldn’t stomach before getting back in time for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Minority Report. The trip was a real lesson in the works of Tom Cruise. He’s made some great films but there’s something deeply unnerving about him.
We took another internal flight, back to Cebu. We got a ride to Moalboal to spend the rest of our days in peace. The rest of our holiday I mean. We got a privately hired minibus with a cool driver called Benjie. He let us stop for snacks and sang along to the radio as we lazily dozed. He offered us a lift back in three days time, when we would be heading back to Cebu to fly home. It seemed like a good idea and we gave him a deposit which Clarissa said we would never see again.
We were in Moalboal for one reason, Kawasan Falls, the famed canyoneering site everyone heads to. We checked into yet another place and realised we didn’t have any food. The resort didn’t offer anything aside. We found a weird German/Filipino hybrid restaurant. Yes, that’s a thing. It was a hut with the feel of a German beer hall. They served schnitzel and bratwurst and pad Thai and chicken abodo. We had chips. The glamorous life of a vegetarian.
The following morning we had another breakfast of eggs and got a lift to the Falls. We were given helmets, life jackets and contracts to sign before being loaded onto the back of a motorbike and driven up into the mountains. I hadn’t been on the back of a motorbike since I was a kid. It filled me with a renewed sense that I needed to learn how to ride. Another promise to myself that would seem empty once I got home. We were dropped off and had to walk through the jungle and to the falls. I instantly forgot our guide’s name and called him mate for the rest of the day.
It was one of the best experiences we had. The scenery was beautiful, beams of light breaking through the canopy of trees overhead as you wonder about safety and exactly how far thirty-five foot is.
The key thing is learning how to fall with style. It took Clarissa taking a tumble on our second jump before our guide decided to teach us that you simply stepped off with one foot and then used the other to push you away from the edge. There’s a lovely GIF of the fall somewhere.
We returned to our new accommodation, next door to the original, battered and bruised and ready for food and sleep. We ate very well while we were in Moalboal, everywhere had something we could eat.
We took another boat tour out around the islands and saw the sardine runs and a sea turtle being hassled by locals. There’s something incredibly freeing about snorkelling and watching nature. I could have stayed below the waterline forever.
We spent our last day chilling by the pool and trying to remember exactly how we were supposed to function in the real world. It turned out that our driver got a better offer so sent someone in his place. Someone who turned up fifty minutes late. After sitting in traffic for two hours we arrived at Cebu airport to be told we had missed our flight. We then had to sleep in the airport hotel before booking onto the flight out the next day. We then missed the connecting flight out of Hong Kong. It took us fifty-five hours to get home. Those were the worst of times.
Like I said, with all of that nonsense out of the way I can appreciate how incredible the trip was and how lucky I am to enjoy a place that is yet to be completely ruined by people just like me.
I’m a chancer. That’s a given. I will take any opportunity. I’m happy to take a leg up. I enter a lot of competitions. I apply for a lot of things and I always live in hope that one day one of them would get me to the place I want to be.
This includes a ten day all-expenses-paid trip to Vietnam and four day workshop with travel filmmaker Brian Rapsey.
You can view my entry above and the video is below. I’ve taken a page from my upcoming book on the Inca Trail in combination with video from my trip there in 2014.
It was dark and the heat was terrible, one of those encompassing heats that knocks you off your feet as soon as you step out of the air conditioned comfort of the plane. It was Thailand Jim, but not as we knew it.
My first thought was what the hell we were supposed to do now we had arrived. We collected my bag once more and headed through the confusion of security and out into the arrivals hall. There were a gang of beautiful faces. They were not waiting for us. We withdrew some baht and considered our options. There were already more people than in the airports of Malaysia or Singapore, all trying to get our attention, all offering a cab ride or a flight or a hotel. We knew where we were going, we were just reliant on not getting ripped off before we got there. Staring at a laminated map on a desk we found the rough location of our hotel, the only place I had left Adam to book. The only place that still had vacancies seven hours before we were due to arrive in town. The hotel was near to Rassada Pier, where we were due to get the ferry to Koh Phi Phi Don from the following morning. It was away from Patong and the party side of the island.
We paid our 650 baht (£13.46) and headed outside where there were rows of beautiful white cars waiting in the heat of the night. We were ushered into a backseat. I felt tension shift beneath the leather and assumed everything was fine. Our driver half said something before starting up the engine and pulling out in front of whoever else was waiting. On the walls beside the car park were huge posters for club nights and full moon parties. We stared at them like dogs into the window of the butchers. The car just kept on going.
Some way out of town he pulled up suddenly and without explanation, the taxi idling in the light of a travel agent as he disappeared inside, leaving the windows down. A woman came out and asked us to clarify where we were going. Adam fumbled with his phone like Hugh Grant proposing illicit prostitute sex and pulled the address. They struggled with the English translation and ended up calling to confirm. The directions were then explained to us in English and the driver in Thai before we headed off. The tales of Thailand were always those of legend. It was the place people had been most excited about us visiting, assuming a certain lifestyle or expectation by a visit to the fair land. That was not our intention but if it happened, I was happy to play along.
We pulled up on the driveway and a small Thai man came out onto the street to greet us. He offered to carry our bags and we headed into his immaculate home. Everything inside was tiled. It was too clean. The walls were probably covered in plastic wrap and the host zipped up in a biohazard suit just hours before as he disposed of his last guests in the harbour. It was that kind of clean. He couldn’t stop bowing.
He proudly showed us the table where breakfast items had been set out for the following morning. He then introduced us to his maid who I instantly fell in love with. Then he methodically led us up the stairs, making sure we paid attention to every painting and frame along the walls. The place was completely silent except for our creaking nods of agreement. We were the only guests at the Bleach Hotel. Our room was on the second floor and was somehow hotter than the streets. We quickly turned the air conditioning on full as our host showed us everything from the towels, to the toilet roll, to the water in the fridge, to the folded swan on our double bed. We approved of everything. We were tired and we were hungry. All he kept saying was that if we needed anything he was right next door. I know he meant well but it had a touch of the serial killer catchphrase about it. When he finally left I turned to Adam and let out a huge sigh.
‘He’s a bit intense’ I said. ‘What’s his name?’
‘I don’t know know.’
‘You kept saying something.’
‘I know, it’s something like Criterion but not that.’
For the rest of our stay that was what we mumbled at him.
Criterion return a moment later to introduce his wife. He seemed proud of his hotel. He simply could not do enough for us. We asked if there was anywhere locally we could get something for dinner.
He gave a series of confusing instructions which Adam and I hoped the other had been paying attention to and then we were out on the hot street. We came to a bar that we thought might have been where he had suggested. There was nobody inside. It was so quiet that the barrstaff were stood in the doorway, chatting with a bunch of prostitutes. We ordered our first pints of Chang, the lager of Thailand, and took a passing look at the laminated menu before making our excuses and moving on.
Somehow we found our way to another restaurant. At the front, two giant plastic prawns faced off against one another, lit from beneath by a series of garden lights. It appeared to be popular with locals. We went in.
As we bungled our way between tables of families a handsome waiter grabbed us both by the collar and led us to a table where the majority of the fans could be directed. We were under a canopy but exposed to the elements so the humidity still caught up. We were told to go and collect whatever food we wanted while they fetched a grill for us. We ordered another two Chang. Other tables, more developed in their understanding, had globular BBQ pits set up on their tables and were taking turns at grilling meat and fish. I returned to the table with a tray of overlapping plates, some fish, some meat, some vegetation. Our waiter took a piece of pork fat and ran it across the hot plate over the coals of our personal BBQ and layered meat onto it for us. Around the edge was a moat of chicken stock where the fish and seafood could be cooked. We got to it. There was a surplus charge if we didn’t eat what we cooked so we filled our bellies and ordered another Chang. The waiter kept excitedly bringing more food over for us to try, keen to introduce us to more Thai cuisine. We ate prawns and octopus, chicken, something that might have been beef and who knows what else. It was the best meal for the occasion and we felt stuffed and treated.
Afterwards we washed the fish guts from our fingers and found our way to a bar where a four-piece band were playing, the cocktails tasted sweeter than necessary and we were the only European faces. We drank and smoked and applauded the band. The heavens opened as we were preparing to leave. We decided to risk it anyway, sure we were just minutes from Criterion’s safe house.
Adam lost a flip-flop as we jumped the flood along the gutter and I ducked back inside as he watched it head downstream. He caught up with it somehow and we ran back laughing in the darkness, worrying about our wet footprints on the white tile and having to hang our money out to dry before we climbed into our last matrimonial bed.
In the morning we quickly showered and dressed, heading downstairs to Criterion’s demonically wonderful grin and offers of croissants and coffee. He said he would drive us to the pier in his 4×4 and refused to take any money for his troubles. At the very least I had found myself a Thai sugar daddy.
We were instantly able to identify the clichéd travellers at Rassada pier. There were the vested dude-bros, the girls looking to Instagram their way around Asia and the honeymooning couples. I don’t know what they made of us. We didn’t care.
As soon as we got aboard we headed downstairs to find somewhere to rest our asses and maybe even our heads. The lower deck stunk of fumes and they were showing Mr Bean. I don’t know what hell looks like but…
Adam and I made a game of it by pretending we were on the lower deck of the Titanic with all the Irish folk.
I soon grew tired of jigging alone and headed up to watch the sea. I’ve always been fascinated by open water and there’s something about the wake of a ferry that reminds me of holidays I took as a boy. The sun eventually beat me and I had to seek cover again, watching Rowan Atkinson crawl around a hotel in the buff.
