1. In March of this year I was privy to certain communications divulging that the escritoire once owned by the Danish scholar Victor Emerita, famous for his literary collaborations with Søren Kierkegaard, was to make a rare appearance at private auction. It seemed that the Danish government was looking to fund a series of tax cuts, and was in the process of selling off a number of cultural artefacts from its public collections. The state had already been criticised for cutting 11 million of funding to literary projects: there is concern over a growing budget deficit, an ageing population, and a declining work force.

2. In photographs, I saw the escritoire still bears traces of damage on its right hand side sustained when Emerita, impatient to retrieve his pocket-book from a locked drawer whilst a carriage waited for him outside, forced it open in a fit of anger (a temper one can hardly credit him with). The accident was fortuitous one: it revealed the hidden stash of anonymous documents which, together with Kierkegaard, he would collate and publish under the title Either/Or. The two anonymous authors of these documents discussed their apparently opposed views on whether the world should be approached as sensual ephemera or an ethical problem. Their identity has never been established.

3. My contact was a Mr Vilhelm, an auction administrator who had access to a wealth of contacts and had kindly arranged accommodation in the old seaport of Køge, to the southwest of Copenhagen. The town has cobbled roads, ancient half-timber houses, a large market square and the staggered redbrick towers of Lutheran churches. In the past it experienced witch trials.

4. My hosts the Gotthausens – personal friends of Vilhelm – served pork loin and crackling. The dusk was long, cool, and light. Celebrating Easter, the Gotthausen children ran in circles and played computer games. The Danneborg is one of the oldest continually used flags in the world, and it is not uncommon to see it languishing on masts in suburban gardens – or rather a stretched, ribbon iteration. It is considered unpatriotic to leave the full-size Danneborg flying at night, and this modification circumvents that transgression. “Nations are an aesthetic idea, like race”, Vilhelm had told me. “As such they can be interpreted like works of art, but with real and dangerous consequences.” The right wing anti-immigration Danske Folkeparti – The Danish People’s Party – has one of the largest parliamentary majorities in Europe, and holds the balance of power in the Danish government.

There is a beautiful birch forest outside Køge. My visit coincided with the pale spring blossom of anemones which rested on the forest grass like a fall of sawdust. They glimmered against the eye while the slender birch trees carried on their repetition drama into the dark distance.

5. Vilhelm suggested we meet the next day in the troubled ‘Freetown’ of Christiania in Copenhagen. He was a man of slender build, and arrived late and short of breath. The district is constructed along the perimeter of a defensive moat dating from the 17th century, and throughout the 80s and 90s enjoyed a large degree of autonomy from the state. Devised as a ‘pioneer’ settlement, it is home to disaffected individuals wishing to emphasise their personal freedom, although how far this freedom went beyond smoking marijuana was unclear. Christiania was intended to be self-sufficient, however there is no evidence of cultivated crops, and electricity and gas is piped in from the city. There are inventive self-build houses erected by the idyllic waterside painted with the appropriate signs and colours of ‘counterculture’. It was bucolic and peaceful in the insistent warmth of the sun. “With its secessionary committee and its prohibitions and its wary town-folk,” said Vilhelm, “Christiania could be the kind of idealised township envisioned by the likes of the Danish People’s Party”.

6. At that moment Wilhelm walked ahead to receive a telephone call in private. When he returned he was sombre faced. The auction house was holding a closed viewing of the escritoire and it would therefore be impossible to examine it that afternoon.

7. I took advantage of this unexpected freedom to explore Copenhagen’s art world. As it happened I had an acquaintance in the city I had not seen for many years. I studied a Bachelors in Fine Art alongside David Risley, and some time afterwards he had opened a gallery in London where he had once exhibited paintings by our former tutor Michael Simpson. Now he had relocated to Copenhagen and opened a gallery in the Bredgade district. The city “punched above its weight”, said David, and this was apparent in the wealth of galleries located throughout the city. In the Overgaden, Sonja Lillebaek Christensen’s photographs and films asked us to imagine a continuum between “a shipwrecked Portuguese sailor, a fictional crime scene and a sampled male universe with roaring truck engines and heavy metal”. Leif Kath at the Weinberger showed modest abstractions whose off-kilter geometries both obscured and revealed deeper ones. Gerold Miller’s paintings at Martin Asbaek were slick interior fittings troubled by painterly illusion. “Painters must make ethical decisions when they represent the world,” I could hear Vilhelm saying.

8. We met the next day outside the house where the physicist Niels Bohr was born, at 14 Ved Stranden, a giant mansion overlooking the Danish parliament. Vilhelm was as ever somewhat preoccupied.

Bohr had shown how electrons migrate from high orbits to lower ones around a nucleus, releasing energy as they do so. The physicist, who was Jewish, had been instrumental in assisting the evacuation of Jews from occupied Denmark – one of the largest evacuations from any country during the war.

“The Danes”, said Vilhelm, “have a long history of contribution to the sciences”. It was the accuracy of Tycho Brahe’s observations that lead Johannes Kepler to see planetary orbits as elliptical rather than circular – a blasphemy to his own Platonic idealism. “It is a mistake,” said Vilhelm, “to see Science and the Church as historically antagonistic. The old Round Tower in Copenhagen’s centre – one of the first modern Observatories, was built as part of a church complex and library. Medieval Islamic scholars guaranteed the passage of Greek scientific thinking to Renaissance Europe”. Visibly excited, he said that the Moon landings were like the construction of the Pyramids of Giza: fantastic perversions only possible with “heavy doses of the irrational and ideological”. As such they were the ultimate “aesthetic projects”. I was not altogether sure what Vilhelm meant by this.

9. We ascended the corkscrewing gangway of the Round Tower. Halfway up an upper level of the adjoining church had been converted into a gallery space where a minor exhibition was underway. The artist had placed photographs of deceased acquaintances on music stands.

10. Vilhelm left it until the end of that day, a hot and bothersome sun on his face, to tell me that the escritoire had been sold to a private collector in the Middle East. I looked at him for some moments. How long had he known of this, I asked frankly. “Since before you arrived,” he replied, equally forthright. He shook my hand firmly and walked away.

11. I was obliged to spend my last night in Copenhagen in a dreary hotel room overlooking the giant and odorous Carlsberg factory. Vapour from its funnels was beard-white, and rose endlessly. The beverage – originally described by Orson Welles as “probably the best lager in the world” – has greater brand recognition than sales, so the company are ‘repositioning’ the brand. It was the Carlsberg Foundation, which still holds a fifty percent stake in the brewery, that was responsible for funding the Institute of Theoretical Physics where Niels Bohr worked as director. The luminous glow from the giant Carlsberg signage outside my window was brighter than moonlight, and more permanent.

12. I returned to London the following afternoon much chagrined. I was sad to say goodbye to my hosts – the worthy Gotthausens – but I submit this letter in the hope that further fraudulent correspondence with the suspect Mr Vilhelm may be avoided.

“A pint a-Carling yeah and whatever you’re havin’,” a white-spit mouth, mine, chums out familiar to the bar girl. I’m pointing at the tap and reaching my hand out as it pours, my fingers snatching at the half-filled glass. I can’t wait around. We’re in La Paz for 3 days. I’m counting pints in my head. We have to fit it all in somehow. I just been ridin’ down the World’s Most Dangerous Road on a borrowed mountain bike and I need a pint of England’s finest to savour the moment. Yeah I know. Top Gear did it in jeeps, the legends.

A gulp on the frosty pint. “Put on some fuckin’ Oasis” I shout at no one in particular.

“What else is there to do round ‘ere?” I ask the maid, some English nectar dribbling down and out the side of my mouth onto the corners of the St. George’s flag draped round my Aquascutum shoulders. England tastes good cold.

“Well,” she says, a sneer and a sip on the bottle of Inca Kola I just paid for, “you could head down to the San Pedro prison.”

“Yeah? What’s all that then? I don’t need to come all the way to Bolivia to see the nick.” These foreign birds love the cockney chat. Learnt some off the Internet before I flew ere. Desk job at Foxton’s funds me handsomely.

Her eyes roll back white before pulling up the tap and this thick black book from under the counter, pages all dog-eared like Chav, my bitch Staff I’ve left back home. “All in this book, Marching Powder. But you go down there and see it for yourself. There no other prison like it. I know a guy can get you in. I’ll call him if you want.” She walks off to serve some tanned flip-flop Aussie cunt.

I look at it. Books. I ain’t got no need books. Only book I need is the Lonely Planet. Gap year don’t finish ‘til September. Cambridge mugs better be ready.

I turn the black book over in my hands: “By Rusty Young”. Sounds amusin’ enough. This prison gaffe might be worth a shit.

“Oi you. Yeah, make that call. I’ll get the lads.”

“Too late today. Have to be tomorrow if you still want go.”

“What? A day?” Bolivian mugs. “Yeah alright. Tomorrow’s fine.” I lift my empty and show it to her, adding a belch for effect. Foreign birds love that. “Another Carling, ta.”

Morning. My mobile’s alarm is going off. Max and Paddy: “Wake up, fat slob. Wake up, fat slob.” £4.50 well spent that was. Funny though innit, a gram of Bolivian white set me back about the same last night. And the night before. Off my tits I was. Whoever’s churning out that gak must be loaded.

“Turn that shit off”, a voice from a top bunk in the 12-bed dorm.

“Your mum.”

“Nick, turn it off.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get your shit together lads, we’re off.” We bowl out of there looking for that bar girl.

“Turn the light off!”

We keep walking. “Fuck ‘em.”

We hit the bar and it’s two o’clock. We get a couple rounds in before she turns up. She gives us the time we have to be at the gates and makes another call to her contact for us, speaking colonial gibberish into her phone. She tells us it’s sorted, gives us the number for Kenneth and says that we should go now if we want to get in. Her broken English just about doin the trick. Will and Mickey, nursing their bottles of Cusqueña (foreign muck), quickly down them before we leave. I take my Carling with.

