In retrospect, perhaps my travel sickness, rarely apparent in the afore-mentioned situations, was rather a 'nausee' or 'ennui' induced by the banal and controlling society which has such empty and self-advancing goals, which is so divorced from respect for and celebration of the Nature, concerned only with exploitation, denudation, and profit. Perhaps the travel sickness is not that at all, but a certain mind-weariness of western ethics, which can only be cured by reflecting on the beauty of Seasons, of trees, of sky, the scented breeze, and the memories that these convey..

Today my friend, who is a bone doctor, in Bhopal as I write, at a clinic for the gas-affected victims of the Union Carbide leak in 1984, called me. The effects continue to blight the lives of the old, young, and the yet to be born. The land and water holes are still toxic and condemned, yet people have to drink from them, and try to grow crops, shortening their painful lives. With such awareness of beauty and purity among Hindus, and with the whole continent so dependent on a good-quality water supply, it seems incredible that an outside agency should have been allowed to get away with doing this. However in India, as everywhere else, money talks, and Union Carbide spent vast amounts in legal fees to British and U.S. Law firms, and fines to the Indian Government, more than they ever gave in compensation to the victims, in order to limit liability.

I was bathing in the Ganges at Rishikesh, which nestles in the foothills of the Himalayas, this time last February. The weather was unseasonably warm - it had been snowing in Delhi, much further south, a few days previously - but was now warm and sunny, although the river was freezing due to the ice cold melt water coming downstream from the slowly thawing snows in the upper mountains. I had a dhoti in which to bathe - a strip of cloth passed around the body and with both ends secured behind the neck.

My partner, in his lungoti (little lunghi) was the first to go in and bathe, and I watched as he soaped himself, then carried water in a lota away from the riverbank, and tipped it over himself, not to sully the purity with the dirt and suds washed off his body. A few trips back and forth, and he was clean, and he swum out into the current, moving more vigorously the colder it became. I stood on one of the enormous stone boulders, left to weather from a previous avalanche or up thrust from the young mountain range, caused by the inexorable progress of the southern continent into the landmass of central Asia.

As he stood washing his hair, I had taken a photograph. Now I couldn't wait for him to come out and sit with our belongings so that I too could swim - it looked so inviting! As he approached, scattering great drops of Ganges water (Ganga 'jel') - not 'pani', water, - all over the boulders and the sand, I scampered down to the water's edge to start the process with the soap and the lota - a small steel bucket used for everything from carrying water to heating milk and cooking. Having fully immersed myself three times, offering the appropriate prayers to Ganesh, ShivParavati, and Ganga Mai herself, I took the filled lota away from the river to rinse my long hair and squeeze it out. This took quite a few trips, and by the time I was satisfied that it was properly rinsed, my partner had dried and dressed himself, and was taking a photo of me in the river.

I laughed, attempting to duck down, then swam up and down a few times, realising fairly quickly that it was colder than I had imagined. The cold was not a deadening cold, however, but curiously invigorating, causing a deep red bloom to surface upon the skin, and the arms and legs to thrash about like mad… I remembered I had watched Indians swimming across the Narmada River in OmKareshwar, and had smiled to see the technique they used, which also involved a lot of thrashing and splashing.

Unlike the UK, which is surrounded by sea and copiously supplied with rivers and streams, the Indian continent has some great rivers - but also vast areas where water is only available from wells or in lengthy drainage ditches. Accordingly, learning to swim must be practised rather in the manner of the picture of Rupert Bear in Nutwood; over a chair, arms flailing like windmills and legs scissoring like pistons, with nary a bent knee or elbow in sight. In fact if Don Quixote had been in the vicinity he could have been excused for taking a running tilt at them... It was endlessly amusing to watch these rotating paddle steamers furrowing across the great river, as an exercise not only in cleanliness and godliness, tapasia (struggle undergone on the path towards enlightenment) and worship, but also as a very fine exercise the completion of which would lead to health, strength, and a closer intimacy with the River Deity.

Strivings such as these were often accompanied by groups of pilgrims also ceremonially bathing on the banks, and by small boats ferrying less intrepid souls to the island shaped like the letter Om, in the centre of the Narmada River, from which the Shrine draws its name. The multitude of people did not draw me however, on that occasion, and we bathed upstream, among the rushes and the smooth purple stones that line the banks, alongside moorhens and dippers, wagtails and fishes, weed and soft ripples far warmer, in Madhya Pradesh, than the cold snow-melt in Rishikesh (town of sages) in Uttar Pradesh (Upper State).