Two hours later we made it to Phi Phi and everyone hurried to their bags. We were staying on the far side of the island and were told we would need to locate the taxi boats that ran up there twice a day. A man in Oakley sunglasses and what Adam called “a Jumanji hat” holding a sign for our “resort”. It wasn’t really our resort, but we were apparently welcome to use their taxi services. We took this permission to be fairly liberal and open. He told us the boat would not be leaving for another two hours, that we were welcome to leave our bags with him and should come back fifteen minutes before we were due to leave.
I dropped my huge bag off my shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Adam.
‘I’m putting my bag down’ I said, ‘the guy said we can leave them here.’
Adam stepped closer to me.
‘Are you going to trust him with all your stuff?’
‘It’s just stuff man.’
Asia had clearly changed me.
Adam eventually dropped his bag too and we started walking off.
‘Are you sure about this?’ he said.
‘Yeah, I’ve got our passports and my card, what else do I really need? Anyway, I trust him. He had a good face.’
Adam didn’t seem so sure. ‘I think he had teeth missing’ he said.
Our first stop was for breakfast where we each ordered a Chang before anything else. I had the American breakfast which was the least American thing I have ever eaten. Adam ordered a spicy noodle dish. It looked like Asia was changing him too. I got an orange juice and a coffee and sipped my three drinks in turn. It felt good. I wanted to keep on going and never look back. As long as I could get online every couple of days and tell my mum I was okay I never wanted to go back.
The issues with such a plan were several-fold. Mostly they came down to the fact I had left some cherry tomatoes in the fridge and they really needed chucking in the bin.
We walked up and down the market stalls in search of something. Adam considered getting a bamboo tattoo but balked at the price. We checked out clothing and massage parlours, bars and private boat hire stalls before returning to the pier for our next boat. Jumanji was still there. As were our bags.
‘I told you he was alright’ I said.
Adam and I were the only passengers on the narrow boat. It was fifteen foot long with a motor on the back. The “captain” stood at the back directing the rudder while we sat under a cover and shouted to one another over the sound of the suffering engine.
After half an hour we turned a corner and pulled into the kind of bay a Bond villain would set up base in. There were palm trees and private boats, chalets on stilts and handsome tanned people enjoying life. We had arrived.
As we clambered down into the surf our bags were taken from us and loaded into a motorcycle sidecar. We jumped in and took a leisurely ride to check in. Along the way we passed between a row of shops and the five star resort I secretly hoped we would be staying. Our place was slightly more basic. Once the air conditioning was on and I realised I had my own bed I felt a lot better. Adam and I threw our stuff down and headed out for a swim. I only had Converse to wear and felt a bit of a dick because everyone else was bare foot or in flip flops.
The sea was so warm it offered no comfort from the humid air. I swam out as far as I could and watched boats fly along by our harbour as they ferried travellers to different islands. It was possible from Phi Phi to visit Maya Bay, the beach popularised by The Beach. The Beach beach. I heard there was no point in going in search of quiet paradise because it was now a queue of people looking for that one shot.
Adam and I stretched out under palm trees and snoozed. We then sauntered into the infinity pool for the five star resort. Adam kept muttering to me to look like we belonged there. I was in a pair of swimming shorts that didn’t fit me, Converse flapping on my feet. I was covered in tattoos and had shaved my head just days before. They all knew I didn’t belong there. A waiter came over and offered us a drink. We considered charging it to one of the rooms in the hope we could scram before anyone picked up on it. We were too recognisable. We drank from coconuts and took a dip in the pool, drying ourselves with the plush towels stacked at the side.
Later in the evening we went in search of a night out. On the north end of the island this was a hard job. We stopped at the first restaurant we found and ordered pizza and beer. Every tourist who walked into the joint ordered pizza and beer. Adam was distraught. Amongst the other patrons were the German couple who had been eyeballing us as we sunbathed on deckchairs in the private resort. They knew our game. We didn’t care.
An hour later we were in Freedom Bar watching a Thai band cover Hotel California. When they finished they asked if anyone wanted to get up and perform. I don’t think they were expecting it. I got up and played covers of The Cure and David Bowie before letting them slam through some more songs. They were cool guys and our bar bill was half what it should have been by the end of the night.
The next morning we decided to head back over to buy cliché travel items. I was done with Converse and bought flip flops, leaving my trainers under a cart for fate to decide upon. Adam bought a vest and instantly regretted it. We got some food on a balcony overlooking the cove. I ate as much seafood as I could and knocked back a beer.
Our heads were turned at the thought of a Thai massage. We found ourselves off of the hot street and in front of a large fan in the doorway of an open room with four low beds. There was a curtain around each for privacy. As I kicked off my new flip flops I could feel my t-shirt clinging to my back with sweat. Whoever ended up seeing to me deserved a lot more than the 200 baht for a half hour massage.
I didn’t even get to buy her a drink first. She was on me. Smart hands and digging elbows starting on my calves, working up the backs of my thighs. I felt things being pulled that were surely not designed to be pulled. The pleasure and the pain continued up onto my back until I realised she was standing on me, tiny heels and toes undoing all the trouble my poor posture and terrible desk habits caused. She worked up to my neck and then massaged down my arms before yanking each of my fingers in turn. She turned me onto my back and pulled my arms free from tension with a sharp click. I gasped.
The next thing I knew she had her knees in my back and was pulling me over on top of her in the most bizarrely uncomfortable but mildly sexual position I have been forced into in some time.
She was like Xenia from Goldeneye. I wanted to be put to death by her thighs.
As Adam and I walked up the road feeling soulful, taller and lighter I waxed lyrical about how I would return to make her my wife. We went for another beer and to enjoy paradise before getting the boat back.
We started talking to two German boys with matching pencil beards and baseball caps on the ride back. They had arrived in Thailand after travelling around Australia for six months, living out the back of a converted van and doing construction jobs whenever they needed money. Their stories all revolved around how stoned they had got in a particular location. We made plans to go for dinner together on the basis that, unlike the vast majority of people in the area, none of us were honeymooning couples.
Over Thai curries we talked about Frankfurt, David Hasselhoff and drugs. We bought more beers and ended up nearly passing out in their rooms.
The following day all I wanted to do was sit by the sea and soak up all the sun and memories I could. We got back into the honeymooners resort and pretended we belonged there. We swam and read and went and got food. We went out into the sea and I wondered why we had to go back to our own lives at all. We decided to group our funds and go big for our last night. It turned out Adam didn’t have any money left. This meant we could scrape a dinner and maybe a round of drinks for the pair of us. It was already too late in the day to get to the other side of the island where there was access to an ATM. We wandered through the posh resort and asked at reception if they would charge our cards in exchange for cash. It wasn’t happening. We asked at our favourite restaurants and none of them would take card. We got to the end of the road and there was one place left to try. As we walked by Adam noticed a sign he recognised above the till – VISA.
‘No way’ he said’. We were in luck. We would eat like kings.
We ordered a beer, a cocktail and a bottle of water each. We sat out the back and in plastic candlelight watched the sun go down and people go by. We ordered two lots of starters, four lots of main course and deliberated over the idea of dessert before getting more drinks. It came to two thousand baht (£41.40), the most we spent on anything while we were away.
We went back to Freedom bar and spent everything we had on two vodka and cokes before falling in love with a South African couple. He wore a vest, worked on oil rigs and swore at us, she painted our faces and was too drunk for our own good. They picked up the tab for the night and we ran out to the beach.
I fell asleep some time later and Adam drank whatever else he could find and smoked something he found on the floor. Our last night in Thailand was not without mishaps.
The following day, with his head rattling and mine as fresh as a daisy, we took the boat back to the other side of the island, got another beer for breakfast and waited for the ferry. The whole trip felt very sombre. My shoes were not where I had left them.
The flights back were terrible. Adam kept trying to talk to me. I was watching The Good Dinosaur. I slept. I ate something unspeakable and before I knew it we were back in Heathrow and I felt like a tit in a pair of flip flops.
While we waited for our flight to be called we wandered around the small space that was Changi departures lounge. Upstairs we found a food court and argued about whether we were going to eat pork and rice in the canteen or a chicken burger at Louisiana Burger. It was eight in the morning.
‘It’s not just a chicken burger’ I reasoned, ‘it’s a breakfast meal.’
‘The only thing that makes that a breakfast meal is that you get a hash brown instead of chips’ replied Adam. He decided he was going to eat pork noodles. I let him go and queued up for my chicken.
Everything on my plate was a shade of brown. I tried not to think as I took quick bites, trying to fool my taste buds by washing everything down with an unnatural tasting mango juice.
Adam solemnly joined me with his chicken breakfast having given in to the power of Louisiana. Both of us ignored our food and chatted as we slowly pulled it apart and chewed it up. Confused as to why we had eaten when we weren’t hungry, we got onto the hour long flight from Singapore to Malaysia. As soon as the plane levelled out a couple of chicken tikka wraps were thrown at us, followed by pots of water.
‘I told you we get a meal’ said Adam.
The plane immediately started to descend. I stuffed the sandwich down and we landed in Kuala Lumpur.
Adam and I collected my bag and were directed around the airport in a complete loop until we came to a taxi rank. We withdrew some money and asked for a ride to the area I had booked in Chow Kit. The taxi driver was called Eddie and wanted to talk about the weather in London and our taste in music. Both subjects were fine with us. We were dropped at a shopping centre and gladly sucked at the air conditioning while I roamed around in search of a free Wi-Fi connection to contact our host.
We then had to be directed across the road to an intense looking tower block. We were staying on the 32nd floor. We got by security and managed to get as far as the 7th floor before realising we were supposed to have a key card in order to access the higher floors. We wandered back down and met Nikolas whose apartment we were staying in. Him and his girlfriend, Sasha, showed us to our room and offered to wash our clothes for a very generous 15 ringgits. We took them up on the offer as I had run out of pants and then headed down to the swimming pool. We bought a couple of beers, swam as much as we could and fell asleep in deck chairs until the sun disappeared behind the mall.