“You not comin’ along, darlin’?”

“Yeah, no thanks.” She walks off into the back room. We watch her leave.

We get in a cab and show the driver a piece of paper. Mickey bolt upright starts saying: “San Pedro prison, yeah?”

Drives eyes us and says: “San Pedro. Si.” Catching sight of my pint he speaks louder this time, turning in his seat: “No beber aqui. No beber aqui.”

“Yeah mate no baby a key. No worries mate.” Fuckin mug.

“Come on, Drives.” Will is pointing at the road through the windshield and mime-steers an invisible wheel then points at the potholed tarmac again. The cab driver sighs. “No hay dos sin tres,” he says as we roll out, looking into the rear-view at us: “Gringos.” I ain’t got a clue what he’s on about.

“Yeah mate. Gringo Starr,” Mickey.

“Bit stroppy this one, ain’t he?” I polish off the pint, some of it dribbling down the side of my face and onto the knot of the St. George’s flag round my Ben Sherman, tightening it around my throat.

We pay off Drives and get out in a lively part of town. A few beggars are in the square in front of the prison, lying in the sun. I light a cigarette, take a few puffs and drop it on the floor. One of the tramps comes up to me, gesturing an imaginary smoke at his lips and asks for one with his hands out saying “English? English?”

“Yeah mate.” I hand him the glass and we walk off laughing. The wind blows the corners of the flag into Will’s face. We call the number we’ve been given for Kenneth, the man who sorts the tours. He’s already there. No need to waste my credit.

“You ready to go in?” Kenneth is wearing sunglasses, can’t see his eyes.

“Yeah, how much is it, Ken?” Will is reaching for his wallet, drops some coins on the pavement and turns to see the beggar coming back moaning something with his hands out. The flag licks at his hair. Will picks most of them up and puts them back in his wallet, spinning away from the tramp. He kicks the rest into the gutter with the sides of his plimsolls.

“250 Bolivianos,” says Ken.

“Done.” We hand over the money and wait while he counts it. I light another cigarette take a couple puffs and drop it under my Reeboks and squash it, looking at the beggar and smiling.

Ken starts to walk off, “Vamonos”.

We go through these old maroon double doors streaked with blue, “They must be Hammers,” I says. Inside there’s a metal grill with a desk in front of it. Ken walks back out the door after a few words with the black Guard. Through the gridiron we see life within, prisoners and children. Will and Mickey start emptying their pockets for the guard pretty sharpish so I do the same, looking into the concrete courtyard of the jail and seeing the kids run up and down, middle-aged men round the edges sat under a hoop. The guard searches Will and Mickey then they put their stuff back in their pockets. The guard looks at my digital camera and wags his finger putting it in a wooden box and locking it. “Later”, he says.

He tells me to raise my arms for frisking by lifting his slightly. He goes to patting me down quick without really searching. Keeping up appearances. He misses the mobile in my pocket but handles the red and white cape on my back and tries to yank it off over my head. “Later”, I say, winking at Mickey. He keeps pulling at it over my head so I let him, then fold it up neat and tidy before handing it over. He stamps our hands and nudges us through the gate in the middle of the iron fence where this white South African inmate, Daniel, leads us to a tight spiral staircase going up to a hatch in the corner of the yard. Behind us I hear the word “Gringo” again and laughter.

Finding it a bit of a chore, I’m the last to climb through the hatch and the last to see the room of t-shirt boys sitting silent round a table. We take our pews at the patio table. I’m looking around and sniffing the loose snot up my runny nose, all the oily glitter of £4.50 sucked back up for a second wind. There’s a grey haired bloke standing over us with an accent I can’t pin down:

“Welcome. This is, as I’m sure you already know, San Pedro Prison. I’m Cisco, I’ve been in here for two years and I’ll be your gracious host for today.” He sits down on his double bed. “What we’re going to do is break you up into smaller groups so you can do the tour with whoever you came with. Daniel will take the first group down and show you around. You other boys will wait here with me…” His scrawny smacked up girlfriend with a running video camera takes a shuffled step forward from the side of the bed. He turns and smiles at her, “… and my girlfriend, Julieta. I’ll answer any more questions you have when you come back. And we’ll discuss the tip then.”

The first group fucks off quietly. They’re Dutch or something. They walk off speaking gibberish to each other.

It goes quiet. “Now, you boys. Where you from?”

“England, mate.” Will looks uncomfortable when he says it. I narrow my eyes at his weakness. Reminds me of Tyndall.

“London?”

“Yeah, mate” I say.

“Alright, mite.” This Cisco guy’s a bit of a joker. “What did you come here for?”

“Some bird told us about it, said we might wanna check it out.”

“So you know what goes on in here.”

“Not really.”

“This is a prison.” No shit. I keep schtum though. Don’t trust his long hair and scarred cheeks. “The prisoners run this place on the inside. The guards we pay off to let in tourists and people like you. It’s a democracy in here, we make our own decisions. We have committees and a forum on Tuesdays. Any problems, we sort them out ourselves. It is our little island.” He looks down at his hands then back up, “So, what about drugs, you tried our drugs over here?”

“Yeah a little bit, mate.” I sniff the snot again. “We tried a bit.”

“You like?”

We nod at him.

“You wanna try some of ours? We make it in here ourselves. The purest of the pure. Uncut.”

“How much?”

“50 for a gram. 25 for a half.”

“Yeah go on then.” I look at the other two, they start getting their money out. Cisco’s bird still has her camera on us.

“Don’t worry about her. We’re just filming for fun.”

“Yeah no worries mate. Don’t wanna see this on YouTube though yeah.” I don’t smile.

“Don’t worry about that. You know Brad Pitt is making a movie about us?” He smiles.

“Yeah?” We put the money on the table. “How many grams did he have?”

Cisco ignores the banter and hands Julieta the notes, who gets some wraps out of a black bin bag.

“We do it in here or what?”

“Yes, in here. Don’t worry about the guards. Just finish it all before you leave. You can’t take anything with you. You might have problems with the guards and end up in here.”

“No problem mate.”

“Here, use this.” He hands over a thick black book. Marching Powder again.

I loosen the wrap and tap out a trail, rack it up and pass the book to Mickey when I’m done. He does likewise.

“So, what you in here for?” Mickey makes small as he chops.

“Drugs.” He says. “Most of us in the foreign section are in here for drugs. Some of us innocent. But there is nothing we can do about our situation here apart from get on with it and wait. Drugs make money for us, yes, but in the end it is all shit because there is no other way to live in these conditions. We have some serious addicts in here. But when I’ve done my time, I’m out of drugs forever.” The book comes back to me and I rack another thick one. I hand it along again. I look at Will and Mickey and they’re both tense, chopping up and sucking it in. “Happy days,” Will says.

“What about weed, you like weed? 30 for a spliff. Good stuff.”

“Yeah, you got a drink though?”

“Beer or soft drink?”

“Beer if you got it.”

“Sure, 10 bolivianos.”

There’s the exchange of money and beer.

“So, how’d you get busted?” Will asks.

“Trafficking coke is a dangerous business.”

“Yeah? You always been doin that?”

“No, I used to be in the military.”

“Bolivian?”

“No, Argentina.”

“Falklands, yeah?” Cisco goes quiet. Touched a nerve. St. George safely wrapped up in his box downstairs.

“Get him his beer.” Julieta pushes the bottle across the table looking at me. Doesn’t smile much this one.

“This is fucking mental, mate”. Mickey looks up at me before he huffs another.

“Is there a toilet in here, blud?” Will looks around as he speaks. Cisco points behind him to a cupboard.

“It’s in there,” he says.

“Cheers, mate.” Will goes over and slides the door across and revealing a cramped shitter.

Two more guys come up the hatch with Angelo, a Dutch inmate. Black. “Two more Gringos,” he says looking at us before climbing down the stairs.

Me: “Alright lads?”

Them: “Yeah not bad.”

“Where you from?” Mickey puts the book down, his wrap half done.

“England.”

“Two more Brits”, Cisco.

“How about yourselves?” One of them asks, taking a seat. A fuzzy-lookin Chinese lad he is.

“Norf London, mate.” I say with usual charm. “Wait. Aren’t you in our hostel?”

“Not sure. We’re at the Wild Rover,” one of them says.

“Yeah that’s us,” says Mickey.

“You’re not the guy with that shit alarm, are you?”

“Nah mate. It ain’t shit.”

Will comes back from the bog straightening out his Evisu’s: “How do lads.”

This bloke Angelo sticks his head out of the hatch and says: “Ready?” We wrap up the rest of our gear and stuff it in our pockets. The Dutchies come back and I hear Cisco quizzing them about coke and how much they want. “See you soon,” he shouts as we’re slipping down the spiral, “Hopefully no one fucks you while you’re out there”.

Angelo laughs, looking at me: “Yeah then we’ll have to charge you!”

“Yeah, not funny mate.”

Angelo walks ahead of us and we’re looking at these Bolivians lounging around the courtyard in the sun. They mostly sit in the shade, chatting gibberish at each other.

“It’s not gibberish, it’s Spanish.” Angelo says looking at me and Will. “You speak only English, yeah?”

“Course, mate. Only language I need.”

Angelo skips ahead and starts speaking with the two lads from the hostel, “Right, so this is the courtyard, over there we have a basketball court, this is an open area where people hang out.” They are drinking cola ignoring us and killing time.

“Out here people sit and talk, play games, whatever. There are men who live here with their families so there are women and children too.” I look a kid in the eye and he looks happy to see me.

