Jack: …after Chiang Mai and Pai I’m heading to India
Shannon: So, you’ve read Shantaram?
Jack: Urm, no…
Shannon: Well, you must. It’s wonderful.
Jack: Okay..?!
I bought it at the next opportunity; at Chiang Mai airport.

The story is written in the first person by a character called, variably, Mr Lynsey, Lin, Linbaba, or, eponymously, Shantaram. He is an Australian drug-addict and armed robber who has escaped from prison during a 20-year sentence, run to New Zealand and then headed to India with a fake passport. The story starts at his arrival at Bombay airport, as I was about to in around 18 hours time.

The truth behind the story remains to be seen, but is largely irrelevant. The author is clearly as in love with India as the protagonist of the story, and the passion oozes contagiously from the book from the outset. It is written in such a romantic and eloquent manner, and the story is told with such extremes intensity that it reads like a thriller and is almost impossible to put down. Not being a prolific reader myself, I’ve never been so enthralled for almost a thousand pages before in my life.

My favourite example of his incredible writing comes towards the end of the book. I won’t explain the turn of events that leads to this realisation for him, because you should read it.

You can’t kill love. You can’t even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and loveliness. You can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can’t kill love itself. Love is a passionate search for truth other than your own, and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever. Every act of love, every moment of the heart reaching out, is a part of the universal good: it’s a part of God, or what we call God, and it can never die.
- Gregory David Roberts. Shantaram.

Seriously, read it.

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I’ve decided to diversify. All this blog writing is weighing me down. It’s too much of a chore. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future at some point. But, anyway, in the meantime, I’m going to treat it a bit more like a scrapbook, rather than a travel diary. Some of it could be just like it has been, but some other things could just be ‘aide memoirs’ for when I write my beat selling autobiography at some point in the future.

So, I’m on Palolem beach in south Goa. It’s coming to the end of the season. They are already starting to dismantle some of the timber buildings in time for monsoon, which will start mid-May. The yoga instructors are packing up and heading home. The beers are at the seasonal price of 50 rupees (60p-ish) for a small bottle. Who’s complaining? India has been incredible so far. Amy and I have crammed in a huge amount of sight-seeing into the first 7 days and then just chilled out on the beach for the remainder. I’ll tell you more about that later. It’s been a while since I’ve written, so I’ll through some facts about the last few weeks, up to my arrival in India, and then things might get a bit more interesting.

Since my last post about Vietnam, Peter, Sarah, Keith and I got our plane from Hanoi to Bangkok and spent a couple of fairly uneventful nights there, with the exception of St Patricks Night on Khao San Road. Eye opener. I then headed north to Chiang Mai, they headed south to Koh Tao.

The journey on the night train to Chiang Mai was good fun. I say opposite a Canadian woman called Shannon who actually lived there. She was a hardcore traveller, and she suggested reading a book called Shantaram before I headed to India, a book I have just finished reading, in fact. I’m now on Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”, another book set in India.

Once off the train, I teamed up with my carriage mates, Jamie and Sonja, and later Rob & Alex, Jeff and Matt & Natalia. We would happen to spend the next week or so together, between Chiang Mai and, the very highly recommended by every backpacker in South East Asia, Pai.

Our first day in Pai was spent getting to know each other, eating and plenty of drinking, at Freedom Bar: the obligatory reggae bar. The next day, Rob & Alex and Matt & Natalia headed to Pai. Jeff, Jamie and I hired bicycles and toured the ancient ruins of Chiang Mai, the walled city, surrounded by a moat, and took in the sights. Later that night, with our new friend Jimmy (yes, Jamie, Jimmy, Jeff and Jack) we headed out to see some Muay Thai (kickboxing), which was awesome. Particularly when we got ringside seats for the last match, which unfortunately lasted less than a minute, and were then able to get in the ring and practice our wrestling moves on one another.

Then we headed up to Pai, 6 hours on a minibus up into the mountains. All of us almost threw up. Jamie actually did.

We met up with Rob, Alex, Matt and Natalia and checked into the same bungalows as them, across a rickety bamboo bridge from the main town.

We later found out that the woman running the hostel, Nat, had given Waitrose the recipe for their green curry paste. As you can guess, the food was incredible. I was just pleased that this was happening at the end of my trip around South East Asia, as I think anything else I ate would have been a serious disappointment in comparison! By a long way, the highlight was her chicken Masoman. I thought I’d had a good Masoman before. How wrong I was!

Pai was incredible fun. All the bars are set around fire pits and sitting in circles chatting with other backpackers and strangers is the order of every night. There aren’t really any night clubs as such, which is no problem for me at all.

The days are very warm, 30°c or so, and then the nights get quite cold. Which is a nice difference to Bangkok where even the nights are too hot and sticky.

One day, we all hired scooters and, after a quick stop off at the (very) hot springs, we tried to find the only flowing waterfalls, some 57km away.

We’d driven a good 70km through some of the most incredible landscapes any of us had ever seen, before we decided to head back and catch sunset at ‘The Canyon’. A sunset that went straight into my Top 10 Sunsets Of All Time instantly. (What? You don’t have a Top 10 Sunsets Of All Time? Get a grip!)

Pai was a lot of fun, and I spent my time there with some awesome people. Jeff, a semi-pro cyclist and the nearest thing to James Bond Canada will ever have, Jamie, one of the most knowledgable film buffs I’ve ever met, Rob & Alex, with identical music taste to me, and Nat & Matt, who live on a barge! Amazing, amazing people!

I headed back to Chiang Mai alone, and then caught a domestic flight back into Bangkok airport for a 9 hour stop over before my 6-hour flight to Sri Lanka, followed by a 3-hour flight to Mumbai. I bought Shantaram at Chiang Mai airport and began devouring it straight away. You’ll hear more about that I’m sure. The excitement levels for India went through the roof!

And then it was over. 3 months in South East Asia;

Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur, Cameron Highlands, Pulau Pangkor, Borneo Sandakan, Senporna, Kota Kinabalu.
Indonesia: Bali, Gili Trawangan.
Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur, Penang.
Thailand: Koh Tao, Koh Chang.
Vietnam: Saigon, Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hue, Hanoi, Halong Bay.
Thailand: Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pai.

What fun.

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