Tired of my sweaty hair falling in my face I told Adam it was time he took the beard trimmers to it. I sat on a towel on the floor and let him drive a clean sweep down the middle of my head. My precious fringe fell into my lap. He told me it was too late to change my mind. Fifteen minutes later I was a monk.
As the evening drew in Adam had a nap and I watched the most incredible tropical storm from the lounge. The sliding doors to the balcony were open and I stood just before them as a sheet of water fell. In the distance everything crackled and rumbled. Skyscrapers disappeared from the base up until it felt like we were in isolation in an apartment in the clouds.
Adam emerged having been scared awake by the thunder and came down to sit with Nikolas and I. I kept rubbing my hands over my exposed scalp. Adam had been in contact with a friend of a friend who lived locally and had offered to take us out for the evening. We didn’t know what to expect or how awkward it would be.
When Nigel came to collect us we had to walk out to the main road where we found him curb crawling. We got in like a couple of night walkers and he gave us a historical tour of the city before taking us to a restaurant in Chinatown. We let him order for us, both food and wine, and before long the three of us were tucking in and sharing tales of the great loves of our lives.
After Adam and I had paid the bill as a thank you, Nigel took us through the nearby market. He told us to keep our hands on our wallets. We were both amazed at the selection of counterfeits and bootlegs. Barrel-chested men in peeling football shirts and chains stood in doorways offering us a good price. I walked through like Obi-Wan Kenobi, telling them I wasn’t the shmuck they were looking for.
From there we went to PS150, a secret prohibition-era bar tucked down a back street. Nigel had to give some kind of special nod or handshake for us to gain access and from street level the bar dipped backwards through a covered alley and into something that looked like it was from a Nicholas Winding Refn film.
The three of us worked our way down the menu until midnight and then decided to head home. We had an early flight. Adam and I insisted on stopping at a 7/11 so we could load up on beer and cigarettes to take out onto the balcony. Once we had said goodbye to Nigel and were back on our very own Pride Rock we looked over our new kingdom and talked about the importance of living in the moment and being around people.
I went to bed happy and drunk.
The following morning we went for an early swim to clear our heads and then packed up our stuff. I kept looking guiltily at the bin of hair in the corner of the room. It felt weird leaving it for our hosts. They dropped our cleaned and folded laundry back to us. It smelt so fresh compared to everything else I had in my bag. It felt a shame to collect it all together.
We hit up TripAdvisor for a Chinese temple and found Thean Hou, which had been given four stars. I struggled to establish how you could grade religious monuments. Set on 1.67 acres of land in Taman Persiaran Desa, it’s intimidatingly beautiful and tucked away from the manic hustle and shine of the rest of the city. I found myself speaking in hushed tones and trying my hardest not to do anything disrespectful. I’m not a religious person but I appreciate the importance others place upon it.
We took our shoes off on the steps outside and prayed before each of the statues. For all my naivety I was in awe. It looked like an album cover from the summer of love. I found my mind drifting to the people I cared about, those I shared my most precious moments with. It’s so easy to get caught up in everything that seems to be going on in our lives that it takes a lot to get away from it all and think about what truly matters. On the hillsides of Malaysia I was able to do that. I understand if it sounds pretentious and distant, that it doesn’t fit in with the version of myself you see but there was something about the area that enchanted me.
Adam and I burnt joss sticks and got our fortunes told. The latter was based on a game where you picked up a collection of sticks and dropped them into a divot in the top of a coloured drum. As soon as one stick bounces out it counts as your fortune. Each stick is imprinted with a number which relates to a drawer on the front of the drum. I had 41.
We sat just inside the door, our bags rolled up against the wall. My stomach started to growl and I realised we hadn’t eaten since the previous evening. When I checked with Adam he had no money. We had been driven out away from the city and I wondered if there would be anywhere we could eat. We headed out the back of the temple and up a winding staircase to a lane of ornate statues that came to a dead end. We headed back down and found an information centre that was closed.
As we were starting on our way back to the road we noticed there was a small shop underneath the hill. As we got closer we realised it opened into a basement area with a food court and stalls selling Buddhist items and joss sticks. We had ten ringgits between the pair of us, equivalent to £1.67. I started to panic. There was nowhere to get any money. None of the stalls would accept card. We didn’t know where we were. We didn’t have access to anything. We were far enough out of the city that it would be difficult to pick up a taxi and explain that we would need to withdraw money on the way. On top of which, I was hungry and irritable.
‘I really want to get a statue’ said Adam, looking back at the stalls from where we had strolled into the centre of the space.
‘We need food and water. We are going to need a taxi to the airport. You haven’t got any money. You’re not getting a statue. It’s going to take some kind of miracle for us to get anything here.’
Two plates of food and a bottle of water used up our last ten ringgits. The temple had Wi-Fi so we were able to book an Uber to the airport.
I’m not saying it was divine intervention but something was shining down on us that day.
We arrived with enough time to get something to eat before our flight. We checked my bag in and headed into the terminal. We walked back and forth and the only place to get anything was a coffee shop with garish blue lights and pink font. We were both starving again and bolted down sandwiches, sausage rolls and tiramisu, hardly traditional Asian fare but all airports look the same so you might as well eat the same.
I called my brother because it was his birthday and we had a very stilted conversation because of the delay caused by the connection. Then we were loading ourselves into cattle class and heading on to Thailand.
“Clearly you’ve never been to Singapore”, famously uttered Captain Jack Sparrow upon freeing Elizabeth Swan from her corset using a knife. This wasn’t the only reason I wanted to visit the city but it was up there, along with the fact it would coincide with Eurovision. I figured flying to South East Asia was a cheap price to pay in order to escape the hideous showboating and rip away skirts.
When my friend Adam, who I first met two years ago on a trek to Machu Picchu, mentioned the pair of us going to stay with his friend Roshni in Singapore, I think he was expecting a little more resistance. I agreed almost immediately. It was only afterwards the gravitas of the decision really hit me.
It seemed bizarre to travel all that way to only visit one place so we set upon Malaysia and Thailand in the process. This post, however, is about Singapore, what we saw and did there, and the lessons we learnt along the way.
Changi airport is one of the best air-conditioned spaces in the world. How do I know this? I tried going outside at eleven o’clock at night to hail a cab. Two steps out into that muggy wall of heat and I returned to the Wi-Fi and eateries of the arrival hall. While waiting for Roshni to meet us, unsure of exactly how we had ended up in such a predicament, we counted our money and tried to work out how many Singapore dollars there were to the pound and if everything before us was a bargain or a rip off. It’s fair to say that Singapore has equal opportunities for both.
Roshni collected us and we got a taxi across the city, taking in views of the marina and the incredible number of skyscrapers before blasting out the other side and up to her apartment. Roshni moved to Singapore last year to teach. She’s possibly the most upbeat and spirited person I have ever met. She’s purposeful and attentive and her smile can sort of break your heart a bit. On top of this, she insisted we take her bed while she slept on the sofa. It was the first of many nights Adam and I were in bed together.
The following morning Roshni made us smoothies and introduced us to her flatmate Amanda who also worked at the school. They took us for breakfast at a restaurant called Jimmy Monkeys to sweeten the deal before we attended a dance show at their school. It did the trick. As I sat with a thick vanilla milkshake, eggs and avocado smeared across soda bread, I couldn’t care what we did, as long as we kept cool in the process.
Like most drama schools, there were a lot of pushy stage parents. My first encounter with them was when we were ushered into the darkened auditorium and told we could sit anywhere by the other teachers, before being moved along by parents who had booked specific seats. They obviously needed to best capture the offbeat stammerings of their kids. After being moved on yet again by another set of Croydon facelifted mothers we hit the back row and watched two hours of theatre which was probably cute if you had an invested interest/offspring putting in a wonderful performance as a daisy or rabbit.
Afterwards Roshni took us on the Singapore underground service, the MRT. I just did some research and that stands for Mass Rapid Transport. How delightful.
We went to every coffee shop, bookshop and bakery we could find before heading to the top of the Pinnacle Tower for an incredible view over the city. Singapore has been built up very quickly. The skyline looks like a competition nobody is winning.
We headed back down and strolled around the city before Roshni took us to one of her favourite vegan restaurants for wraps, soup and salads. Adam and I discovered paying by card in Asia is not commonplace. Like the Queen, I don’t carry money. Unlike the Queen, I serve a purpose beyond just looking nice. Each time we wanted to pay for a meal we had to locate a cash machine on the busy streets and then worry about how to get back and whether our bags and passports would still be there. Considering it lacked my favourite foodstuffs, the vegan restaurants we visited in Singapore were incredible. I was almost converted.
Roshni took us through Chinatown and back onto the MRT to go and see the Supertree Grove in the Gardens by the Bay. This is a must when in Singapore. Not only is it beautiful but it’s also free. My favourite things are beautiful and free. We spread out on the paved floor, in the way of everyone else, and stared up. The supertrees are a collection of eighteen man-made trees, at around eighty-feet high. One of them has a restaurant inside to give an impression of scale. Each evening a light show plays out across the trees in sync with classical music blasted from hidden speakers. We were treated to a waltz. It was a mix of Fantasia, Debusssy and the music from X Factor. I was quiet and still for ten minutes. If there’s one thing it is enchanting to be, it is quiet and still. The lights and music pumped through me and I was so moved by the display that I realised my mouth had dropped open. The experience was something I was so pleased to enjoy with friends.