“The women cannot afford to live without their husbands so have to live inside. Of course the young children see some of the violence but that cannot be stopped. The violence would probably be much worse without them. Plus there are no guards in here, which keeps everyone a little happier. Then there’s the kitchen, a restaurant too over there where you can get food and drinks. Up there are some of the rooms. We’ll go up there later. If you are rich, or have a job in here to work for one, you can get your own room, like Cisco. He is one of the richest. Commands a lot of respect around here. Money makes the power. Like your democracy back home, right?”

I don’t get what he’s on about. But the other two lads smile and keep walking, not saying anything. The inmates look at us and greet us. When we get around the corner we go into a corridor with some cells along the wall. “These are some of the rooms where people share together. At the end here, is solitary confinement.”

I hear a shout: “Chino. Ey Chino!” This guy sitting in solitary, one of two in there actually, is lying on his bunk looking out a small opening, shouting at the Chinese lad. Chino ignores it.

“This is solitary?” Chino’s mate says. I hear him being called ‘Uno’.

“This isn’t a regular prison,” Angelo says. Will and Mickey rub their noses. “Right, in there’s the chapel if you want to have a look.” Uno and Chino poke their heads in and come back out.

“Nice is it?” Mickey asks from outside.

“Small”.

“So now let’s go upstairs.” Angelo leads and we go up a flight of stairs and look down on the scattered inmates in the courtyard. “Come in”. There’s a bloke standing in the room and he’s got these pictures in his hands.

“This man sells cards of Saint Peter and asks for a small donation if you want one.” We look at them, little holograms of a man with a beard and a halo looking up at something.

“Quite religious, aren’t they” I say to Will handing back the card. “You’re alright, mate.” Uno and Chino give the guy some notes.

“Let’s go upstairs.” The steps go up to the attic. There’s a wide skylight and far away outside there are snowy mountains.

“You can see the Andes from here. I come up here a lot to look out. Some people have tried to escape over this wall here.” It’s a big drop with craters and overloaded bins for a safe landing. Angelo shuts the skylight again and the view of the mountains disappears behind the dirty window. The noise from outside silenced.

“That’s pretty much the tour.” We turn to leave. Coke bars and beers waiting.

“But now I ask you gentlemen for a donation. A tip.” I look at Will and Mickey who are looking at the floor. “I’m in here but I’m innocent. I got put in prison because I took the rap for my girlfriend. She was pregnant. We are from Holland and I couldn’t let her go in prison. It is rough here. So I took the drugs she had and now I’m in here.” Coke bars fill with backpackers. “So I ask for just a little donation.” We’ve been cornered.

Uno and Chino do the honours. I ignore the heartfelt speech and start to make my way toward the steps again and ask where I can get a beer. “Cisco will give you one,” Angelo says.

“If someone else doesn’t first,” Uno says. Chino likes that one.

We go back to Cisco up through the hatch and sit with a few beers and the shift the rest of the gak skyward. We laugh and shoot the shit with Cisco, tell a few stories and chat to the quiet Dutchies. We’re the only ones laughing.

“Did you give Angelo a tip?” Cisco asks.

“Yeah mate. Plenty.”

“So now I ask you for mine.”

Cornered again. Swindle. I take out some coins and put them on the table, on top of Will and Mickey’s notes and pass it over. “Cheers yeah, Cisco. Take it easy.”

He says nothing. I run my finger over Marching Powder and rub my gums. Books ain’t so useless. We go down the spiral and get back to the gate.

“Later Angelo,” we shout. He doesn’t hear.

We step through to the other side of the gate and I get my digital camera from the box. I unfold the glory of St. George and lift it. I put it back over my head where it rests round my neck and we go out the West Ham doors. The cigarettes from the pavement, gone. The coins still reflecting a dull sun in the gutter.

The square is quiet. Shit engines chuck out fumes as they pass. I light another fag: “It’s the last night lads. Let’s get mashed. Route 36.”

I throw the unfinished cigarette and we walk off as my St. George chokes me to death in the breeze.

“Take it out of the bag,” one of them whispers, as a small mountain of Bolivian marching powder unfolds from the wrap. Forming peaks where it piles on the surface, the small patch of black bin liner is emptied into the soft light of the room. The backpackers lean in, pushing pure uncut white to and fro with an out-of-date health insurance card from some place far, far behind them now. Racked up with two fat lines, sat side-by-side along the blackened edges of a bootlegged copy of Appetite For Destruction, some stranger nearby leans in and assuredly urges: “Don’t use the straw, use this.” He hands over a softened and tightly rolled 10 Boliviano note. The newcomers eye their bounty and savour a last breath. They then begin judiciously disappearing it up their snouts, chattering and grunting between disjointed monologues that they might later call conversation.

It’s not surprising that with a flick through the guidebooks one soon realises the nightlife of La Paz isn’t for reading or researching, but for devouring – with one’s eyes, ears and, for some of the travelling crowd, their noses. This fact only hits you once you’ve arrived and, like any place worthwhile, what you find can’t be written up in a tourist handbook.

The buses ride in on La Paz’s vertigo high roads that encircle the valley metropolis of Bolivia’s capital, which sits pretty at 3,660 meters above sea-level, making it the highest capital city in the world. I’m in a crowded bus, heading for a hostel in the city’s centre. As we wind in from the mountain ranges, we’re afforded a final opportunity to peer down on the rabble below – because once we get amongst it, we won’t be getting any of the peace that the name La Paz suggests.

It’s getting late when I check in to the hostel. Upstairs in the bar, things are already heating up. I join a ragtag group of stragglers, all heavy from a night of drinking and trading coin in sporadic games of Texas Hold ‘Em. We’re told of a place called Julia’s, named for its sexagenarian ex-prostitute owner, which is apparently not favoured amongst backpackers due to its grimy interiors and knife-loving regulars. Not to mention the inelegant prospect of witnessing Julia inhaling savage charges of powder before indulging in a reminiscent rub up on some vagrant’s unzipped lap.

Incorrectly labelled the world’s first cocaine lounge, Route 36 is nonetheless one of the few lounges that exists in La Paz. Travellers opt for its relaxed atmosphere and welcoming attitude, and that night so does the hostel crew. A couple of more silent types from the other end of the room enrol when they hear the word circulate. We band together, and exit out of the bar’s warm confines to hail cabs. There are eight of us, but as we peer back and forth along the street there’s not a vehicle in sight.

We wait for a while until finally two short-skirted receptionists from the hostel offer us a lift. They have the contact, for Route 36 anyway. The location of the bar certainly isn’t common knowledge, and for good reason. Though it remains a poorly kept secret our eager escorts make the call to get us on our way. The first girl leads us to her car, half-mounted on the pavement at the side of the street. “We can’t take too many at once,” she says, “They don’t usually like that – it alarms the neighbours.”

Part of the group stays behind. The rest of us jump in the cramped hatchback, rowdy and curious, but by the time we arrive we’ve turned solemnly introverted, contemplating what the night has planned for us.

Suddenly Quincey, one of the fresh faced near-mutes, pipes up and offers, “What if it’s a full-on crack den? What if it’s all used syringes and withered bodies hanging from the walls?”

“Don’t worry,” one of the receptionists replies, turning from the front seat, “it’s more like a cosy little house – not so well lit but warm, with loads of backpackers.” The word ‘backpackers’ conjures a familiar scene, and this is a comfort at least, but our paranoia is hard to shake. The possibility of finding ourselves stranded in bandit country is all too real.

Dropped in some nondescript street in an unthreatening residential area, we pay the cabby and get out in silence, walking across the road. No one says a thing. We step up to a large steel gate, leaving it to our receptionist to knock. Apparently they prefer girls.

We wait. Nothing happens. Knock again. We listen to the metal shake in the crisp air. Someone makes a phone call. Slowly, an invisible door opens and the post-box slides across to reveal a pair of suspicious eyes. They look us up and down in a vague, uncaring way. We hear the other side of the gate unlock as the eyes disappear. But we’re still worried. We’re not in yet.

“What do you want?”

“We’re looking for Marco,” one of the girls says.

Pause. A quick look around.

“Come in.”

We get the nod. We’re nearly there. Walking through to a blue-lit corridor we enter stage left. The music seeps through to the hall as we track inside. At the entrance a middle-aged couple are chatting around what appears to be the front desk. Before them sits a table of unlit candles and ashtrays, alongside a glass full of chipped straws and a pile of pirated CD cases. It all looks extremely improvised.

“Do we take these now?” someone says, pointing to the CDs and straws.

“No, it’s okay, just come on through.”

The faces at the desk smile furtively, and we reply with an awkward nod, as they make us immediately conscious of where we are. We go through to the ground floor of an open plan house with all the appliances taken out. A selection of coffee tables and large, gray sofas has been put in their place. We soak in the action. Finding it hard to shake the surreal surroundings, we take some seats at an empty table close-by to another, where youthful faces plunge their heads into the dusted table. Conversation stagnates.

We’re greeted with an “All right lads?” from the only busy table in the room. The music stops. Everyone smiles through the silence. The room is dimly lit by muted disco lights and floor lamps, with national flags adorning the walls. They are black with marker pen, displaying messages like “Steve-o on tour”, “Gary loves boys” and our personal favourite: “REALITY WAITS” – just a flavour of what amount of brain cells have been left behind on these sofas.

At first it strikes us that the place is quite small. It’s 2am, but the few people here are really getting stuck into it. “It’s early yet, there’ll be more when the clubs shut,” someone sitting close by reassures us. Conversation, if you can call it that, drives out from between all the chattering teeth. Sentences are blurred in an unbreakable wall of voice, slurring and jittery. People sit deep in their seats, tense, trying to loosen up, with cigarettes going feverishly from mouth to ashtray. Music starts again; the rhythm from the sound system resonates through the bodies of those present.

“Good tune, this,” Quincey comments.

“Yeah.” The uninitiated sit tapping the offbeat while the well-schooled nod calmly out of rhythm. “Just relax, they’ll change the music if you want.”

