16 January - anonymity & armour

Everyone should sometimes go to a place where being themselves as they know it is not possible, your clothes don’t indicate who you’re, your accent, your mannerisms don’t make you someone they want or do not want to talk to. You’re an enigma no one’s interested in solving. The lives of those around you go on without you. You’re some kind of refugee with the status of someone with cash and c/cards in their pockets. No one will run you out of town, in fact some will welcome you in their hotels and shop. You’re invisible, though you stand out in your clothes that are just so different. You’re not even attractive as you don’t fit in with national stereotypes of beauty. You’re too skinny, too white. Your hair is too lank and in some places if you’re a man with no beard you’re like some kind of unremarkable teenager. You can break any habits as you cannot reach for your toutines, your coffee like this, your window shopping like that. The paper you read every day… you wont’ miss it, the music you listen too will be the wrong rhythm for here. You can wash your entire body and soul and rinse it out clean. Or just different. This time am going to do it in Chennai and round and round in Southern/central India. The solitude and anonymity is precious and later so will be the return to ‘your’ people.

Just from the first morning out in a foreign culture, realise am sort of happiest on a bus/train coming from a place I hardly got to know and heading for one I definitely don’t know yet. Suspect am the same with people?

Wearing your old/previous travel clothes is like putting on your warrior armour, your protection. To ther people they are an average pair of green thick silk trousers, to you they’re the ones you had on when you reached the top of the plateau of Sygiria in Sri Lanka and again when you climbed the steps to the main temple in Angkor Wat. You're practically invincible.