Afterwards we met up with Roshni’s friends and went to a bar in an alley where musicians played covers on guitar, trumpet and keyboard and we sipped at expensive cocktails named after renaissance painters or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Soon we were dancing away in the hot night. Adam and I took breaks to stand in front of a huge fan that pumped out recycled air into the alley. We watched a woman getting arrested and Roshni fell in love with yet another musician, taking up residence in the chair directly opposite the performance area to pine. After clearing away all of the money we had withdrawn earlier in the day on drinks, Adam and I were forced to call it a night and get a cab back to Roshni’s apartment, falling into a drunken sleep underneath the buzz of the ceiling fan. The best way to get over jetlag is to get drunk.
The following day we woke up late to discover we had been left alone. It was a Monday and Roshni and Amanda had both got up and gone to work/school. A friend of mine had recently returned to the UK after spending a year in Singapore and had given us a number of spots to check out, including a barber’s shop in Geylang where he had worked.
When we got outside it started raining, a thick viscous downpour that quickly soaked us through. I was growing tired of the mop of fringe dangling wet in my face. I wanted it gone and considered shaving my head.
We took the MRT without Roshni’s assistance for the first time and when we arrived in Aljunied (memorised by thinking of All You Need Is Love by The Beatles) we found the barbers closed. I had told Adam we couldn’t rest or eat until we had found it. After rattling the door for confirmation our thoughts turned to our stomachs. We didn’t have a clue where we were or where was good. There were no picturesque bakeries or quaint vegan eateries so we stumbled into an open air buffet next door where we were promptly handed two plates of what we quickly realised were the “westerner’s special” – rice, noodles, chicken, sweet and sour pork. It was delicious but Adam was feeling adventurous. He went back up and returned with a plate of pig skin. He assumed it would be fried off, similar to crackling. He was disappointed. What he had collected was boiled skin. I watched him struggle with a mouthful before deciding I needed a similar kind of punishment. I have put some terrible things in my mouth but the lump of pig made me heave. I quickly chewed and swallowed it down but I could feel it writhing. I was once told that pork is the closest meat to human and I had the horrible feeling I had gone all Hannibal on the buffet. Our two plates of food plus pig skin, two bottles of coke and four bottle of water came to £9.00. You can’t beat that with a stick.
Being suckers for punishment we decided to head to Orchard Road, an intense complex of shopping centres designed for the ex-pat community especially. The place was so swanky that I felt like I was going to be shooed out with a broom the whole time. Adam found a gold-plated, jewel-encrusted pen that was marked up at £3,500.00. He said he would buy it if he had the money. I called him a capitalist pig. It was the first of a series of conversations we had about materialism and politics. I told him a Bic was good enough for me. He pitied me.
We had arranged to meet Roshni and to visit another of her favourite spots, East Coast Park, but were slightly concerned we would have to forgo meat from another meal. Despite the tale/tail of the pig skin we were eager to get some food in us before our next adventure and hid in a KFC near our arranged meeting point while trying to connect to the Wi-Fi so we could book a restaurant for dinner. As Roshni had been so kind to us we wanted to treat her. When we told her she seemed genuinely impressed but had already set her heart on visiting Brownice, a vegan Italian bistro nearby.
We first went to East Coast Park, took off our shoes and paddled in the water before walking up and down the beach and talking about how connected we felt with the earth. At the time it felt really intense and honest but I now feel silly and clichéd for considering a concept so enlightened. Not me at all.
Brownice had the best food I ate in Singapore. The pizzas were big, covered in tofu and vegetables and their Root Beer float changed my perspective on the universe. Again, when it came time to pay, we couldn’t use our cards and Roshni had to pick up the tab for the bill we had kindly taken her out for. We got vegan ice cream and sat out in the hot street, watching traffic and street cats wander past until it was time to go home.
The next morning we awoke at six for our flight to Malaysia. Roshni made us smoothies so thick they would have been placed in a remedial class and we booked a taxi back to the airport. Our next adventure was waiting.
Like the opening scene of Lawrence Of Arabia I have returned to you from the depths of the dunes. I had the most amazing time, and will just not shut up about it.
It’s not really possible to get an idea of the scale of any part of it but I’m going to do my best to explain what happened when I left my world and ventured out of my comfort zone and into the unknown.
We flew from Gatwick to Casablanca and then Casablanca to Marrakech before an 8 hour jeep journey through the Atlas Mountains and out into the Sahara desert. I had never been to a desert before and was surprised (despite having been well informed beforehand) that only 20% of the Sahara desert is the sand dunes people associate with it. The rest is mountainous, rocky terrain intended to bend ankles and test patience.
We arrived at our first camp just in time to watch the sunset. Our guide Saaid presented us all with green headscarves (because the sixteen of us made up the green team) and we had some green tea. It should be noted that green tea in Morocco is an entirely different animal to green tea in the UK regardless of how well Clipper do in crafting it. They drink it in little glasses with plenty of sugar.
We were given the chance to unpack our equipment into the eight two-man tents which had kindly been erected prior to our arrival. From that point on we were responsible for putting up and taking down our own tents on a day to day basis. It is also worth stating there were five other groups of equal size doted about on the plains and whilst we were all in it together, there was a definite rivalry between the groups. We walked, ate and slept in packs and as the week progressed the sense of loyalty to one’s fellow hikers increased.
We were then presented with our first meal. As you can imagine my expectations were set low for the quality of food, as well as the toilet situation and the company. I was pleasantly surprised (apart from the toilets which can’t be helped and I’ll do my best to avoid describing). It is also worth noting that our cook Omar is not a professional chef and is in fact a local farmer hired by Epic Morocco to cater the group. We were given soup and then presented with a volcano of cous cous with a magma of chickpeas at its peak and chunks of tender beef on the bone with meat sauce. After spending the day travelling it was an absolute joy to eat a hearty meal and despite our serious attempts we could not clear the platters before us.
We spent some time chatting as it got dark before getting an early night ahead of our first day of trekking. As there was no light pollution the darkness was absolute once the sun had gone down and I fell asleep instantly.
We awoke early on our first morning in the desert. This would become protocol for our time there as it meant you could get some serious walking in before the heat became unbearable. Regardless, it was still twenty degrees. We got dressed, packed up our stuff, took down our tents and sat down for breakfast. Again, there was the threat that it wasn’t going to be the Crunchy Nut cornflakes or Eggs Benedict we were accustomed to but Omar smashed it. We were brought a vat of porridge, workhouse porridge, with the consistency of school time glue. This could be sweetened with the options of honey or jam. A number of people had just started to grumble when we were brought fried eggs, and thick pieces of fresh bread along with a pot of boiling water for teas, coffees and hot chocolates. It seemed so surreal to be sat on a tiny metal and fabric stool in my cargo trousers, t-shirt and scarf watching the sun rise and wiping the sleep from my eyes as I stared across the three directions of open, sparse landscape and then to the mountain stretch to our right which ran like a wall all the way to the horizon.
After breakfast Saaid made us fill our canteens and CamelBaks (or patent pending and poorly manufactured equivalent) while discussing our plans for the day.
‘Which direction are we heading in?’ someone asked, thumbing in either direction alongside the goliath wall of rock.
‘Over’ replied Saaid, pointing at the mountain whose side was lost in shadow. It was not going to be an easy start. For some reason the other teams were packed away and off up the path before we had finished breakfast. It set the pace for the majority of our actions as a group. We got a reputation for not just being the last to be at the next camp, but also as the loud group, the late night revelers and the early risers. Once we were on our way we soon set into a neat single file until we were overtaken by our camel (who we named Alan) and our camel handler (who was named Ali). Watching Alan make it up the mountain pass made the whole thing seem a lot more real. I don’t know what I had built the whole experience up to being in my head but this was as close to the fantasy as I was likely to get. I was swigging fresh water from a military canteen and following the trail of fresh, perfectly rounded camel pebbles up the side of a mountain in the desert breeze. My existence could not have been more removed from my life. When we got to the top of the mountain we stopped for breath, not that we hadn’t done that on our steep and zigzagging path up in the first place but this was a real rest and a chance to pull out our cameras and get some wide sweeping shots of what we were putting ourselves through. It was then noticed that the green scarves we had been provided with were dyed, and that when mixed with the sweat escaping from us this dye ran. A number of the team had green foreheads and necks, depending on where they had tied them. I didn’t wear mine on skin for the rest of the week, but could often be found sporting it tied around my waist, which I found to be particularly useful when attempting to hide my thunder in a pair of harem pants on days two and five.
As we sat on the top of the world chewing on the sugared nuts and sweet dates that Saaid had dragged up the mountain in his day bag we saw Omar walking up the path. Within the blink of an eye he had made it to the top. It put our shallow-breathed and perspiring browed efforts to shame. He acted as if it was nothing, as though he could do it every day. In actuality he probably does.
From there we headed down the other side and into a valley where the groups all seemed to merge and disperse as people found their natural rhythm or fell by the wayside. Our team stayed together well, keeping the pace of the slowest walkers to ensure we all made it through. We stopped on top of another plateau and admired how far we had come from the sweeping mountain pass which bowed behind us. Ahead was just rock in varying forms, all the way to the horizon and then beyond. We ate some sweets for the energy and for the joy of tasting something other than water which continued to increase in temperature as the sun rose above us like a chuckling puppeteer. It was getting on for midday and Saaid advised us to cover our heads to prevent the risk of sunburn, sunstroke and every other kind of ailment which has ever had the prefix or suffix ‘sun’ included. We did as we were told and dosed up on sun cream.