We smile. Someone asks for Joy Division. They don’t have any. They put on Iggy Pop’s The Idiot. It breaks the ice. As the night bears down on us, the company grows in number and becomes increasingly erratic. Some youngsters suffer from a severe aggravation of mood, occasionally ending in a barely controlled wriggling frenzy. By nap-time, any agitation will have been soothed with a little Valium.

Due to the highly illegal wares on sale, the respectable-looking proprietors of this place have had to shift it every few weeks. Marco, though he’s dressed in a hood and jeans, is called the waiter. He fills me in on the details in perfect English, a language that he’s forced to practice by some of our fastest talking exports. “This is a new location; we’ve been here for a couple of weeks. We were raided not long ago; gas masks and smoke grenades, a whole SWAT team. But we received warning. We’re usually told by an informer beforehand so we get rid of anything illegal before they turn up. It looks like we’re just an after hours spot selling some drinks, and that satisfies them. Policing is like the theatre around here, it’s just a show.”

I stretch my legs and have a stroll, lighting one of someone’s lost cigarettes. Trying to talk to the actual owners is difficult. They seem to view their customers as wild beasts as they cash in on their cravings. I decide to go back to my table.

After some small talk, Marco gets down to business. He takes our drinks orders, and goes through the beers and spirits on offer. Water is the biggest seller, it costs nearly as much as what he offers next: “100 Bolivianos a gram for standard, or 120 Bolivianos for strong.” It’s about £9.

“What’s the difference?” Quincey asks eagerly, sitting forward and wiping his sweat-tipped fringe to the side.

“Not much,” Marco signals with his eyebrows and a wink, hinting at a business move that plays on the need for some to appear experienced in front of their friends and the roomful of strangers.

“Strong, please,” come the responses from around the table, “a gram each.”

The waiters and waitresses are chatty, amiable types. It’s their prerogative to be as personable and friendly as possible, and they let us in on some of their esoteric knowledge of the scene in La Paz. “Don’t try picking up on the street, you’ll get baking powder or worse.” Quincey lowers his eyes; he already knows.

After a few hours of serving and introducing strangers to strangers, Marco returns to our table and takes a seat. He offers us a tour around some of Route 36’s quieter areas for a chat. He tells us tired anecdotes of some who stay days at a time, with minimal sleep and maximal intake. “People coming out of Britain, America, Ireland and Australia are the most common, where cocaine costs a lot more. It’s a need to take advantage of the here and now – not just for the price, but for the transcendent experience,” Marco explains.

As he shows us the vacant disco room, reserved for weekends and lunch breaks, he speaks eloquently of his experiences. “I’m an autodidact; I’ve just been reading Moksha by Aldous Huxley.” He lifts his copy from his table, “You know it?”

I murmur in recognition. He seems surprised. “Huxley hates cocaine though, doesn’t he?” I ask. “He’s all for hallucinogens: acid, mescaline and mushrooms. The moksha-medicine.” Marco smiles a wide Cheshire and leads me away from the chatter to the other side of the room.

As we cross the floor he admits he indulges heavily in what Route 36 is known for. When we’ve found an isolated spot, he demonstrates with zeal by carving a thick streak of white around the corners of Gloria Estafan’s Greatest Hits ’84 to ‘91. He is from Peru, he tells me, where they have a similar drug culture. He’s seen the dangerous effects of cocaine – and this bar – first hand, on travellers and locals both. “I call it death row,” he says. He points back across the room to someone who has been drinking and loading heavily all night. The man talks incessantly about his newborn son, Seraphim. “Angel of Fire!” he shouts as tears well in his eyes.

“His wife has kicked him out,” Marco explains. “And they’ve moved to another city. But he still comes here every day, always talking the same shit.”

During a small break in conversation about Ayahuasca and Peyote, a laughing customer jumps up and starts dramatically punching the wall. I sit back, wary of the sudden tension. “What happens if things get out of hand in here?”

“We rarely have to ask someone to leave; people generally seem to behave quite well.” Marco delivers a sharp look to the table in question, gesturing with his hands to quieten down. “Even the ones that take too much, all they do is talk or joke. Usually it’s the drunks that give us more hassle. If we don’t like what they’re doing, we call them a cab and say goodnight. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves here.”

At times it seems as if Marco has been hardened by the things he’s seen. He talks unemotionally of the countless reformed coke addicts who have relapsed to excess in here, and the fresh faced gap-year students who cane it day and night, bouncing between sessions in the bars and lengthy bouts in the tombs of ’36.

I tell him that even Bolivia’s President is painted up as a coke fiend in the Western press. Marco nods. “They vilify Morales because he’s a man of the people,” he says, smoking his American L&Ms. “Don’t listen to that bullshit you read about him. He chews coca leaf, just like everyone else. It’s an ancient tradition going back thousands of years. It’s the ones that don’t know anything about it that want it criminalised.”

“Yeah, it’s the same thing as the War on Drugs in the US, they criminalise all the poor people and they throw them in jail.”

“It’s completely different here,” Marco tells me. “Cocaine is derived from the coca leaf in a lengthy and complicated process that makes–”

“Cocaine hydrochloride,” I interrupt a little ungraciously, eager to impress, perhaps.

He smiles. “Yeah, but it’s in a completely separate ritual that the normal folk of South America use it, and unfortunately many confuse that traditional act of growing coca leaf with the relatively new business of making cocaine.”

Morales made a similar argument when he stood before the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in 2009, chewing the leaf to underline his point. “It is an important symbol of the history and identity of the indigenous cultures of the Andes,” he told the Commission. “Today, millions of people chew coca in Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and northern Argentina and Chile. The coca leaf continues to have ritual, religious and cultural significance that transcends indigenous cultures and encompasses the mestizo population.”

According to Marco, the locals believe the US government exploits this confusion to sabotage the democratically elected governments of Latin America. He shakes his head as we take a last look around the hollow chambers of Route 36. It’s been a fast night; the morning is beginning to break through the one uncovered window.

As Marco leads the way toward the exit, he tells me it’s the rejection of these Old World values that the new democracies of Latin America are marching for. He paraphrases Morales as he explains: “For the first time in South America’s history, the countries of our region are deciding how to resolve our problems, without the presence of the United States. The increased support from his 2005 election win made the US-backed elite opposition turn violent. They assassinated a load of peasant supporters of Morales’ government. But you probably didn’t read that in the papers, did you?” Marco says finally.

A cab has been called, and we wait together by the door. “I guess we’ll see what new horrors Western democracy has in store for South American dictatorships,” Marco finishes, with a wry grin. The door swings open and we exit through the front garden, leaving behind the rising chemical heat and the sparkly noses of the death row inmates.

Sourav Roy from Mumbai battles gluttony, despair and cricket fever to hunt down seven utterly original book stores of the city

As somebody who has been taking books to bed way before hitting puberty, I have it on good authority that the addiction of buying and reading books, is not so very different from any other addiction. Your ears prick up at the mention of new releases, your breathing changes when you meet a strange book review and your legs do their own walking when they see a bookshop close by. But just like any veteran junkie would tell you as the monkey on your back gains weight, only higher doses just don’t cut it.

The fume of addiction grows denser, splits into veins and develops its own ecosystem of multiple sins, each demanding its own special fodder of words, pages and genres.

As your fix changes, so does your peddler. You start avoiding the standard-issue, brightly lit, bestseller-clad, staffed-to-the-gills-with-idiots chain bookstores and ache for the ones little-known: the roadsiders, the rare, the forgotten and the niche. A bookshop with that glorious musty smell, shady alcoves where you can disappear for hours and an owner as obsessed as Calvin Tower yet as colourful as Willy Wonka. In short, a Flourish and Botts for adults.

As one evolves into a reader every author daydreams about – “ah, and a lover of lists, a twiddler of lines. Shall this reader be given occasionally to mouthing a word aloud or wanting to read to a companion in a piercing library whisper? Yes; and shall this reader be one whose heartbeat alters with the tense of the verbs? That would be nice…” (1) – your quest for the ideal book store becomes more and more fervid. You are neither intimidated by previous wisdom – “If Jack Kerouac had set out to find a real bookstore in the suburbs, he would still be on the road, Phileas Fogg would still be in the air, the Ancient Mariner wouldn’t have had time to tell anyone his story” (2) – nor are you disheartened, even if the city is Mumbai, where Mammon is the said ruler, fantasies apparently come attached with business plans, and devoted readers are said to be as rare as authentic book stores.

The Despair of Discretion vs. Strand Book Stall

As courtship with books turns into a long-term relationship, the usual tricks up a book’s dust sleeve – the bold and bright bestseller insignia, the gushing blurb, the shady ellipses in the praises section – start losing their charm. They only make you more wary instead of more enthusiastic. You tread with caution remembering all the times in the past you have been hasty and burnt. You look for genuineness and magic which don’t fade out once you are back home with them. 

When it comes to loving books truly, madly, deeply, it is hard to find somebody more genuine than late T.N. Shanbhag, founder of the 63-year-old Strand Book Stall. Driven out of a bookstore for browsing way too long, he started his own bookshop at the lobby of the elite Strand Cinema, Mumbai. He started with not one but many quixotic dreams which come true everyday at seven of their outlets across India for hundreds of readers – one in Mumbai, three in Bengaluru, one in Mysore, one in Pune, one in Hyderabad. Except the major two in Mumbai and Bengaluru, the rest of them are by request of IT majors Wipro and Infosys in their respective campuses.

The dreams of a book stall where browsing is held sacred, only genuinely good books are stored (bestsellers are sourced in a jiffy too, if you insist on being a yokel) and most importantly every book comes with a discount of at lest 20% on the cover price, are dreams no more. The discount is actually the margin from publishers, aka profit, handed over to the readers. None of them seemed to make any sense for a businessman, but Mr. Shanbhag was a reader first.

