Rishikeshing

So I returned to Circe’s Island ,  Rishikesh, hungover and heartbroken. It hadn’t been the plan, but maybe it was exactly what I needed.

I surrendered to the myths and whispers about the river’s healing power. I sat by her edge for hours, letting the turquoise flow pass me by like time itself. I went to the gym. I ran in the jungle. I spent time with my odd cast of Indian friends. Everyone I met was drawn to this place for reasons they couldn’t quite name. A friend coined it “getting Rishikeshed.” You come for a few days. You stay for months.

I knew I wouldn’t make it to Southeast Asia for the winter as planned. But I made peace with that. I told myself I’d rest here a few weeks, then move on. Keep the body moving. Keep the mind occupied.

But at night, the doubts always returned.

What am I doing?

Where is this all headed?

Is this journey just an elaborate escape ,  or something more?

People on social media called it the trip of a lifetime. But those same people didn’t see the reality ,  the loneliness, the fatigue, the psychological freefall. The curated adventure and the actual, shapeless days. No safety net. Just the road. And the hope that, after the leap, the net might appear. But faith in freefall is a flimsy canopy. And right then, it was all I had.

Time began to distort. Maybe it was the place. Maybe the hash. The riverside cafés were thick with it.

Without realising, I’d become a long-timer. I knew the shopkeepers. The chai wallahs. The expats. My circle widened ,  billionaire Indians chasing redemption, broken artists, recovering addicts, backpacking mystics. A whole tribe of seekers hiding out in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Sometimes the panic returned ,  the black dog was scratching at the doors of my sanity. When it did, I went to the river. The Ganga had grown colder. Winter had come to the mountains. I’d wade in, dive deep, let the freezing water slice through the negative thoughts. It always drew a crowd.

Indians don’t swim. Not here. Not often. Most come to dip their heads, perform a ritual, then retreat. Those who try to swim across usually don’t make it. Tales of drownings abound ,  blamed on the river’s divine will. The truth was simpler: drunk young men, high on hash, trying to impress someone.

That’s how I met Gil.

A fifty-year-old German travel writer, and also a cold-water swimmer. He’d spent decades reporting on the subcontinent, especially Pakistan. Trekking solo through deserts, climbing peaks in Hunza long before it was “cool.” He hadn’t returned in years ,  said it wasn’t safe. He’d pissed off the ISI.

We bonded over stories. He became a mentor and offered to help me write. Brutal, brilliant, Teutonic. Where I waxed poetic, he slashed sentences with a pen. “Dat is to much! You need to cut it n=down!” he’d blunder in his thick accent. My verbose French style got blitzkrieged into something leaner. It was humbling. And helpful.

Evenings were spent wrapped in thick scarves, walking the banks with Tyagi ,  young, romantic, hiding from his family. Talking life, women, books, heartbreak.

November turned to December. The week I meant to stay became a month. I trained at the gym. Smoked. Swam. Slept. I laughed with Mo ,  a millionaire-turned-addict-turned-runner. I watched Victoria, a wounded Ukrainian, search for meaning. We were all broken in our own ways, letting the river patch us back together.

Mo roped me into a local half-marathon. I agreed, curious. After eight months on a motorcycle, countless cigarettes, and barely any cardio, I wanted to see what I had left in the tank.

He didn’t tell me it was hosted by the Indian Army. Nor that it doubled as a training event for the Olympic marathon team. I was in the hurt locker by kilometre fifteen. I walked part of it ,  a first for me. Shame crawled up my spine. But I still finished. Two hours flat. Not bad. Not great. A long way from the 1:25 I clocked during Parachute Company preparation runs.

Jungle Christmas

Life in Rishikesh settled into a rhythm. The Ganga. Gym. The strange peace of knowing I was in a place where nothing was expected of me. I loved my friends. I felt welcome.

Suddenly, it was Christmas. My first alone. My first in a non-Christian land.

The night before, I’d been drinking with a group of Deloitte consultants from Delhi ,  sharp, funny, cosmopolitan guys who’d taken pity on the lone foreigner. We debated religion, corporate life, the absurdities of spirituality. I was grateful they had taken me in for the evening, they did their best to make me feel at “home” for Christmas, a bottle of scotch whisky helped in the process.

Christmas had never really been a thing for me, after my mum passed Christmas was just another day dad and I would spend together. He didn’t cook I didn’t care. I missed him all the same.