Each step became harder as we walked in the midday heat. I had trained to walk the distance but there was no way of preparing myself for the intense heat which pulsed upon my head and back in those hours. My walks in Hockley Woods and Epping Forest disappeared as I struggled to keep the sweat from my eyes and reverted to wearing a bandana wrapped across my brow and tied at the back of my head. This is one of the only situations it is acceptable to attempt such a style faux pas. It did the trick and woulld be included in my list of essential travel equipment (along with Immodium and candy sticks if ou’re interested).
When our water was running low we were allowed to rest in the shadow of a giant withered tree and restock from the supply on Alan’s back. I blew my nose and it immediately gushed forth with blood, running in a sticky glow over my lip and gumming into the cracks between my teeth. Saaid quickly took action, covering a cotton wool pad in some kind of brown gel and twisting it up my nostril until it stuck fast.
‘Keep your head tipped back’ he said.
‘Tilt forward’ someone else replied. Oh no I thought to myself, the continuing nosebleed debate. I’ve suffered with nosebleeds since I was very young. I’ll get a bout of them a couple of times a year and there’s no shock in it anymore. When I was two or three I awoke one morning to find a dark irratic circle of blood staining my pillow. When my parents asked me what had happened I replied simply and quickly ‘The crocodile came out of the sunshine’. I’m still not entirely sure what I meant, like some kind of dandy Nostradamus in a cot. The mixture of whatever was in my nose eventually stopped the bleeding.
Saaid told me as we walked on that it was very common. The air was full of dust and sand and it cut the inside of your nose when you breathed deeply enough. For the rest of the week I felt congested, and would periodically (possibly the wrong choice of word) blow a mixture of scabs and red snot into a tissue. Most people suffered similar ailments. Sleeping in the desert was also a cause of sore throats for the team.
Along the next stretch of our walk we were beside a dried out riverbed which was just cracked flat earth. I daydreamt about it overflowing with water. The idea of completely disappearing beneath the surface of a river overpowered me. I felt the heat claiming me. It was about this time that I started to integrate into the group a little better. Prior to the trek I had known one other person (Terri, my Sahara buddy), had met one (Emily), and was aware of another (Tom). Being thrown into a group of such bright young things had brought out the introvert in me momentarily but I soon found myself joking around with them and by the time we were to part ways again it yanked at my insides to see them go.
‘How do you feel on a scale of one to desert?’ asked Emma, who is a brilliant and wild outdoorsy type from Oxford. She spent the week laughing at my rubbish jokes and dressing like a jumble sale of hiking gear, tri-coloured Primark sunglasses and a baseball cap.
We used the 1 to Desert scale to describe our feelings, our activities and our gradual descent into heat born madness. The four words which were passed back and forth more than any other for our travels were ‘That is so desert’.
Eventually we came to a patch of greenery. Date trees and roughage created wide shadows for us to rest in and a well provided water to the camels. The other groups were all nestled nearby, eating lunches we could only dream of and getting lost in their own adventures. Two donkeys clomped about lazily in the attached field, one of them bloated with child, their front feet tethered together to stop them escaping and heading out into what I am sure was just more desert in whichever direction they chose to take.
Omar served up pasta, salad and bread, an incredible achievement given the fact the sixteen of us had only been able to serve up green necks, nosebleeds and bad puns. We lazed and even dozed before we were ushered back to our feet to complete the last two hours walking to our camp spot.
I walked the flat dry earth towards camp with Andreas, a chilled out Greek guy currently living and working in Dubai. He made the place sound as if it were a dream come true, a place to live the high life and an absolute must before the claws of growing up managed to pin you down. If I took one thing away from the people I met it is that I have not seen enough of the world. I understand that we are all different people and we have our own dreams and our own ambitions but their knowledge of the world and their understanding of different cultures and currencies and foods and systems and even geography made me feel young and naïve in comparison. That’s why I applied in the first place though. To get out of my bubble, even if just for a week at a time. As if from nowhere the most relaxed man in all of the desert appeared. He was the doctor for the trek. The one man in charge of keeping us all on the road. In the week he was with us he saw around a third of the 97 people walking due to some kind of ailment. For the time being he was as chilled as a fucking cucumber though. I’ve never seen a man so laissez-faire about weather. I didn’t think that was even possible and yet here he was. Dressed in jeans and a wonderful denim shirt he strode past us as though on a conveyer belt, satchel thrown over one shoulder and a cigarette balanced between two fingers of the opposite hand. I called him Doctor Denim. Soon we all called him Doctor Denim.
The camp was on the horizon but it refused to grow. The perspective shifted. We gained ground but it appeared to be to no avail. It just sat on the line before the sky as though it were smirking at our attempts. Dots on top of other dots which were the other teams could already be seen relaxing in the shade of the large mess tents that had been erected. One member of our group, Louise, a woman who works in IT and keeps chickens was really suffering and whilst half the group pressed on for the shade of the camp, the others hung back so we could finish our first day together. It made arriving all the sweeter and as our camp was located at the front of the groups we were spared the slow claps and grimaces of the other groups as we emerged from the dry heat covered in blood, sweat and tears (which were for the most part metaphorical). Once we were washed (or wet wiped at least) and changed, Emma asked Terri and I if we fancied going for a little walk up a nearby hill. None of the others were interested. Anyone would think they had spent the day walking and could think of nothing worse than pushing themselves to go even further. I was dressed in my pyjamas, a pair of cotton check trousers and whatever t-shirt I could find because it was the most comfortable thing in my bag so the pictures of me at the top of the hill against the brilliant sunset look a little thrown together. It was still a fantastic view and worth the climb. When we came back down we played the Post It Note game, where the person to your immediate left chooses a celebrity for you to guess by sticking it to your forehead. I was Victoria Beckham. I struggled to get it until Amy, who was bored of the game, gave me some excellent clues to end my torture. We played until we couldn’t see each other’s notes anymore. Terri still had ‘The Queen’ on her head as we headed in for dinner.
That evening we ate lamb and rice before sitting around in a circle outside with Saaid and Omar as they sang traditional Moroccan and Berber songs to us. This consisted of a call and response system which we tried to adopt but mostly just invented our own hybrid of nonsense in order to join in. We tried to reciprocate by teaching them Wonderwall but it seriously wasn’t happening. We banged on water carriers and the floor to make a beat and this may have been the cause of us being tagged as the noisy group. Overhead the sky was the clearest and deepest I would get to see it. In a strip of creamy light that went over our heads like the Earth was wearing a head band the Milky Way showed off against a backdrop of stars which looked like smashed glass spread across the dome of the sky. It was like nothing I had ever seen.
Selected members of the other groups drew closer to the candles we were collected around and the screams and shouts we emitted as we tried to sing along. We became the hub of the camp. People waved phones and cameras in one another’s faces and a giant moth committed suicide in the waxy flames. Suddenly the people to my left jumped up and the music stopped. Somebody had seen a scorpion and the guides quickly gave chase, parting people effortlessly as they trailed it out of the camp again. When they came back they tried to claim it had been a mouse. It didn’t make it any easier to swallow. It just made us more aware of what the threats were. This was no holiday. For the second night in a row I slept like a baby, watching my own mobile of stars above the tent which was my crib.
When I woke up I waited for the ache to set in. The feeling that I had been walking for eight hours on the day before. It didn’t come. Alongside it I couldn’t hear the usual hum of the world that symbolises waking, the normal association. There’s always an electric buzz in the air, or a pipe humming for no good reason at all but here there was nothing. It was still pitch black outside. I don’t know what time it was but I lay as still as possible until I heard the tinkling approach of Saaid, mobile phone in hand, playing us our wake up call. He would sweep from tent to tent each morning, willing us awake with his croaky morning voice and then dropping a ‘yallah’ into the mix if someone was slow in moving under the searchlight of his phone.
We got up, got dressed and took down our tents, slightly quicker than the day before, eager to head out before the other groups could get a headstart. It was the only day we bothered with such a feat, it did us no good. After another breakfast of bread and jam and porridge and eggs and tea and coffee and hot chocolate we refilled out water bottles and rushed to the edge of the riverbed which was still just as dry. The sunrise was particularly beautiful and spread in a new kind of panorama wider than the eyes could manage. We walked away from it, having to rush Saaid out of the camp so we could be the forerunners of the day. We berated him as we jovially made our way down the path. Spirits were unbelievably high. We had got over the first bout of nerves, of not knowing one another and had hit upon an understanding. We were all very much in it together, and the best way to do that was to embrace it and laugh and enjoy it together. We passed a stagnant patch of water which passed in the Sahara for a lake. Beside it was a wide green plant, an odd blott on the otherwise orange and brown landscape. Saaid told us it was toxic to camels but someone pointed out that it just looked like a lettuce. Saaid also told us there had been a meteor shower recently and we should be on the lookout for bowls sized rocks (my point of reference there, not his) as they could be worth a small fortune if we got them back to Marrakech. We spent most of the day with our necks bent, our eyes scanning the tumble and jumble of rocks beneath our feet for a variety of reasons.
We started talking about university experiences. Everyone seemed to know somebody who knew someone who had been through something horrific and our laughter obounced off the high walls of rock to our side. We were due to pass up onto the ledge soon but didn’t bother to conserve any energy as tales of drunkenness and sex and faeces were swapped and laughed at. Jamie’s in particular was brutal!
When it came time to zigzag up the side of the mountain again I walked up with Ian and Feyza, talking about the joys of working in London and the places we called home. Louise had dropped behind again with Emma trying her best to will her along. When I eventually got to the top I was astounded. The other groups were yet to reach the peak and there were just the fourteen of us in a deep V of mountain looking out after what seemed like fields of more rocks and hills before the horizon was kissed by the thought of sanddunes. We could see our intended position but it would have to wait until the end of our third day before we even began to reach it.