And now that Strand Book Stall is run by his daughter Vidya Virkar in Bengaluru and the family of his Man Friday and Manager, Mr P.M. Shenvi in Mumbai, things have only turned sunnier for readers.

Strand Book Fair, a brainchild of Vidya, is now a bi-annual pilgrimage for Bengaluru and Mumbai book lovers. Huge exhibition spaces are hired and the entire warehouse of Strand Book Stall turns up in full glory. When this collection joins hands with up to 80% discounts, the book lovers’ eyes glaze over with lust and their wrists ache with plastic bagfuls of haul.

True love for good books compels Strand Book Stall to take up occasional publishing endeavours of exceptional books, simply because nobody else will. Like the 1931 book A Case for India by the noted philosopher Will Durant. A book which went to great lengths to praise India’s poise under British fire and its upcoming glory. This book has since been conveniently let go out of print. Now republished by Strand Book Stall in English and several Indian languages it’s finally getting its due share of attention.

And it’s again true love of books that makes them think twice before spending money on expanding, computerizing or sprucing themselves up. Because who would want yet another shiny book shop that keeps the profit and sells bestsellers at cover price?

Strand Book Stall, ‘Dhannur, Sir P.M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400001. Tel: 0091 22 2266 1994/2266 1719/2261 4613, www.strandbookstall.com

The Gluttony for Bargains vs. City Book Centre

There has been at least one recorded instance where a biblioholic has paid the price of a steady girlfriend for a rare autographed book. (3)

And there have been gazillions of instances where book addicts have spent other equally obscene amounts on books. In fact, there is someone, somewhere blowing the roof off his credit limit right now at a book store. But inexplicably, if there is anything which this species enjoys more than overspending of books, it is saving money on books. They will go anywhere, even the deep entrails of the internet to get a great deal on books.

They also go to City Book Centre. It was transported to the suburbs after being evicted following the Municipal Corporation’s enforcement of their no-hawking policy at Fort a couple years ago. Very few of the wonderful roadside booksellers have been so successfully replanted.

As soon as you cross the crowded street, you are thrown headlong into books of all sizes, shapes and ages. The readers are just as varied. Mothers buying books for children, Engineering students fingering text books, Medical students looking at them irritatedly (medical books are not stocked due to their high price) and pretty much everybody leafing through modern day penny dreadfuls and the latest Man Booker winners.

Nobody leaves empty handed from City Book Centre because even if you don’t want to spend a pittance (it’s impossible not to like even a single book in this tiny yet jam-packed darling of a store), there is a lending library system with dirt cheap refundable deposits and variable fees. The beauty of the fee structure is the resale value of the book is less than the deposit. So the books are theft-protected.

The owners reveal that they source their rich haul of secondhand books from containers at Mumbai ports. I could have pressed on but I shut right up when the throw in a cup of tea in my bargain haul of books.

I smile as I wade through knee-deep traffic.

City Book Centre, Shop No 5, Sukhamani Building, Junction of S.V. Road & V.P. Road, Near Archie’s Gallery, Andheri West, Mumbai 400058. Tel: 0091 22 6553 2739, pramodcitybookcentre@yahoo.com

The Sloth of Familiarity vs. Victoria Book Centre and VCD DVD Library

Every book lover has a favourite position in bed, for reading. (4) Lying on your side, lying on your back holding the book up with your strong hands, doing the half-cobra pose with your hands propping your cheeks, pillow under your stomach with the book against the wall, and several others which might best be kept inside bed rooms. But no matter how uncomfortable your position sounds to others, it is instant Nirvana for you. The moment you and your book strike that pose, the cares of the world fade away, the day slowly slides off your shoulder and you are home.

I feel the same aura of familiarity when I enter Victoria Book Centre and VCD DVD Library, even though I have never been there before in my whole life. Past the faded, hand-painted ‘Wanted Help’ posters (not a single spelling mistake, by the way) and racks and racks of magazines, I enter the store and learn that the owner has been out for lunch for the last couple of hours. As a strong supporter of both independent spirits and long lunches, my heart gladdens and I start browsing. A shopfront with multiple sections for new books, old books, magazines and soon to be added text book section, it’s a place with a whole long, lazy summer afternoon’s worth of browsing. Luckily, it was a long, lazy summer afternoon. I spot usual suspects, vintage favourites fallen from grace and a surprisingly eclectic collection of Indian writing in English.

As I chat with the lady in the store and the owner on the phone, I wonder why this 60-year-old store seems so familiar to me. Then, a bunch of kids walk in to browse, and I know the answer. This was how all bookshops used to look when I was a kid.

The kids turn out to be a few of the thousand plus members of the lending library who pay a laughably low fee to read hundreds of books. When I ask the owner why the fees are so low, he laughs indulgently and says most of the kids who are members today are third generation patrons of the store. Then he mentions the really high number of members to make it good, as well as the advantages of being located next to a school. Then he stops for a moment and hastily cracks a joke about me being a probable income tax agent in disguise.

When I step out, I notice the owner has trust enough in strangers like me and many others to keep the keys hanging from the glass cases. I let out a contented sigh. All seems to be well with the world.

Victoria Book Centre and VCD DVD Library, 12 L.J. Road, Between Sitladevi Temple & Victoria School, Mahim, Mumbai 400016. Tel: 0091 22 2446 1897

The Lust for the Niche vs. Marine Sports

There is a very thin line between discretion and niche-snobbery when it comes to the reading habit of biblioholics. For example, a fellow biblioholic had started an online group for discussing books so niche that only a handful of people had read them, an idea poetically doomed to some and simply doomed to most. On the other hand, there is another biblioholic who refuses to read Harry Potter books simply because they are way too popular. But no matter which side of the line your err in, just like the occult to the masses, the niche has an Eldorado’s appeal to biblioholics.

Reason why I landed up at Marine Sports, Mumbai’s and India’s only sports bookshop, despite being gloriously underaccomplished in all kinds of sports since childhood. The Cricket World Cup 2011 has just been over. I have avoided it like the plague and cursed it repeatedly for hindering my bookshop-hopping. But there was another, secret reason. I frankly could not believe that there were enough books about sports that could fill up a bookstore. Because playing sports are all about not reading books and vice versa, right?

I realise how wrong I was, the moment I step into the store. Only cricket rulebooks cover up a sizeable portion of the wall. Then there are some more cricket. Biographies, analyses, history, rare Wisden Almanacs and encyclopaedias. Though the three-fourths of the store are cricket books, there are books on tennis, netball, rugby, water sports, cycling, football, hockey, judo, table tennis, sports psychology, sports medicine and, most importantly, Olympics. I also spot a gorgeous giant tome about the automobiles of Maharajas. In fact,their online catalogue lists sports alphabetically with sometimes multiple entries under each letter. And then there are how to videos, recorded matches and other paraphernalia. When a gentleman drops in for a history of table tennis, he is confidently told that no such book existed yet, otherwise it would have been available.

When the affable owner, Theodore Braganza drops in to chat, I get to know the amusing birth story of this store. Started by his father late Bruno Braganza in Marine Lines, Mumbai as a sports goods store it slowly turned itself into a bookshop. All because of his abiding love for books and increasing distaste of the murkiness of sports goods business. And his acquaintance with the leading sports institutions and sportsmen of those days certainly helped. Legendary cricketers dropped in often, asking for books on opponents, before they went on tours. Thanks to extensive networking with sportsmen, sports journalists and genuine eye and nose for sports books, Marine Sports has grown into the institution it is today, supplying to hundreds of library and thousands of individuals worldwide. Prudent moves like a website and regular presence at all major sporting events have not hurt either. In fact, so encyclopaedic is their collection that many a devoted mail order customer have been shocked when they have walked into the tiny store.

This unique access to the sports fraternity has also helped them publish unique books, mostly on cricket that are considered collectibles by the discerning. India’s recent Cricket World Cup 2011 win has spurred him into publishing two books, once for the serious cricket junta and one for wide-eyed fans.

After an unusually long chat and browsing, when I finally get up to leave, I realise my apathy to sports has come down several notches thanks to the familiar empathy with books I saw at the heart of Marine Sports.

Marine Sports, 63A, Gokhale Road North, Dadar West, Mumbai 400028. Tel: 0091 2432 1047/2436 6076, www.marinesports.in

The Pride of Idealism vs. Gandhi Book Centre

No bibliophile ever says this out loud but all of them secretly believe that books can change lives. And this belief has not come to them from any self-help book but from themselves. They know how books have changed their own lives, helped them travel through time, discover deep bonds with perfect strangers, made them live hundreds of lives in one lifetime, made them less judgemental, more compassionate and most importantly less bored. That is why when I come to know of a bookstore that only sells Gandhi-related book, I take down my shield of cynicism and get going without any delay. After all who has changed more lives than this man in loincloth and a pair of round glasses?

With the latest idiotic Gandhi controversy (5) still buzzing in my head I approach the book shop, my vision stumbling into Mumbai’s tallest building sticking out like a sore thumb in the background. A few moments after I walk into the store and start browsing a little self-consciously, the staff rush to my help, stricken perhaps by my utterly non-Khadi appearance. My ruse of browsing over, I meet up with the man at the helm, T.R.K. Somaiya. And from him I come to know the surprising origin of the book centre and why Gandhi Book Centre is anything but a book centre. The story had, not surprisingly, had less to do with lofty thoughts and more to do with down-to-earth actions, just the way Gandhi intended.

The year was 1982. Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi was running in Bombay to packed theatres and Gandhi-ism was in the air. T.R.K. Somaiya, a dedicated Gandhian, decided to make use of the opportunity and started selling The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Gandhi’s autobiography) in front of theatres. The plan seems to work wonderfully and thus was born Gandhi Book Centre. Twenty-three years later, the Gandhi Book Centre is hardly a book centre but an exhibition, a museum and most importantly a Gandhian nerve centre that sends out his thoughts in periodic waves throughout the country. As a book centre it stocks more books by Gandhi than on Gandhi with a special emphasis on affordable books in Indian regional languages. It also stocks works by Vinoba Bhabe and Swami Vivekananda, both considered Gandhi’s spiritual blood-brothers.