Christmas Day came. The sun was out. No decorations. No carols. No pressure. I didn’t have to perform anything for anyone. I missed people, sure ,  my father, stuck in the fog of Alzheimer’s; my aunt Tessa, warm and wonderful. But I also felt something like relief.

The memory of Christmases past ,  with Kate, with grief, with lonely fights in spare rooms ,  they flickered. I let them go. I smoked some Manali black beside a naked sadhu on the banks of the ganges and stared into the river.

Routine or boredom?

Boredom, anxiety, and routine had begun to settle in. The Ganges had done its healing work. I’d reached a kind of inertia, unsure how to start moving again. The thought of getting back on the road filled me with quiet dread. I’d found peace in Rishikesh ,  but I could feel the spiritual gloss beginning to wear thin. It was time.

Maybe if I didn’t leave soon, I never would. Maybe I’d just give up and settle in Rishikesh. Part of me was still clinging to the mission I’d set myself ,  but another part was growing tired. My heart and head were torn. I had no home to return to. My soldier’s life was over. The camaraderie, the structure ,  gone. I could make a home anywhere now. I was free. And that freedom was crushing. I didn’t know what to do with it.

Slowly, Rishikesh was becoming home. I knew the local business owners. I had a rhythm ,  the restaurants, the bars, the gyms. I even started dreaming up a plan to open a boxing gym in the yoga capital of the world. The Ganges felt like it was pulling roots from my itchy boots, trying to anchor me.

I’d grown close to someone else ,  Monica. A bright, erratic bohemian who had once worked for Google, now living by the river with her limping Jack Russell, Peanut. Peanut reminded me of Rags. If you’ve loved a Jack Russell, you know.

Monica was brilliant, in flux ,  caught somewhere between corporate redemption and spiritual retreat. We were both drifting, rebuilding. We’d spend long afternoons staring at the Ganga in silence. She was wounded. I was recovering. We became each other’s scaffolding for a while. It was platonic, born of a mutual need to step away from who we used to be ,  to try something less driven, softer, kinder.

As I slowly built the courage to leave, fixing Tara, training again, our friendship deepened. And so, the Rishikeshing continued. Every plan to move on melted into the slow rhythm of life by the river.

It was mid-January, my birthday was around the corner, I was going to turn 42, alone, drifting and so far from home. I was living in an ashram, a year before I was Major Clark, working for the British ambassador in London , jumping out of planes with the French elite units and now I lived in a small room by the river Ganges, it made no sense to me, my identify was completely lost to me.

Rishikesh had emptied out. The cold swept down from the mountains, biting through the nights. I spent most evenings alone in my humble ashram room, meditating, trying to stitch together some sense of confidence. Laloo, the ashram dog, had taken up permanent residence with me. She seemed attuned to my moods ,  whenever I spiralled or grew tense, she’d rest her head on my lap and look up at me, soft-eyed and still.

I had to move but didn’t have much of a plan ,  just a vague knowing that it was time to go. The snow was beginning to melt in the high passes. Roads through Tibet would reopen by March. The thought stirred something in me ,  a quiet, persistent urge to keep going. But underneath that momentum was something heavier. I was still healing from the breakup with Emily. I’d come to realise that love, while beautiful, wasn’t enough. For a relationship to last, it needed time, commitment, shared goals. How would I ever find that in someone willing to live this wild, rootless dream ,  to circumnavigate the world on a motorcycle?

So I came back to centre. I would have to finish this journey alone. It wouldn’t be fair ,  to myself or to anyone else ,  to try and build a relationship on shifting ground. The nomadic life of a solo motorcyclist was lonelier than I’d expected. Fleeting connections couldn’t fill the gaps. Deep down, I knew I still had a long way to go before I was whole.

Maybe I feared the solitude. But I also revelled in the freedom. Still, the lonely nights pressed in. Doubts. Regrets. The loss of my military identity. The weight of old transgressions. The grip of addiction that had stalked me for years. It all came rushing back.

I knew I had to find a way to carry it, to heal from it. Until I could let go of that self-inflicted burden, I had no business asking someone else to carry it with me.

I had to let go. Free myself from my past. I’d thought the road was the answer ,  that distance could dissolve it. But you can’t outrun yourself. Meaning isn’t out there somewhere ,  it starts within.