We took turns at taking pictures of each other on the rocks. Terri had found what she referred to as her ‘Rafiki stick’ and stood on top of a big rock, shielding her face from the sun and posing.
Jamie asked if anyone wanted to climb up the sides of the mountain to the plateau we could see at the top. Everyone else sensibly decided to stay in the dip, their backs to the cool rock as they ate more dates and nuts. Jamie and I raced up the side of the mountain. It would be fair to say he has a competitive edge and when I’m up against someone who has a competitive edge I tend to get a bit competitive in return (For more proof see Day 4 when I elbowed Emma during a race). I felt like Kerouac in The Dharma Bums, leaping from boulder to boulder like a mountain goat, overcoming nature in the most breathy of ways. There was also an element of Ethan Hunt climbing the rock face in the opening of MI:2. When we got to the top it was worth the hike. The view was cinematic, like Peter Jackson and Stanley Kubrick’s lovechild, stretching wide like arms going in for a hug. Jamie was sure we were high enough to see the curvature of the earth. It looked like the surface of a glass of water, slightly bowed in the middle and full of promise. We took photographs, waved to our teammates and then carefully climbed back down again, pleased we had got an extra bit of view on top of the others. It was our trophy.
When we got back down Louise had arrived and was sheltering with the others.
‘You know we are all climbing up there in a minute’ said Terri. I tried to pretend I knew that all along. I did not know that all along.
Other teams started to arrive and repeated the steps we had already made of finding shelter and drinking as much water as they could. We started on our way up the rock face again, before being passed by those cads in orange who undercut us against the steep path we were casting for ourselves to ensure they breached the surface before us. All it would have taken was one kick to turn their dream adventure to a trip home in a cedar wood box. Things were getting dark.
The problem with walking along the top of the hill face was that it was uneven and strewn with rubble. It flipped ankles up on themselves and caused constant stumbles. We had to focus on our feet just to stop ourselves from tumbling over the edge.
Whenever I’m near a steep ledge I get an overwhelming temptation to throw myself off of it. Apparently it’s a form of vertigo but I always placed that as being the extreme fear of heights and the sudden lurch that you could fall rather than the desire to do so. As an example Ian suffers from severe vertigo and acted like an absolute hero in getting across, albeit slowly and safely, his walking pole twisted so he could face away from the cliff’s edge. We stopped after an hour to eat dried bread and Laughing Cow cheese triangles or La vache qui rit (en francais). This was the kind of bohemian living I had been searching for all along. The luxury of Moroccan soups and culinary delights were us being spoilt but feeling abandoned on the edge of a cliff with a hunk of cheese and a red cow grinning maniacally at you from her foil wedge was pure beatnik. I just wished the bum fluff on my chin were a little more coarse.
When we took off again the group started to divide. Up front were the keen younglings who were sure they had caught sight of our next camp, back down past the dry riverbed and a hilly patch of land some distance away. Then there were the middlemen of which I was a part. We just wanted to make it alive, and to not burn or worse beforehand. This was a key thought, maybe even a motto. At the back was brave sir Ian, shaking and swearing at the wall of rock while Feyza tried to get him to carry more of her things and hurry along a little, simultaneously, along with Louise who was really struggling and Saaid. It was the first opportunity I really got to speak to some people. I talked to Jo about the scheme she was on at work and the pains of what they were expected to do as well as her time at King’s College, and I got to walk with Hannah and Jane who showed a sweet amount of interest in my dreams of being a writer as well as telling me about their families and partners. There was not one person I walked with that I didn’t want to know more about. Considering our proximity it was an absolute joy to learn about the way things are for different people. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in your own life and to forget that elsewhere people are doing the same things or very different things in similar climates or lost out in a different world. It’s very empowering to listen to other people. It makes you appreciate things an awful lot more.
It didn’t matter how hard we walked it was another day when we just didn’t seem to be drawing any closer to the camp. There was a dot on the horizon which may well have been a white tent but there was nothing we could do to draw it closer to us and it became painful.
When we took a break I sat with Andreas, my legs practically swinging out over the canyon as we talked.
‘Do you think you could find your way back to the first camp?’ he asked me, a sinister look in his eye. ‘And how long do you think the water would last?’
I didn’t know how to respond. We had enough water, a point alluded to by Saaid shouting ‘keep drinking’ at us every fifteen minutes. Of course it was because he had been out trekking with enough groups of gallivanting idiots to understand that if you didn’t drink then you probably wouldn’t make it.
Eventually of course we did get to the stop in the monotonous and monstrous rock and seeped down into a gully which sunk further into a ravine and onto the camp. Deep gorges had been built into the rock, and piled on either side were smaller stones to create high walls so there was no sight of a bed for the night for the first time in three hours. I decided I’d had enough of snaking behind everyone else and crawled myself out of the parapet to run for the camp.
It was still further than I had expected. Although the heat certainly wasn’t as severe as it had been the respite was minimal and there was no shade between me and my target. I struggled up the slope to the field where camp was and it all opened up to me. To the right of centre was our white tent, the sides flung up in salute and the first few of my team dowsing their feet in aloe vera and coiffing green tea with sugar. I heard the slow claps of the other groups, either through exhaustion or pity and collapsed onto the mattress to the left on the inside of our tent. Despite it not being a hard day it felt like the longest day, the most arduous and as my hands shook and sweated I had a plate of biscuits put down and knew I was going to be okay. By the time the slow claps picked up again I was upright and joining in, welcoming the others over the finish line.
We wondered how long Feyza and Ian would be and once they made it back safe we wondered how long it would take Louise and Saaid to join us. Before we saw them Doctor Denim grabbed his kit bag and headed off in one of the 4x4s to rescue someone. We watched it disappear down a ridge, the sun winking at us on the polished black. Before it returned two figures appeared on the horizon, one wrapped in a black headscarf and the other in green. It was the last horse to cross our finish line. Louise had made it.
Before we had fully recovered Kai and Lucy, the trip’s organisers, came a-knocking to ask if anyone fancied going for an 8km fun run. There are some things you don’t want to hear after struggling across 20km of desert rock and high up on that list is ‘8km fun run’.
Tom went, dressed in his chino shorts, designer t-shirt and Adidas shoes. He looked good even if he didn’t look the part. It was only once he had left that we were informed the other entrants were triathletes, tough mudders and semi-professional runners who train with Olympians. We laughed.
They were gone for over an hour. Nobody moved around if they could help it. I collected my leather bound notebook and tried to catch up on the day. I like to keep a journal whenever I’m doing something specifically different and incredible and this fell into both categories.
When Tom returned we cheered for him with renewed vigour and prepared ourselves for dinner.
Again this started with Moroccan soup but was followed by spaghetti bolognese which I needlessly slurped away at as the sun went down once more on our empire. There’s nothing quite as surreal as chowing down on spag bol against a desert sunset. For the evenings entertainment the guides and cooks came out with tambourines, made us stand in a circle and we danced together. They then made a fire that somehow smelt of cinnamon and we gained the attention of the other groups again. Soon there was a circle of fifty people around the fire, clapping and wailing together.
Eventually Terri and I branched off to get some sleep before we headed back over the mountain again.
When I woke up for the third day of hiking I thought I had a blister. Don’t tell anyone else because this is as close as I got to an injury whilst everyone else started to really suffer and continued to push on with the kind of courage I would like to think I would have in the situation but hope I will never have to test. I wrapped it in a blister plaster and some zinc oxide tape (excellent suggestion Annabelle, also, thanks for the pen knife, I cut the sleeves off many a shirt with it). I Vaseline’d my feet and I was ready to go for another day. It sounds like a weird thing to do but Vaseline stops the rubbing which causes friction and blisters so make sure you lube up before you boot up. That could almost be a rhyme. Remember that you heard it here first.
Some people were having toilet issues. I said I would do my best to avoid talking toilet but it took up a lot of our time and conversations. Some girls, who I will not name, started referring to the act of excavating a turd as “completing the mission”. Since we arrived a number of them had not. There’s room for another reference to Mission Impossible but I won’t sink to it.
Lucy had delivered the most incredible blisters. They looked like 50’s teenagers blowing bubble gum. Jo was complaining she felt sick. Louise was up seven times in the night being ill so decided to rest up for the day in the hope she would be able to join us. Emily was walking on a dangerously swollen ankle. I kept quiet. I had no war wounds aside from the possible inkling of a blister.
I was very excited because it was the day Terri and I had decided we would treat ourselves to an Oasis. We had bought a bottle each at Gatwick airport and then agreed not to drink them. On the second evening we left them by the entrance to the tent so the freezing night air would get to them and they would be refrigerator cool by morning.
I feel obliged to explain exactly why we had opted for Oasis to be the one drink we took with us. It is worth noting that more than anything as a group we discussed our need for a Coca Cola, such is the power of their advertising. The huts on the way into the desert had the red and white flow of the soft drink font on them.
We had Oasis because it had been recommended to me by my very good friend Mex. He sent me a message a couple of days before I left giving me some helpful advice including taking a bottle of Oasis for the following three reasons: 1. It’s very refreshing.
2. You can point to it and say “Look guys, there’s an Oasis” and people will definitely laugh.
3. It’s wide enough that you can slip your cock in there to wee in the night if you really need to go.
That is why we had Oasis, and that morning it was so cold and joyful I could have cried.
We set off after most of the other groups, up the pass we had come down. When we got to the top Terri and I ripped open our bags and took out our cold bottles of Oasis. It looked perfect. I cracked open the lid and took a swig. After three days of nothing but water and sweet tea it tasted incredible. It woke up my tastebuds. When I brought the bottle back down there were thirsty eyes staring at me. I shared it between as many people as I could.
