‘œAnd again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy.’ – John Steinbeck
The water in the emerald paddy fields glints as I walk. A confetti of butterflies flutters in the air. The roadside palms are painted in black and white checks. I enter a village with music blaring from speakers rigged on bamboo poles. I always like places that play music out loud (it’™s quite common in parts of Eastern Europe, China and Latin America), even in the countries where it’™s done with Orwellian undertones.
This feels like a happy town, a happy morning, except, I guess, for the goat who is about to be butchered on the roadside. I stop to watch. The knife is sharp and swift and one elegant slice ends the goat. How fragile, life! So very easy to die. So final. Is this a beautiful, musical morning to die? Or so beautiful and musical that the thought of death feels too sad to bear?
The goat is dead. It lies in the dust. There is very little blood. The butcher works swiftly, turning the animal into joints of meat. His customers wait patiently. I am fascinated by the neat and tidy compartments of organs inside the goat that had, until moments before, been working magically well.
*
Morning on the road is about the satisfaction of committing to action. Of being in motion and not yet demoralised or tired. The nerves have passed. It’™s a positive time of day. Everything is still fresh. It is up to me to fill this day. I picture what I would be doing back home and what my friends might be doing right now. I’m™m glad to be out here (as opposed to later in the day when I’m™m longing for home and an easy life).
I am rarely without company. People always want to talk to me, to find out about this strange Englishman walking briefly through their lives. I walk from one identical conversation to the next. Why don’™t you take a bus? Do you know Freddy Flintoff? Every day I see children playing cricket in the fields, the pitch scratched out on a patch of flat earth. They are always delighted if I stop to join their game.
‘œEngland against India!’ I declare as the boys squabble over who will bowl at me first.
I am still cheerful and energetic enough to greet everyone I pass. I always say ‘œgood morning’ to children in English, as I know they have learned at least this much in school. They might as well put it into practise for the first, and perhaps only, time in their life. A conversation usually follows that is identical across the non-English-speaking world.
Me: ‘œGood morning.’
Child: ‘œGood morning.’
Me: ‘œHow are you?’
Child: ‘œI am fine.’
Me: ‘œI am fine too. Goodbye.’
Child: ‘œGoodbye.’
I walk on, followed by giggles and incredulous gasps.
*
I pause at a water pump and wash my hands and face. I clank the long metal handle and dunk my head beneath the gushing burst of water. The day’™s heat is beginning to build and I shiver at the delicious coldness of the water. The water runs down my face and neck, wetting my clothes. The sun will bake them dry again only too soon. I fill my broad-brimmed hat with water and up-end it on my head. I fill my bottles with enough water to get me to the next village and walk on.
Rooks caw and swirl above me. A funeral is taking place. The whole road from the home to the burial site, shaded beneath three gnarled trees, is strewn with yellow, orange and pink flowers.
‘œFuneral processions clatter
Down streets with drums and rose-petals,
Dancing death into deafness.’
The task now is simple: blast out as many miles as I can manage before it gets too hot. I am earning my lunch break. The river teases me, tempting me to swim. But a combination of crocodiles, pollution and my impatient obsession with ticking off miles dissuades me. I snatch occasional respite in scraps of shade. After a few more hours I am beginning to suffer.
The first negative thoughts creep in. I miss home. I feel a hint of annoyance that every vehicle or moped beeps at me, even on these rural lanes. That every time I pause a cluster gathers to stare and snigger and ask the same questions I’m™ve been asked a million times before. I ask why I’m™m putting myself through this, a question I’m™ve asked myself a million times before.
It feels like a taking up of the strain, a satisfying stiffening of the challenge, like cranking up the treadmill pace a notch or two. The exercise in masochistic suffering has begun.
Love this. “I have no idea what time it is, but I slept so early that I feel fresh even though the sun has not yet risen” The joy of being on the road with no rhythm to follow except your own.
[…] I was inspired by a recent blog post by Alastair Humphreys, a really great adventurer (what a job title), called “Morning”. In the post Humphreys describes the feeling of getting up in the morning when you’re on an adventure. The article is beautifully written and it struck me how only one word can conjure up so many thoughts, associations and feelings. (Read it here: https://alastairhumphreys.com/morning-2/) […]
It’s interesting how we go away from our “at home” routine to set another one while on trips. Guess we are going for efficiency even in the most stress-free environment. You have all my admiration mate.
Morning. This is sometimes a mixed experience. I don’t always sleep that well on the ground in a tent and sleeping bag. I tend to toss and turn a bit. I sleep, but not well. However—on my last sub 24 ON, I had ridden to a place I’d camped at quite a few years before, and set up my meager camping equipment just as the sun was going down (hoping, in that way, that if anyone else was around, that they would be heading back to their cars or campsites as it grew dark).
Then I lit my stove and boiled water for supper. After that—well, I mainly sat in silence and watched as the sky grew darker and darker, and the stars began showing up.
I didn’t have a camp fire that night (too windy near the tall dry grass). But that made the place I stayed at all the more private and stealthy! Then, after a while, tired from the ride in, I crawled into my one man tent and fell asleep with the sleeping bag acting as a quilt, instead of getting inside of it.
At sometime around 5:30 in the morning, I woke to hear the faint sound of thunder. I could see faint flashes of lighting, too. When I got up and sleepily staggered out of the tent, I stood looking around, bleary-eyed and with a serious case of “bed-head” hair, the eastern sky, though still dark, was dominated by the planetary conjunction on Jupiter and Venus (with Mercury barely above the horizon)! The deep, deep cerulean blue, contrasting with those pin-pricks of intense white light began waking me up. The breeze, though neither cold, nor overly warm, also helped wake me up.
I stood there outside the tent for some time just watching, just listening. The thunder I’d heard while still inside my tent was coming from a mass of huge thunderheads further north of where I was, and as the sun rose higher, those towering clouds were lit up like atomic bombs exploding, and that was when I was truly glad I’d tossed and turned more than slept—in order to have seen these sights that, had I been in my house, I would never have seen.
But even with that, every time I think about going out again (which I do) there is still that strange inertia, that curious reluctance to face the discomforts, the sleeplessness, the staggering-away-from-the-tent-in-order-to-pee-in-the-pre-dawn-wobbliness. So, each excursion is therefore a defiance of that inertia! As we get older, that inertia becomes easier to submit to.
And then, there is that comforting ritual of packing and repacking the minimal gear required—which I find enjoyable in seeing just how few items are really needed! As each item goes back into it’s particular spot, and then the next, and the next, I’m soon looking around myself at the tiny spot left where I’d slept, and realizing how spare my “comforts” had been, and yet how adequate they had been after all.
I’d done it! I’d escaped from the mental ‘gravity well’ of my previous inertial state! Riding away, still slightly tired sure, I am glad I took the time to do something like that, and vowing I’d do so again, and again, and…
[…] Alastair Humphreys @ alastairhumphreys.com – This is not so much of a routine, and yet, when you travel or go on a lot of adventures, mornings look a bit different. This fit for its simplicity and its clear focus. […]