I compared the gentle Narmada with the Rushing Ganges at Haridwar, which is so fast, a little like the river in Inverness in Scotland, that it hurtles, and you know if your were to bathe unprotected by the chains along the bathing ghats you would be swiftly carried away downstream, along with the bloated corpses of careless oxen, or the occasional sight of inadequately burnt human remains. Nevertheless we bathed there on the way to Rishikesh. It is one of the holiest sangams (confluences) in India.

Both the Upper Ganges and the Narmada are, however, clearer and less busy than the lower reaches of the Ganges at Varanasi, where I took locks of hair from my mother and Grandmother, and a few years later from two writer friends of mine, in order to re-cremate them in absentia, and enable their spirits and those of their family for seven generations to achieve moksha, or liberation from the tyranny of this world.

The procedure was simple; on arrival I settled into my room, and in a niche in the wall I placed a kachouri (a small bowl) with jasmine oil in it, and soaked a lock each of my mother’s and of my grandmother’s hair. I placed a garland of jasmine for my mother, who loved it and had a winter-flowering shrub in her garden outside the breakfast room and lounge windows. For my grandmother, whose name was Rose, I placed her namesake flower alongside, together with some incense and an orange, some Ganga gel, pure water from the Ganges, and a picture of Shiva, Paravati, his consort, dressed in red, and Ganga Mai, who issues from his hair, dressed in green. In the same way Shiva is depicted with a white stream of water, like a crescent moon, issuing from his hair, so the holiest river in all India is conceived of as a boon-granting Goddess born in the mountains, at Gaumukh, (Cow’s mouth). I meditated night and morning, and went down on the third day at dawn to perform a ritual puja, involving a prayer and bathing in the Ganges, then lighting the hair and scattering the ashes, the flowers, and throwing in a coin as to seal it. I then saw a Gangetic dolphin rise to the surface amid the garland of flowers, as they floated downstream. After completing the puja I made my way to Delhi, and then back to Almora, in the Himalayan foothills, and spent some time in reflection and contemplation, near where Nehru and his family used to take their summer retreat. I rented a room, and lived simply, blending with the people and the environment.

The first time I had gone to the Kumaon, I was younger, and fitter, and it seemed that a trek in the high jungle, in the wilds, far from civilisation for a month or so, would teach me more about survival than any book, and would give me an experience of life in India unparalleled anywhere… Yet first I had to get to know the people, and learn a little of their language and their ways. I went to the soft Kumaon, so beautiful, with the pulverised mica shining like stardust even in the soil, gilding everything; it was like coming home to fairyland…

I stretched tall, and my walk took on a light, lithe and swaying gait that characterises the sari-wearing hill women, whose boundless energy comes from their determination to roam the slopes, each field a subdivision of the previous generations’ in the parcelling-out procedure after the death of the elders - and each field not only smaller, but farther apart, so that no one person might be said to have all the good land. Many allotments scattered saved arguments, and left only the energy needed to grow millet, and rai, or mustard greens, aloo and ghobi, and to cut grass for the buffalo kept walled in the yard by the huts or bungalows.

In the dark before dawn, I had the habit of going out walking, to deal with the night soil before the world was awake.. It is traditionally the women who rise first in the morning, who fetch the water, kindle the fire, sweep the yard and see to the man's chai - not until the women and children are up and washed, the place spic and span, do the hill men came forth and perform their morning ablutions, receive their chai, a spiced tea, and then take whatever commissions or vegetables the women have grown to market. As the doodh wallah the men will sell milk from the buffalo, and as the lakri (firewood) wallah will scour the ever-decreasing jungly areas for illicit wood. Some get on their scooters to frequent or to run a pan (betel leaf) sellers’ stall, where they also sell bidis, a thread of tobacco rolled in a leaf, or cigarettes, and gossip.