As we were coming down the mountain into the expanse of mountains and the eventual dunes on the horizon Emily’s ankle started to act up. She sat down with tears in her eyes, devastated at the thought of not being able to finish. Alan and Ali came past us. Saaid carefully took her shoes and sock off and applied a tube wrap which took the pressure off. She put her sock and shoe back on and didn’t say one more word about it. Fierce!
We finally got to the bottom of the other side of the mountain and were met with Mordor, or as close to Mordor as I think you can get outside of New Zealand or Middle Earth. There were these alien looking coils of dark rock. Terri and I walked around them talking about what makes us what we are. On the far side were a number of trees where the other groups were resting up, hidden from the sun which was already burning the place up. On the side of a huge hill tiny figures were hurtling their way up to the summit. We took shelter and watched for a while. Nobody seemed to be able to make it, but then Tom and I were goaded into giving it a try.
I strapped on the GoPro camera I had borrowed from my writing partner Ben (who also kindly let me borrow his sleeping bag which saved me from freezing) and we headed off assuming a slight jog as the incline increased to the point it burned the back of my legs to continue.
I consider myself to be fairly fit but getting to the top of that mountain was something else entirely. I went from being able to run, to being able to jog, to walking, and then to physically climbing, throwing my burning fingers around the edge of shards of rock and dragging myself up.
From the top I could have done anything. I lay down.
When I got back down everyone had recovered to a point where they could continue on. My breathing did not revert to normal until we stopped for lunch. As everyone stood to leave I noticed Jo was still laying on her side, with Emily slowly stroking her back. She threw up in the shade of the tree, announced she felt better and jumped up to continue with the rest of us, wiping her hand on tissues which were quickly passed across to her. Jo is hardcore!
I walked with Ian and talked about travelling and blogging. In the previous summer he had travelled across Mexico and written a blog about it, primarily about the food he had eaten. He confided in me that what he craved and what he wanted more than anything was a special beer cocktail they served up called a Michelada which had lime and Tabasco sauce in it as well as a salt-run rim on the glass. The look on his face as he thought about it was animal.
The sun continued to burn up the earth beneath us. It seemed to come from everywhere and the only sure protection was to keep your skin out of it’s sight. I put my hat and shemagh on but this just made the sweat pool in different places to the usual patch on my back beneath my bag. I walked with Jess and we talked about Twitter, and her love of hip hop. She taught me a lot about 50 Cent. We headed through another dry riverbed. For a desert the Sahara sure loves a useless riverbed. When we came to its mouth there were the dunes. They welcomed us but kept their distance. There was still a large area of scorched sand before we could get there. We started walking into the sun, taking one final stop under the last tree in sight. Once more Jo lay on the floor and was sick before getting up and walking on. For a moment we lost sight of Alan and Ali who had our water supplies and I wondered what we would do if they didn’t reemerge. I tried to work out who looked like they were holding the most water. I had a pen knife, I would cut them first.
Alan and Ali came over the hill and we were saved and I didn’t have to kill anyone, which was a bit of a disappointment to be honest.
The more we walked the more Lucy started to complain. She had made an incredible effort to keep on but it had got too much for her. Saaid radio’d in a jeep and when it arrived she slowly clambered in. Jo was on her hands and knees in the shadow of the jeep. We were all worried for her. I had never seen anyone so green, and I’m sure only part of it was down to the scarf she was still wearing.
‘Jo’ someone said, ‘if you get in the jeep now, and get back to the camp and see the doctor there is a chance you could be alright to walk tomorrow’.
Jo looked back at them, her face clammy and the colour of the waves on Southend seafront. ‘I’m not getting in the fucking jeep’ she said through gritted teeth and clambered back to her feet.
The jeep sped off to camp.
Five minutes later it returned and the driver threw Saaid a bottle of water. Saaid poured some water into his hand and told each of us in turn to shut our eyes. He would then hurl the hand of water into our faces. It had been collected from a well and it was so unbelievably cold that it took my breath away.
Spirits started to sink again soon after however. Nobody wanted to admit it but the heat was getting to people and the torment in joints and muscles was becoming overbearing. We pressed on.
The camp emerged on us suddenly, and although it was over a number of small dunes seeing it renewed us with vigour. Saaid pushed me along, urging me to run the half mile or so with him. As we gathered momentum we collected up other people who had been walking ahead of us. Saaid narrated the whole thing as though he were a sports commmentator, referring to me as ‘the English’ and then pushing himself, ‘the Berber’ to overtake before ‘the Turkish’ Feyza became a real threat. When we got to the camp everyone cheered and it felt like a real achievement. I dropped myself into a corner of our tent and waited for everyone else to arrive. Lucy was on a thin mattress on her front, with her legs covered in pink iodine or something to try and stop her curdling skin from getting infected. When Jo arrived she collapsed to the floor and started visibly shaking, I thought she had gone into shock from the way her body appeared to be spasming but it was just from the relief of having made it. Saaid threw water over her and fanned her as best he could. Eventually she calmed down and cooled down and sat up.
Tom was soon dragged off for another 8km run and this time Jamie went with him as well.
If you need one thing to make all of the pain we were suffering seem worthwhile it was what followed. As I was getting changed I heard Saaid call out to us. I ran out barefoot to meet him, crouched on a small dune. He didn’t say anything but just pointed to where the sun was going down beyond the sand. It was the perfect end to a chaotic and mentally and physically exhausting day and it made it all seem as though it hadn’t been that bad because of the incredible pay off. I started to realise that all of the things that I worried about at home, and all of the things I used to consume my time were fairly worthless in comparison to something so simple and natural and beautiful. I’m not saying I’m going to give up my MacBook and my guitars and head off into the void in search of some great kind of realisation but it’s good to know I can exist and be blissfully happy on so little.
Once the sun had completely disappeared we strapped on our head torches and headed back to our tent for dinner. I spoke to a number of people from different teams who were reporting similar problems with injuries. The most severe of which was a guy called Pat who had broken his ankle just weeks after it had set from a previous break. He walked the full 100km.
Omar served us chicken and chips. We screamed. After the lows we had reached during the day it was incredible to see something so close to home. Terri called it ‘Sahara Nandos’. Even Louise ate it, having made a pact five years before to not eat chicken. People’s morals really start to slip after a couple of days in the desert.
We took our sleeping mats out into the dunes and watched out for shooting stars, sharing embarrassing stories from our childhood and yawning up into the night before we turned in, ready to hit the endless beach.
On the fourth day God created sand, and he created it in abundance, stretching out for further than the eye could see. It felt cool and soft at first but eventually became so hot it melted the soles of Dr Denim’s shoes. Before you ask, they were not made from denim.
We woke up slowly, losing the beautiful dreams we had been lost in at the sound of others shuffling about. It was getting light, the sun was rising but Saaid had not been round with his usual routine wake up call. None of us had bothered to set an alarm, there had been no need to have any concept of time in the man made sense of the word. We still weren’t sure what timezone we had passed in to and out of on the stopover. Tom tiptoed over to our mess tent where Saaid was bunched over, sleeping softly.
‘Saaid, time to wake up‘.
Tom came running back to us in hysterics. He was so pleased he had managed to be the one to wake Saaid up. He said that the first thing Saaid did was sit bolt upright and shout ‘Omar!’ which was becoming one of his catchphrases. In fact, if Saaid were an action figure he would have a little button on his back that said ‘Suncream guys! Keep drinking! Omar! Yallah!’ on a loop.
As Saaid had neglected to wake us we decided there was absolutely no rush, and the whole day felt fairly casual compared to some of the others. We ate our usual porridge which seemed thicker and better than ever along with bread and jam and coffee before heading out into the dunes. This was so desert. Having taken the time to not just read the inventory list, but also to cross-reference it against those available online and the advice of travel-savvy friends, Terri and I had both packed a pair of gaitors. These are polyester or silk rolls of material which either zip up or are tied around hiking boots up to your shins in order to stop sand spilling in over the top of your boots and causing your blisters to rub against your socks like sandpaper. We were in the minority in having taken this step. Andreas walked barefoot for most of the morning. He was at one with the desert.
We didn’t even make it half a mile across the gentle dunes before Tom found another prize. He had started collecting weird things he found in the landscape, claiming he was going to take them back to work for ‘show and tell’. This time it was a tiny clay teapot which Saaid claimed had been left by some nomads. If that teapot had been a magic lamp I would have killed them all for the wishes. It wasn’t, as far as I know. Tom attached it to the tube of his CamelBak proudly. It is worth noting that his other prize was a watermelon about the size of a cricket ball which he claimed was a cure for rheumatism. We had a fairly easy walk. The dunes continued to get bigger but everyone took to them in single file. There was a real level of comerarderie that had been reached. Photos were taken of our shadows across the dunes, as they stretched almost to the bottom trying to escape the sun. When we stopped people would share sweets and we had a league of shared stories and references which could be used to make one another laugh. It was a change to the way we had approached one another when we had first checked in to camp on the first day.
We stopped for an early lunch in the shadow of a collection of trees. I was reminded of our lunch spot of the first day because of how relaxed everyone felt and the way despite the foliage there was no breeze to blow it. As the sun headed over our heads the shade we had slimmed, so we slowly had to shift closer and closer to the shrubbery to protect ourselves. Emily meanwhile had dedicated the day to ‘getting her tan on’ and sat out, the straps of her top rolled off of her shoulders and her eyelids closed delicately.
Pasta was served along with a tomato salad. Again, we failed to clear the plates put before us but then skulked further into the shade for a little sleep. I sat out with Emily trying to write but when Saaid warned us the sun was getting into the middle of the sky and this signaled the hottest time I retreated under the leaves between Andreas and Jo. Despite not yet returning to a normal pallour or temperature Jo was in high spirits, judging the girls with me as they discussed the best places to get a cut and blow dry in Central London and their plans for having their nails done upon their return to the UK. I balanced my notebook on my knees and tried to catch up on the writing I had missed out on. Slowly people started to drift off to sleep.