While personal monetary losses mount every year, T.R.K. Somaiya doesn’t hike the mark-up on his titles, neither does he man every exit of city cinema halls but looks for more practical and exciting ways to take the message of Gandhi forward. He doesn’t stop at the usual exhibitions, seminars, exchanges and speeches. He visits the principals of schools and colleges and wardens of prisons in person and convinces them to join the Gandhi Peace Examination Programme, a unique written examination, where the study materials and question papers are supplied from the centre and the prizes as well as certificates are arranged by the respective institutions. About 35,000 students from 73 colleges and 67 schools and 500 prisoners have taken the examination this year. The moment you secretly start scoffing at the naivete of it all, he would smile and introduce you to Laxman Gole. Currently a corporate consultant, he used to lord over a nine member extortionist gang. Charged nineteen times with various crimes and already six and a half years prison sentence over his head, he was all set to go places in the Mumbai underworld. But that was all before he wrote the Gandhi Peace Examination.Now a model citizen, he is one of the living, breathing results of Mr. Somaiya’s experiments with truth.

And whenever T.R.K. Somaiya takes a short break from spreading the truth, helping hands show up from everywhere. Like Professor Aparna Rao from NITIE, a respected local management institution, who helped sell 6,000 copies of Gandhi’s autobiography in a month through her students as part of a management experiment.

While India’s relationship with Gandhi remains ambiguous, a curious mixture of hate, idolatry and occasional surrender (the sales of Gandhi-related books show a sudden spurt whenever there is a national crisis), the relation with T.R.K. Somaiya and Gandhi has remained rock solid in foundation but fluid enough to change with the times. Quite like the tetra-packed buttermilk he gave me to drink.

But next morning Anna Hazare (6) breaks his fast with fruit juice.

Gandhi Book Centre, 299 Tardeo Road, Nana Chowk, Mumbai 400007. Tel: 0091 22 2387 2061/2388 4527, www.mkgandhi.org

The Greed for Serendipity vs. Smoker’s Corner Book Stall

“Secondhand books are wild books, homeless books,” said Virginia Woolf. “They have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”

Book veterans would agree wholeheartedly. The joy of secondhand bookshops are more in the chase than in the finish. So imagine my anticipation after finally making into very suggestively named Smoker’s Corner Book Stall after three misses. More than half a century ago, the entrance of this store had a tobacco shop frequented by sailors in transit and hence the name.

The readers in the know had told me this was one of the best second-hand bookshops in town. And I am not disappointed. With a zig zag of glass cases, nooks and alcoves, I am already in a biblioholic’s candy land, a secondhand book version of Alice’s wonderland, a little musty, a little dog-eared but with infinitely more character. I wander aimlessly and meet lavishly illustrated German fairy tale books, Harlequin romances, oddball science fiction all tied up in strings, looking out like orphaned puppies in an animal shelter for a second home. I comply.

Smoker’s Corner Book Stall, Botawala Chambers, Sir P.M. Road, Fort, MumbaI 400001. Tel: 0091 22 2216 4060

The Longing for the Lost vs. The New & Second Hand Book Shop, Kalbadevi

The journey unfortunately comes to an end with an obituary. No book pilgrimage in Mumbai supposedly should exclude The New & Second Hand Book Shop, Kalbadevi. I was forced to commit this blasphemy. Because the book shop no longer exists and has given way to a computer goods shop recently. From a report from the past, by cnnngo.com:

Founded in 1905 by Vishram’s grandfather Jamalbhai Ratansey, this corner store started out selling raddi paper, moving on to include school texts and exercise books before finally introducing fiction and non-fiction around the Second World War.

Ask whether people still read a lot nowadays and Vishram smiles somewhat ironically, “to use modern terminology, the ‘feedback’ is not so great.” He rues especially the decline in the number of younger readers thanks to media like television and the Internet, saying that “most now read only if they have to, if the book happens to be in their curriculum.”

Even though there’s no (apparent) order within each section, browsing through these shelves is like taking a chronological crash course in Mumbai’s reading preferences. From the frail 1855 copy of the Poetical Works of John Dryden (Rs 350), to the quirky Rise and Fall of American Humour (Rs 150), the beautiful illustrated 366 Goodnight Stories (Rs 120) and an outdated Cassette Guide from Penguin (Rs 150). (7)

May the soul rest in peace. Amen.

Footnotes:

1. In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, William H. Gass
2. Michel Winerip, The New York Times
3. http://commonsense2.com/2008/11/essays/lost-the-girl-got-the-book/
4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/sep/01/sitting-lying-reading-position
5. Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, Joseph Lelyveld
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Hazare
7. http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/shop/mumbais-secondhand-book-shops-262929

Images Courtesy: Prarthana Singh (www.cnngo.com), Fiona Fernandez (www.mid-day.com)

Chris Hall revisits J.G. Ballard’s childhood and finds the future in the past

The opening of J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun (1984) has young Jim watching British war propaganda films with fellow choristers in the crypt of the Holy Trinity church in Shanghai, which was designed by George Gilbert Scott and built in the 1860s and is due to reopen this year after extensive renovations. Ballard himself attended the church’s prestigious boys school, a 1920s Art Deco addition. It’s a nice thought that Ballard’s archive is going to be in the British Library, right next door to another Gilbert Scott building, what used to be the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras railway station in London, also recently restored to its former glory.

I was recently in Shanghai, researching a book about Ballard, and this was one of the many places from his childhood there (from 1930 to 1946) that I visited, including the Ballard family home on what used to be Amherst Avenue. It’s now another restaurant – the Xinyue Club – after some recent renovation work and, though internally much has changed, the structure of the house remains. Ballard described it as being in the “stockbroker style of the home counties”. A Chinese friend who lives in the city steered me there and we pretended that we’d come to take a look at the private dining rooms upstairs to hire for an event. Seeing what would have been Ballard’s bedroom as a “luxury and elegant private room” hammers home his belief that “reality is a stage set”.

It hit me while I was there that a great deal of those quintessentially Ballardian obsessions are seeded in Shanghai – gated communities, suburbia, his interest in Art Deco, etc. As Ballard himself said, the Art Deco buildings of Shanghai – the city is thought to have a higher concentration of them than even Miami Beach – seem somehow more modern than the steel and glass skyscrapers that tower above them.

Further south is Lunghua pagoda, which the Japanese used as a flak tower against the US planes and which features a lot in Empire of the Sun. The pagoda is oddly affecting when I finally chance upon it, and, like the Ballard house, it’s a very moving sight. Ballard wrote about the time shortly after his family’s internment: “During the American raids the pagoda had lit up like a Christmas tree, tracers streaming towards the low-flying Mustangs, but now its guns were silent and unmanned”.

From the ghost towers of Bangkok and the very real atrocity exhibition that is the War Remnants museum in Saigon, to the empty streets of Hong Kong the day after Chinese New Year and especially the drowned world of Brisbane, my trip had been a little too Ballardian for comfort.

Further Resources:

• Chris Mitchell: In Search of Ballard’s Shanghai

Meet you at the cemetry gates
We all need somewhere to go on our dreaded sunny days. For those inclined to be both literary and world weary, an afternoon amongst the marble and ivory of the deceased can be oddly inspirational. Whilst graveyards like Prague’s New Jewish Cemetery are worth a visit to pay tribute to the likes of Kafka, this is Spike’s guide for to getting your money’s worth. Pack your Kindle and some sandwiches.

01 Highgate East: Highgate was part of a grand project in the early 19th century, to build seven great cemeteries around London. The eastern part of the site is open to all and includes Douglas Adams, George Eliot, Karl Marx, Paul Foot, Jeremy Beadle, and Malcolm McLaren. Highgate West: Highgate West is the most atmospheric, it is almost a city of the dead and can only generally be accessed as part of a guided tour. Some sections of the ground are unstable and people used to steal souvenirs. There are some wonderful architectural features such as the Circle of Lebanon and the great stone entrance to Egyptian Avenue. Amongst the residents are Beryl Bainbridge, Jacob Bronowski, Alexander Litvinenko, Christina Rossetti, Radclyffe Hall, and Adam Worth (the model for Moriarty).

Creative Commons Photo: Jennifer Boyer

[Source of image and license]

02 Cimetière du Montparnasse: A better class of graveyard, Montparnasse features some of the heavyweights of Parisian intellectual culture. Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Serge Gainsbourg, Eugène Ionesco, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Baudelaire, Tristan Tzara, Susan Sontag, and Kiki ‘Queen of Montparnasse’ help make this an essential place to ponder being and nothingness.

03 Cimetière du Père-Lachaise: Although it houses some remarkable tombs and a legion of unruly cats, there is something of the parking lot about Père-Lachaise. The cemetery is the biggest in the city of Paris. However, the list of dead celebrities here is utterly remarkable and this is a must for any death tourist. Oscar Wilde, Honoré de Balzac, Colette, Molière, Marcel Proust, Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein are amongst the highlights.

04 Kensal Green Cemetery: Harold Pinter is the only recent name of note in this west London site, another of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ Victorian locations. The playwright of the pause joins grandfather of computing Charles Babbage, as well as novelists William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, and Wilkie Collins. Chesterton immortalised this resting place of the immortal in his poem ‘The Rolling English Road’.

05 Other literary death destinations are Glasnevin in Dublin (Brendan Behan and Christy Brown), Haworth Parish (the Brontës), and Westminster Abbey (Chaucer and the plaques in Poets’ Corner). English literature even has a representative movement in the ‘Graveyard Poets’ of the 18th century. Pre-Romantics such as Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, William Cowper and Thomas Chatterton used the cemetery as backdrop to their morbid ruminations on King Death and the brevity of human existence. The ‘Graveyard’ sensibility carried over into the Gothic strain of Romanticism and its quest for the darker sublime.