Meanwhile their womenfolk set off for the fields, a thick rope slung casually over their shoulder or even coiled on their heads, for roping the burdens of firewood, and fodder for the buffalo into an enormous bundle bigger than themselves, and making their way home with it at the end of the day. Arriving at the small strips of land they cultivate, they then sit and brew tea together, and loudly regale one another with tales of the night's doings, the village scandal, the children, and of the behaviour of their peers. They invited me to join them, and I did, the tea tasting bitter and thick, dark and faintly of kerosene, from the cans used to draw the water…

Their scythes sharpened from stones, the women passed one to me, laughing, to see what I would make of it. I laughed too, rose, and grasped a swatch of grass, cutting it low to the ground, and quickly gathered an armful, then wrapped it round with a long stem or three, looped it and stood it, a stook, as I'd learned from organic farms in England.. They smiled and nodded their approval, yet showed me that they cut even closer to the ground, and were pleased to think that, although I wore an Indian sari, ate and drank in Indian fashion, had long dark hair like the Indian women, and spoke a little Hindi, had five children as some of them did, 'do lurka tin lurki', (two boys and three girls, sons and daughters, 'beta and beti'), yet I could not cut grass as close, and was therefore not up to scratch! That was probably my saving grace - had I been able to 'do it all' it would have not been polite. As it was I passed muster, and was invited to many homes. I went to one, Kamala, and gave her my second-best sari..

At another town, Jageshwar, in the Kumaon, UP, I was invited to dance for the villagers alongside the professional dances called to bless the sowing of the crops. The only men allowed out were an ancient with a tambour, a drum played under the arm with a stick, and a young boy also with a small drum. All the other men in the village had to stay indoors; it was bad luck for them to watch.

I was dressed, again, in the Sari, blouse and petticoat I adopted whilst in India - a practical costume cool in the heat and warm in the chill of night. I danced as did the Indian women, mirroring their steps and actions. My dance teacher in the UK had been Indian, although he also taught modern, contemporary and Martha Graham technique. These lessons stood me in good stead as I followed their every move. They began to address me as Paravati in their songs, as I had fairer skin, and they needed someone to take the part of Paravati for the dance.

We wound our way single file, and in two's and three's, dancing from house to house, where each female householder would come out, place an offering of cooked roasted grains, floury pink sweet meal, flowers, and little dough balls, on the large tray containing the cardboard cut-out representations of the Deities and miniature shrine which was balanced on the head of one of the dancers. Then gradually, as more and more women joined the procession, we danced along the banks of the river, past the thirteenth Jyoti Lingam, or ancient Shiva temple complex, towards an ancient boulder in the jungle, which became he altar for the portable shrine. The singing and dancing women then distributed prasadam from the shrine, and the dance came to an end. In groups of threes, fours or more, the women dispersed, and I was left alone, to retrace my steps back to the village.

I hoped my participation had the effect of a blessing on their crops and homes. We then were invited to eat with a family in an upper room, and shown to the temple complex to sleep. The site was so very beautiful and ancient beyond measure, the design of the temples from the times when many Indians were yet sun worshippers, and the original Surya Mandir (Sun Temples) were made, from prehistory. These pagan times were when the old dark race, the Dravidians, lived all over the continent, before the lighter invaders from the North West. The remains of the Dravidians, followers of the Parsee religion, still live in untouched areas in tribal communities, but from the general diasporas their descendants can be found all over India, and their ancient temples and their cultures’ contributions to the overall cornucopia of culture that is India’s heritage still have an important influence.

When the time came to leave, it was yet again a bus journey, which after the freedom was very cramped, but it couldn’t be helped. I was forever amazed at the very little things about being right up close among the ordinary people, not in tourist-class hotels and transport, and feel that in that way I got to know and love the real India. I would visit the places of pilgrimage, worship at other temples, (I can thank God in any language, and in all expressions available to us) and as a non-partaker in dubious habits (no attempt to preach there) I did not become the target for unwelcome conjecture or attention... In fact, on the plane home, the steward was amazed to find he recognised me from one of the temples in the City of Delhi - he hadn't realised I was English; I'd stuck in his mind, and he made himself known to me as I got on the plane. It was the Maha Laxmi Naryan Mandir where there are shrines to the Goddess Laxmi, prosperity and all Blessing, and Naryan, may awareness of God be everywhere. May her blessing still go with us now, and with you who read this... Om Jai Ganesh! Om Shiva Paravati! Om Laxmi Naryan! Jai Bharati!