Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Global roamıng!
She’s wandered the world on foot, padding around paradise islands and slogging through the Sahara. Now Kate Humble wants to inspire you to step out too, with these tantalising tales of her travels...
Back in 1999 my husband Ludo and I spent five weeks travelling with four men and their 50 camels across nearly 1,000 miles through the Sahara desert.
We spoke nothing of each other’s languages and came from cultures that couldn’t have been more different, but I came to see them as my desert family. It was a brutally hard journey, both for animals and humans, and often we travelled well into the night.
There is the misconception that deserts are vast expanses of monochrome sand, featureless, deadening to the senses, but one of the things I learnt was that the desert – well, this bit of it in northern Mali anyway – is as endlessly varied in terrain as the countryside I live in now, in south Wales, although admittedly less green.
It was on this journey that I discovered the joyous, almost hypnotic pleasure of walking, heightened by being in the company of animals and in a landscape that gave the impression no human had ever passed this way before. It was also where I became aware of the appearance of the first star in the sky, always before it was properly dark, always in the same place, always assuredly bright and twinkly.
Rachman, the senior member of our ‘family’, who had spent all his life since he was able to walk making this journey, called it ‘The Shepherd’s Star’. It was one of the many natural signposts he used to lead him unerringly through the dunes, to get to the next well or to a dried up watercourse where he knew the camels would find food.
The Shepherd’s Star was a comforting presence, at first the only pinprick of light visible – but as darkness descended over the desert like a cloak, the heavens would reveal the full chorus line, a bewildering array of thousands upon thousands of stars. As we walked, we’d watch the constellations move with stately majesty across the sky, feeling as if we were the sole visitors to the finest planetarium on earth.
For me, walking feels as vital as breathing. The first thing I do, every morning I can, is to go for a walk for an hour, or longer if I can get away with it, with my dogs. I find the simple action of putting one foot in front of the other, and the rhythm of that action, incredibly therapeutic. It wakes me up, unscrambles my sleep-fogged head.
But it also gives me a sense of immersion, of being rooted somewhere, a sensory and physical connection to whatever bit of the world I find myself in... which today is an island called Bequia, pronounced Beckway, in the Caribbean. It’s one of the biggest of the Grenadine islands, at seven square miles, and it pokes up through the sea like the back of an iguana.
The houses are all pretty and candycoloured, with verandas. There are great thickets of verdant vegetation, and garish flowers hang over ga rdens a nd walls. Every garden seems to have a goat in it.
After I return from a run, Ludo and I pad along the narrow strip of sand that lines Friendship Bay, where our hotel is, as far as we can go and then swim back. Then we walk to find somewhere to eat, and mooch around the vegetable market or the tiny bookshop with its surprisingly eclectic collection of books, maps and charts.
Afterwards, we walk to another bay, peeking nosily at the houses that cling to the slopes – many of which, we’ve been told, were purchased by foreign- ers for millions of dollars. We wonder idly if we’d want to live here, if we had millions of dollars. Then we climb back up the ridge in the hot afternoon sun, and drop back down to Friendship Bay to read till the sun goes down.
When darkness has fallen and the crescent moon is lying on its back like a Cheshire cat’s grin, we set off for another walk to the sound of crickets, amid the scent of flowers and cooking, surrounded by soft snatches of music and conversation. Few people seem to walk here after dark, but it doesn’t feel strange or unsafe to do, and it gives us another perspective on island life.
I’m in India, at a town built on a series of steep hills called Shillong in the far northeast state of Meghalaya, somewhere above Bangladesh. On my first outing I pass a Catholic church, bright icing-sugar blue, and worshippers are gathering, the street choked with cars, abandoned rather than parked. A few beggars sit outside the gates with their bowls.
Shillong’s market is a maze of tiny alleyways and steps, where unfamiliar fruits overflow baskets and crowd the
‘There’s a hypnotic pleasure in walking’
stalls. Old men read newspapers while drinking tiny cups of sweet, dark tea. Boys with elaborately greased quiffs and mohicans hang out or stalk self-consciously through the crowds. Hundreds of little stalls beckon, with cuts of meat laid out on tables, fish brought in from Calcutta, heaps of pomegranates, jars of sweets, garlands of tiny plastic packets containing nuts and tamarind and some sort of dried berry.
There are women shopping, casting their eyes over fat, red chillies and bunches of coriander. None of the women I see are wearing saris: the traditional dress here is a piece of gingham cloth worn over shirts and jumpers, slung diagonally across the shoulder. Other women are wearing Western dress.
They walk after dark here, too. Some are alone, others are in pairs or small groups, and they all exude a selfassurance that should not be unusual – but in my experience, you don’t see women in other parts of India doing this. Meghalaya is one of the few matrilineal cultures in the world: that means family names are passed down
through the female line, from mothers to children, and so is property.
It is an ancient system that empowers women, making them equal and liberated. It is also the thing that gives this state its unique identity within India. Although I had read about it, I didn’t appreciate how it manifested itself until I was out on the streets on foot. I have never seen a country as startlingly clean as Rwanda. This central African country seems unreal, like a theatre set, because there is no rubbish anywhere. No bits of shredded plastic hanging in trees or bushes, no discarded packets and cans at the side of the road. One reason for this cleanliness, I discover, is that in 2008 plastic bags were banned – the use, sale, production and import of them. It is shameful that the rest of the world hasn’t seen what this small African country has achieved and immediately followed suit.
It is late afternoon when I get to the hotel in the capital, Kigali, and meet my colleague, Jonny. I suggest a walk into town: we are only here for the night and really only passing through Rwanda but I still need that walk to anchor me here.
Anyone who has ever watched a Woody Allen film will assume, as I did, that for New Yorkers a visit to their therapist is as much a part of their normal routine as the commute to work or brunch on Sunday. But the tall, strawberry blond man I am introduced to, by the gold statue at the entrance to Central Park, is a therapist with a difference: his name is Clay Cockrell and he encourages you to walk while you talk.
He has a favourite loop that we follow, walking alongside lakes, under trees and across open ground. The paths are smooth, with no uneven tracks or steep gradients to break the gentle rhythm of our pace. We’re not alone but the people we pass, pushing prams or throwing balls for their dogs, pay us no attention: our conversation is as private as it would be in any office.
As a species we’ve been walking for hundreds of thousands of years but recently, in the past 100 years or less,
we’ve become dependent on speedier ways of getting around that are less physically demanding. ‘I think we’ve forgotten that connection to the earth and the power of walking,’ says Clay.
‘We know that people do better when they have some form of exercise, even one as simple as walking. When you walk, you’re breathing differently, you’ve got more oxygen going to your brain, you’re outside, you can think more expansively, more clearly, more creatively. This is not rocket science.’
I think back over my many walks this year, and the feeling of blessed relief and release that came from putting one foot in front of the other. Clay’s right: it’s not rocket science but it can be powerful and healing. Extracted from Thinking On My Feet: The Small Joys Of Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other by Kate Humble, published by Aster, £20. Offer price £ 16 until 20/ 10/ 2018. Order at mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640, p&p is free on orders over £15.