PDF map of Bunhill Fields and location of graves

Futureland #17 – Shanghai, China, 2010. Ink jet print, 110 x 145 cm
© Nuno Cera and Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, reproduced with thanks

Nuno Cera’s project Futureland catches the process of rapid urbanisation in the act. Between 2008 and 2010, the photographer travelled between nine of the world’s fastest growing cities as they rush towards the future (and the sky). Rather than the gleaming metropolis, however, Cera’s photographs and videos portray the delirious repetition of mass housing and crowds, and slums giving way to building sites giving way again to slums. The exhibition catalogue quotes Rem Koolhaas, whose writings on Lagos might be seen as an appropriate adjunct to the images: “People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that’s both liberating and alarming”. Commenting on the chosen locations (LA, Dubai, Istanbul, Mexico City, Cairo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, and Jakarta), Cera has stated, “Each of these cities has its own scale, form, density and diversity that shall be quantified, memorized and compared. From an artistic, personal and subjective view, the project transmits a temporary experience of new and old Mega Cities on their transformation to future Giga Cities”.

Born in Beja, southern Portugal, in 1972, Nuno Cera now divides his time between Berlin and Lisbon. Spike asked him about his attitudes and working methodologies:

How are your working days? Are they casual or disciplined? Driven by deadlines or goals? Do you work every day?
My working days are rather structured and organised which helps to stay focused and concentrated within a rather ‘casual’ and ‘non-organised’ atmosphere and nature within the contemporary art scene, art production and discussion I feel surrounded by (in Portugal). I try to separate private and working areas. I am lucky therefore to have my own studio in the centre of Lisbon, where I work every day of the week. I usually arrive in my studio around 10am and leave at 6pm. I see myself as disciplined in a way and I try to work concentrated and effective. Since I moved to my new studio in Lisbon, I have been starting to organise and sort my ‘archive’ from the past 10 years – meaning old research material, texts, photos, prints and negatives, articles published about my work, documentation about past exhibitions of mine, etc. Sometimes my working schedules are driven by a deadline, some times rather by my personal goals. When I am facing a huge production outside the studio, I normally try to prepare the schedules and teams carefully beforehand. Somehow I feel it is important to keep working and to development my work even if the conditions or perspectives are not the right ones…

Do you own original work by other photographers?
Yes, I do. I own a few photos from some artist friends.

What influence does your photography and video work have on the rest of your life?
My work is the prior and central point in my life. The work is constantly influenced by my life and vice-versa. I really can’t separate one from the other.

Do your cameras have distinct personalities? Or do you consider them merely as tools?
Different cameras offer very different forms of seeing. They are rather tools to reach a goal, but at the same time they open and offer me different ways of photographing and seeing the reality.

Do you ever face a crisis in your work, one that perhaps demands a new direction or a temporary boredom? How do you deal with it?
There are always the two moments of input and output. In the moment when I feel the need to read more, see more exhibitions, travel, watch more movies, I enter into a process of input of ideas and stimulus. Then there are moments of creation and output, where I am very focused in my work and in the production. Generally I would not apply the term ‘crisis’ onto my case – I do not feel a crisis or being in crisis – I rather feel the need and demand of ‘input’.

Futureland #4 – Bombay, India, 2010. Ink jet print on Hahnemühle paper, 45 x 60cm
© Nuno Cera and Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, reproduced with thanks

Further Reading:
Nuno Cera’s website with extensive examples of his work
Nuno Cera’s page at at Galeria Pedro Cera
An essay on Futureland by Rahul Srivastava and Matias Echanove

So far, 2011 has been a bumper year for the film production Pinewood Studios Group. The company has just announced a 31% rise in pre-tax profits and now plans to invest in British low-budget filmmaking through direct funding. Chief executive Ivan Dunleavy said, “Although our financial commitment to each film will be relatively small, we can, in addition, offer British films access to the world-class facilities and production expertise at Pinewood and Shepperton which would normally be beyond their budget”.

The studios, most commonly associated with the James Bond franchise, has also played host to Star Wars, The Dark Knight, the Carry On films and many other blockbusters. Thanks to increasing demand, a new 30,000 sq ft stage will be build by the second half of 2012, at an anticipated cost of £5.1m.

Last year, Pinewood expanded overseas operations in Hamburg, Berlin, Toronto, and Malaysia. In February, the group announced another outpost, Pinewood Indomina Studios in the Dominican Republic, in response to the growing Latin American market. The 25-acre site is expected to be complete during 2013 and will include a 75 sq m tank for water and ocean scenes.

A World Tour of Film Studios
01 Studio Babelsberg, Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany: Next year sees the centenary of the oldest large-scale film studio in world. It’s first notable films were expressionist masterpieces such as 1920’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. A year later, the studio passed into ownership of UFA (Universum Film AG), the central production company of the Weimar Republic. They made Metropolis and a handful of other German classics before falling under the control of Goebbels in the early 30s, effectively becoming a propaganda unit for the Nazis. After the war, DEFA (Deutsche Film AG) was established in the former East Germany to produce over 800 films, and which now have a film library at the University of Massachusetts. Post-reunification, the studios were privatised with a tangled succession of companies.

The DEFA Film Library at UMass
Official website of Studio Babelsberg

02 Atlas Studios, Ouarzazate, Morocco: Looking something like a painting by de Chirico, the Atlas Film Studios is over 91,000 sq m of desert and abandoned sets, such as ‘the Colosseum; from Gladiator. Although Ouarzazate was used to shoot Lawrence of Arabia and (yet again) Star Wars, an actual studio was not constructed until the early 80s. The site contains Egyptian tombs (from The Mummy) and a labyrinthine ‘Kasbah’. A curious simulacrum, one might expect Baudrillard to locate one of his books there. Tours to the Studios are great fun, although some tourists are disappointed by the disrepair of the sets, perhaps expecting the equivalent of Universal.

Photo essay by Steve Davey at vtravelled.com
Moroccan location agents for filmmakers

03 Barrandov Studios, Prague, Czech Republic: Largely the work of Václev Havel’s father and uncle, and founded in 1931, Barrandov became the biggest Czech studio. It was during the Prague Spring, however, that the New Wave graduates from FAMU (the Film and TV School of The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague) started to gain international attention (most famously Miloš Foreman). As with the early French New Wave, these films engage in a playful renegotiation of cinematic rules and dark humour is used to counterpoint social realities. Czechoslovak film has distinct differences from the nouvelle vague, however. Amadeus was made there in 1984. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, American directors began to use Barrandov’s facilities, starting (appropriately) with Steven Soderberg’s Kafka, his 1991 follow up to Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Dozens of films have subsequently shot there, including Casino Royale and The Bourne Identity.

Time article from 1967 on the Czechoslovak New Wave
Official site of Barrandov Studios

04 Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad, India: The mother of all film studio complexes (and holder of the Guinness record at 8.1 sq km) is 1996’s RFC in India. As well as the 500 sets, Ramoji is also a major tourist destination with hotels, convention facilities, and an amusement park. For filmmakers, every service is available off the shelf – ready locations include an airport, hospital, streets and railway station – and RFC can even put together a budget. The motto is “Walk in with a script and walk out with a canned film”.

Ramoji Film City official site

05 Cinecittà, Rome, Italy: ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’, as it has sometimes been dubbed, Cinema City is mythical in film history. Like Babelsberg, Cinecittà’s past is entangled with fascism. Mussolini’s head of cinema originally founded the site in 1937 with the express purpose of making propaganda films (with the slogan “Cinema is the most powerful weapon”). Financed by the state, it was a vast location with the most sophisticated facilities of the time. It also formed an almost allegorical function, similar to Speer’s Nazi architecture, of an idealised model city. Instead of a fascist modernism, however, the Cinecittà milieu gave birth to some of cinema’s most daring intellects, including Antonioni, taking cinema and its investigation of urban existence into breathtaking new territories. Fellini made films there for 40 years. More recently, Scorsese made The Gangs of New York at Cinecittà.

Cinecittà official site
Ehsan Khoshbakht’s ‘Notes on Cinecittà’

Himalaya – Michael Palin

See all books by Michael Palin at
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Dodgy dentists. The Dalai Llama. High-altitude polo players. Maoist rebels. Yak herders. Imran Khan.

Just a few of the diverse personalities professional funnyman turned adventure traveller Michael Palin met on his epic 125-day journey across the world’s greatest mountain range, the subject of his most recent book Himalaya.

The former Monty Python member embarked on his sixth expedition in 15 years to be filmed by the BBC on 12 May 2003 at the Khyber Pass, Afghanistan. He and his team reached the final milestone, the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh, on 17 April 2004.

As with his previous adventures Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Hemmingway Adventure, and Sahara, Palin penned an account of the journey.

The result, Himalaya, is written in the form of a travel diary – a continuous narrative intact except for a few rest days and flights, according to the author – which provides a window in on the day-to-day experiences traversing the 1,800 mile spine of mountains. A journey that would pass through Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Tibet, Yunnan (China), Assam and Nagaland, and Bhutan.

Not a bad accomplishment for a geography-loving working class lad from Sheffield, England, whose childhood summer holidays were spent at the not-too-distant southeast seaside town of Norwich.

Throughout the book Palin demonstrates a deft skill in creating a sense of place. His descriptions of the geography, cultures and peoples of the places he visits successfully walks the tightrope of taste, and his narrative thankfully avoids descending into over-the-top gushing reports of his exploits.

Instead, you find a modest account not intent on thrusting the author into the limelight, but which allows the human interactions that take place to reveal more about the realities of life in the mountain range. The geology of which spans deserts, rivers, peaks, and glaciers, and plays home to diverse cultures founded on Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and animism.