Terri took out a pack of strawberry laces and we each placed the tip of one in our mouths and then raced to eat the whole thing without using our hands. Tom won each and every time. He said it was all in the tongue. I won’t elaborate.
Once we had enjoyed the kind of lunch period that the characters of Downton Abbey would consider indulgent we packed everything up, put on more sunscreen, topped up our water bottles and headed out once more.
The dunes were slightly bigger and while most people tried to skirt around the edges of them there were those who felt they had not punished themselves enough and insisted on taking on each and every dune available. I was one of them, along with Emma, Andreas and Jamie. They would run at a dune, senselessly pumping their legs and shouting encouragement to one another. We soon got into a pattern of racing each other. It was while attempting to race across three ten metre dunes that my competitive edge took over and I elbowed Emma. Sorry, not sorry.
By the time we made it back to the camp we had only been walking for about two hours from where we had stopped for lunch. It was the easiest day we had done, but there was a part of me that just hoped it was because we had got really good at walking across the desert, maybe we were even experts.
Saaid was able to secure us some water from a well. It was supposed to be used for cooking and cleaning but he cut off the bottoms of the five-litre bottles of water we had been carrying with us and poured enough water into each of them that we could wash. The feeling of a wet flannel on my skin was amazing. What I hadn’t taken into account was that my new flannel would lose some of its colour and dye on its first wash. I hadn’t bothered to give it a pre-Sahara wringing out so as soon as I put the flannel into the rationed water it turned turquoise. It didn’t stop me though. Everyone stripped down to swimming costumes or underwear and embraced the feel of nearly fresh, fairly cool water against their skin. It left everyone feeling happy and refreshed. That evening we decided to set up our tents but only use them in order to keep our equipment out of the sand, which stormed across at intervals just to show that nature truly is the boss. All of us trekked out to the biggest sand dune we could find and took pictures and video’d the sunset. It was so nice for the group of us to collect along the great concave of a dune and watch the sun go down. It looked absolutely incredible and to make the picture all the more magical there were a group of camels walking right across our field of vision. We shared out some of Terri’s amaretto, posed and made shapes in the twilight and then ran back down the cool dunes for dinner.
Omar served us meat, couscous and spiced vegetables followed by hot bananas in yoghurt.
Now I will eat a lot of things. I cleared near enough every plate that was put in front of me, and was surprised it wasn’t as adventurous as my tastes would have ventured. Whenever I go away I try and have ’the thing’. I like to push myself. I’ve eaten frogs legs, oysters, snails, lobster, veal, rabbit. I will not draw a line when it comes to trying things and testing myself, but I really hate yoghurt. It’s not milk and it’s not cream and it thinks it can have a go at doing the job of both and it’s just awful. I don’t understand what is supposed to have happened to make it. I fear it.
I moved it to one side and got on with eating.
Some time later we started collecting in the mess tent, pulling in our sleeping bags and mats. Emma, Jamie and Andreas had spent the previous night sleeping out under the stars and had told anyone who would listen that they were massively missing out by locking themselves in their tent. So ten of us settled ourselves into nice little lines and slept under the breezy canopy of our big tent. It really was an amazing experience. Despite the ‘kids at a sleepover’ vibe we were all drifting off at half ten, and Saaid had to go and have words with another group who were making too much noise whilst his flock were trying to sleep. I don’t think I really slept at all. I just slowly dropped out and then reemerged again to appreciate where I was and what I was doing and who I was with. I was alone in that, and I can be sure because against the night air came the snores of my tent mates.
When everyone woke up the next morning Saaid played us his usual jangly wake up music. It was just after six. People requested other songs. He played Tracey Chapman followed by The Scorpions’ Rock You Like A Hurricane. I was the sole fan. My friend Joe once told me that waking up to 80’s power ballads was the best way to start a day. I would go a step further by saying waking up to 80’s power ballads in the desert tops that still.
We lay about chatting until someone came over from another group to tell us off. We snickered as they walked away.
Soon after people started to get up, to emerge. We were already the liveliest group. We got dressed and packed up our tents before our last breakfast. Someone pointed this fact out and I immediately wished they hadn’t. I strapped my gaitors on and we headed out of camp on foot for the last time.
Everyone seemed somber and conscious of the fact we were into the last fifth of our trek. It had been an incredible experience and while people were starting to talk of getting in a hot shower and having a cold drink I could have just kept going. I’m not saying indefinitely but at least for another week.
In the distance we could see some daunting looking dunes, some of which Saaid said would be 100m high. I needed to get up one of those dunes. Andreas, Jamie, Emma and I (later joined by Terri) started out across the biggest dunes we could see, trying to keep our guide in sight as the girls took turns at riding on Alan. Ian and Feyza followed us, taking photos.
Each time we got to the top of a dune it felt final, as though we were the biggest in the desert and we had conquered it. There was always bigger.
Once more Doctor Denim appeared like an apparition. He implied there might be a treat for us when we got to the finish line. The only treat I could think of was shade.
When we realised we were approaching the finish line and the camp we rejoined Saaid and the others to make sure we all finished together. I didn’t want to finish. I didn’t want it to be over and to have to go back. I wanted more.
We listened to Destiny’s Child on Jess’s iPhone and Tom showed me how to slut drop. This was possibly when we realised the heat had really got to us.
As we came over the last dune we could see everyone coming out to greet us. Everyone had changed into their charity shirts so we were greeted by a sea of red and white. As we walked down the dune and onto the last bit of cracked earth we would encounter we started running. My heart was racing and pumping in my ears but I could still hear the woops and applause as we drew up to the finish line. When I stopped I didn’t know what to do or who to turn to, what to say or why we had stopped. Kai grabbed my hand and shook it firmly.
Everyone hugged one another and then we sat for group photos, yet to have the chance to take off our boots or get in the shade.
It still didn’t feel like it was happening. It was as though someone else had done those things and I was an imposter in sitting down, smiling, posing, holding the same expression as people ran up and down taking photos.
When we were released we escaped to our tent and collapsed. I don’t think anyone said anything for half an hour which was not like us at all.
I took out the bag of Haribo sweets I had been saving for when we finished. They had melted into a crushed car in a scrap heap block. I passed them round and people tugged bits of the mass and jammed them into their mouths. As we had missed out earlier Saaid got three camels together and sent Ian, Tom and I out for a ride. Despite what I had heard of their reputation I found them to be no less accommodating than a London cabbie and more comfortable than a vomity backseat on a Friday night.
I know this is just desert talk but I felt like the reason he behaved is because I was so desert.
We got back to camp and prepared for dinner. Kai and Lucy had said they wanted to give a speech, and it would be the last chance we would all be together.
We sat at our low tables on our metal and cloth chairs and waited.
They began by introducing Charlie who owns and runs Epic Morocco who organised and ran our trip. He gave a short speech, thanking everyone who had been a part of the trip, both those we had seen and trekked with and those behind the scenes. He provided a breakdown of how much resource had been used. The figures were staggering.
They brought out a cooler of beers and soft drinks. Suddenly everyone’s attention shifted. Lucy and Kai presented the drinks to people who had won their awards, either for fundraising (WC), or heroic efforts (Pat) or best face plant. Tom won the award for best dressed. We tried not to show our hunger at the idea of a cold drink. After all it would only be another 24 hours before we would be back at the hotel. It didn’t change the murderous looks being exchanged.
‘We wanted to mark the end of this by thanking you all, and doing something special’ said Kai. ‘Thats why’ said Lucy, ‘we have 200 beers and 200 soft drinks for you guys!’
I didn’t hear the rest of their speech because everyone started screaming. Lucy later told me she had never seen people look or act the way they did as they approached the two huge blue coolers which were brought out.
People didn’t know what to do with themselves. I had drunk my quota of beer before I realised what was happening. Fortunately I had made friends with a number of girls who didn’t drink beer.
We took whatever we could carry back out to the dunes and shot the last of our sunset pictures. From then on there would always be some obstacle between us and the great beyond but this was it. This was open. This was free.
We collected round a fire but before long we had to call it a night, the booze laying heavy on our healthy bellies.
Terri and I dragged two mats away from the fire. We slept out in the open, with just the stars and whatever may be beyond them to protect us.
I fell into a deep sleep in the middle of a sentence.
I could tell you what happened the following day. How the journey back was, how I failed to know enough French for our driver, how we got lost and scared in Marrakech square but this is a post about the trek and I would like to hold something back for my book.
Before I go I need to thank Charlie, Saaid, Omar, Ali and everyone else involved at Epic Morocco. If you want a once in a lifetime experience then please look them up here.
I am also indebted to Kai and Lucy. To paraphrase the words of Costner in Field of Dreams; if you hadn’t booked it, they wouldn’t have come.
It was thanks to an email from the pair of you in August 2012 when I was staring out the window and thinking of what I was missing out on that this all happened.
I would also like to thank everyone who donated towards The Prince’s Trust, and everyone from the Trust itself.
Thank you to Ben, John, Annabelle and Simon for lending me so much kit, even where I had to steal it.
Lastly thanks to Terri, Andreas, Jamie, Louise, Lucy, Jane, Hannah, Tom, Emily, Amy, Emma, Jess, Jo, Ian and Feyza.
What we went through could never be replicated and I will hold onto it forever.
Whilst on our Sahara Trek I did the best I could to capture my experience.
The video footage I shot has been collated into the following.
If you’re interested in obtaining any of the individual videos then please drop me an email.
Paul Schiernecker 