Speaking from his London home, Palin says that both the book and the TV series “were honest” in their portrayal of the adventure.

“We didn’t set things up, we filmed what was really happening, we don’t do multiple takes. We do try to keep it as spontaneous as possible, to give you an idea of what those countries are really like. We’ve done this through the local people, rather than through interviews with lots of politicians.”

Palin writes as he speaks, and both his conversation and narrative are underpinned by a mellow humour, which he uses sparingly to prove a point or make light of a troubling situation rather than cracking one-liners all the way.

His ability to make people laugh must have been a source of relief for his fellow journeymen, especially during a couple of the more major setbacks which occurred.

Apart from the expected problems generated by the realities of traveling one of the word’s harshest climates – bone-shaking jeep rides, non-existent roads, and bureaucratic run-ins – the team had two major problems to deal with.

Whilst visiting a Gurkha recruitment exercise in a remote village Nepal, three of their escort went missing when they were “visited” by Maoist rebels. Not too many days later, as they made the rapid ascent to the Tibetan Plateau, a team member had to be evacuated when he was struck with severe altitude sickness.

Fortunately everyone either turned up safe and sound, or recovered from their illness.

Palin is straight about how his perceptions were affected by these events, resulting in him projecting his feelings on to those around him. “When I am happy, they must be happy. Now I’m suspicious, they must be too. Their expressions give nothing back. They get on with their work and I get on with my insecurities,” he writes, after the Maoist incident.

His most vivid memory of the journey was “the first real view of Himalayas, from Nepal to Tibet. The whole sea of peaks was absolutely mindblowing.” For encounters, the greatest was his 40-minute interview with the Dalai Llama in Dharamsala, India.

Unfortunately this is one point where his narrative falters. Maybe it was better on film, but the interview in the book is underwhelming to be honest and it reveals little more than the fact that the Dalai Llama seems to be a decent chap. The author does scratch the surface on how stage managed events in Dharamsala can be, but fails to dig deeper about the Dalai Llama’s own part in this.

Nevertheless, this is a minor point to be fair, and throughout the rest of the book Palin uses an even hand to shed light on the complex political and cultural realities that he comes face-to-face with.

He intelligently portrays the situations in Tibet, Afghanistan, and Kashmir, and vividly describes the contrasts between the intense poverty and vibrant cultures, dirty wars and high-altitude paradises that make the Himalayas one of the world’s most inspiring destinations.

“They seem to face the situation [the war in Kashmir] with remarkable stoicism,” he writes of the Kashmiris. “I’m back among the mountain people – patient, taciturn, and politely wary of outsiders. Masters of survival.”

In recent years high quality, intelligent travel writing has proved hard to come by. The genre that produced such greats as Colin Thubron and William Dalrymple has gone into decline, partly due to the current spate of comedy travelogues (“worst toilets of the world”, “how I followed a third-rate Eighties pop star around Europe”), and partly due to the shortsightedness of the editorial teams at various big-name publishers.

Thank Chatwin, then, for Rory MacLean. With six books to his name already, and latest bestseller Magic Bus recently out in paperback, MacLean has proved to be a breath of fresh air in a stifled genre. Under The Dragon was an insightful and often thrilling ride through war-troubled Burma, while Next Exit: Magic Kingdom saw him putting a surprisingly intelligent spin on the holidaymakers’ playgrounds of Florida.

In Magic Bus he retraces the Hippie Trail that marked the beginning of the modern travel industry in the Sixties and Seventies, a six thousand mile trek that now leads through war zones and some of the world’s most chaotic cities. Thankfully he still finds a few tie-dyed hippie leftovers along the trail as he spins his story of enlightenment, exploration and the Grateful Dead.

Mixing travel stories with history, culture and the occasional moment of Eastern spiritualism, it’s an impressive achievement and a fascinating read. I start out by asking Rory what it was that first attracted him to the story of the “Hippie Trail”. Was there a particular impetus that put the idea for the book in his head?

“Only thirty years ago Western travellers breezed through Afghanistan,” Rory explains, already animated by the mention of his subject. “English girls hitchhiked alone across Anatolia with flowers in their hair. Free-spirited teenagers from London and Los Angeles were welcomed as honoured guests in Baghdad. Now a Western passport, once respected, is a liability in many parts of the Middle East. No sane tourist visits Mosul or Kandahar. Visitors to the Hindu Kush often fear for their lives.

“I wanted to find out what went wrong. How did we squander the promise and trust of the Sixties and Seventies? In 2002, following the US invasion of Afghanistan, the classic Asia Overland “hippie” trail was reopened for the first time in a generation. I saw an opportunity not only to capture the spirit and stories of those heady years, and to compare youthful idealism then and now, but to understand why the Sixties cast such long shadows over our own fearful and protective era.”

As in all the best travel literature, he meets a variety of colourful and intriguing characters along the way — perhaps even more than usual, given the ex-hippie communities that he moves through. I was intrigued to know whether hed remained in contact with any of these people, and who had made the biggest impact on his story.

“In Istanbul I met the original Flower Child,” Rory tells me. “In Pakistan I broke bread with a one-time dope-smoking Catholic who converted to Islam and became an imam – because of Bob Dylan. In Rishikesh I met the Beatles’ doctor. But I’ve become friends with a sentimental Englishman named Rudy, a former bus driver who “followed that long line of loonies” from London to India over thirty times in the late Sixties and early Seventies.

“I never tire of hearing his amazing travel stories. Outside Victoria Coach Station he’d collect “girls in beads, guys with battered twelve-string guitars, Essex shop assistants, Welsh council workers, all of them… looking for an Adventure.” He’d drive them first to Amsterdam. In Dam Square he would open his old Bedford bus door and shout out, “Anyone for India?”. And people would get on! And off they’d go to India, levitating over border crossings because of the amount of dope he passed around.”

I’d heard that since the hardback publication of Magic Bus literally hundreds of veteran “intrepids” had come out of the woodwork, and that Rory was now involved in recreating those communities of the Sixties and Seventies with modern internet technology. How on earth had that come about?

“When Magic Bus was published, and the first reviews appeared in the press, something unexpected happened,” he tells me. “Trail “veterans” started writing to me by the dozen. They’d headed east in the Sixties or Seventies and, motivated by reading the book, they embarked on a new trek, up the stairs to the attic to unearth old boxes and dusty journals. Within a couple of months I’d been sent over 500 photographs, and enough new material to write the book all over again.

“With their permission I started relaying those stories, along with those I’d already collected, in articles and talks. I even built the magicbus.info website and Flickr blog page to create a meeting place for this community of travellers. As a result the letters and emails multiplied again: Australian grannies recognised their earlier selves in old snapshots (“It is weird to see a photo you didn”t know existed, in the newspaper, out of the blue 31 years later”); New Age travellers shared their experiences with “veterans”; one American Intrepid even asked me if I could help him to find his old flame!”

Rory MacLean

Researching Magic Bus wasn’t all beads and incense, though. Many of the areas that the original trail wound through have undergone political upheavals since then, and several are considered to be no-go areas for Westerners. Had he felt threatened at all during his journey?

“I was frightened in Afghanistan,” Rory admits, quite reasonably, “not least because every other adult male seems to carry a Kalashnikov. The country has become much more dangerous since my visit. These days I consider it totally off-limits to travellers.” With six books now under his belt, including several Top Ten hits, Rory has become one of the most recognisable names in modern travel writing. I ask him what it is that makes a travel book great. “A book or story that is written from the heart,” is his succinct answer. “As a reader I want to know how a journey affected the writer, what he or she learnt through the trip, and how he or she was changed by the experience.”

So is there anything that he has to take with him every time he travels – a lucky charm perhaps? Or is it more likely to be a penknife and compass?

“Books!” he replies, cementing his credentials as one of our more literary travellers. “The preparation for a journey and new travel book requires months of reading, which I never get through in time. My most important possession along the Asia Overland trail was my dog-eared copy of On The Road. Kerouac’s restless, seminal work blended fiction and autobiography to define the “Beat” and then the hippie-generation. Its influence in propelling countless kids onto the road cannot be overstated.”

I also ask him whether there are still places that he wants to travel to, or if he’s already ticked off the major destinations on his hit list. He’s certainly travelled more than most of us will do in a lifetime, and he’s passed through some surprisingly out-of-the-way and dangerous locations en route.

“I’ve never been to Japan,” he confesses, “its purity, aesthetic and cuisine fascinate me. Also I’d love to visit a love hotel (with my wife Katrin!). Fly Me To the Moon is in Tokyo: a Japanese love hotel that features suites with pneumatic beds surrounded by wrap-around video screens. As the wind blows through your hair, guests rock and soar above New York’s skyscrapers, through the Grand Canyon and even into outer space!”

So does he always travel as research for his writing, or does he still fly overseas to relax like the rest of us? Somehow it’s hard to imagine someone with Rory’s intrepid spirit settling down for the day on a beach towel on the Costa Del Sol — but equally, he surely has to relax somehow?

“Writing about a place always enhances the experience for me, making my travels richer and more memorable. I’m no good at lying on a beach,” he confesses, confirming my suspicions. “Perhaps the most relaxing place on earth for me is kneeling in a Canadian Chestnut canoe. Nothing, absolutely nothing, moves me like dawn in Quetico, one of Canada’s vast wilderness sanctuary parks, gliding across the dark mirror of still water, paddling into the embrace of ageless forests, listening to the call of the loon.”

As we say goodbye he tells me that he’s on his way to a conference in Italy that’s dedicated to “La Rotta Hippie”, the Hippy Trail that Rory followed as his research for Magic Bus. With his new subject he seems to have uncovered a previously untapped source of stories, a treasure chest of travel anecdotes and shared memories. Unfortunately Italy isn’t likely to offer him any ageless forests or Chestnut canoes — although “La Rotta Hippie” might prove to have more than its fair share of loons…