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There Are Other Rivers

Alastair Humphreys

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Frequency: 1 episode/3d. Total Eps: 34

Alastair Humphreys walked across India, from the Coromandel Coast to the Malabar Coast, following the course of a holy river. Walking alone and spending the nights sleeping under the stars, in the homes of welcoming strangers or in small towns and villages, he experienced the dusty enchantment of ordinary, real India on the smallest of budgets. There Are Other Rivers tells the story of the walk through an account of a single day as well as reflecting on the allure of difficult journeys and the eternal appeal of the open road.

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🇬🇧 Great Britain - books
25/09/2025
#93
🇬🇧 Great Britain - books
26/12/2024
#96

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There Are Other Rivers

Episode 1

Tuesday, January 21, 2020 • Duration 00:08

There Are Other Rivers tells the story of the walk through an account of a single day as well as reflecting on the allure of difficult journeys and the eternal appeal of the open road.

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Author's Note

Episode 1

Monday, April 6, 2020 • Duration 07:28

“For I have discovered that there are other rivers. And this my boys will not know for a long time nor can they be told. A great many never come to know that there are other rivers.” ~ John Steinbeck

“Maatraan thottathu malligaikku manam irukkum.”
“The far-off jasmine flower smells sweeter.”

Author’s Note

First of all, here’s what this book is not:
• A book about India.
• A chronological account of a coast-to-coast walk across southern India.
• An epic adventure tale.

So what is it? Primarily this book is an attempt to articulate my fascination with the open road and the magnetism of the next horizon. I hope it will strike a chord with anyone restless and yearning for a long journey. I wrote it because I spend much of my time on big trips asking myself why on Earth I am doing it. And the answer is often not particularly clear.

The days are hot, hard and repetitive. I am often lonely, thirsty and tired. Yet I keep coming back for more. What is the enduring appeal of these days that have forged my adult life? They have made me who I am, both the bad and the good. These days have created most of my strongest memories and all my best anecdotes. These are the days of clarity that I turn to when I’m looking for answers and direction in my life. And I think to myself, “one day, on the road...”

I also wanted to try to share what a day on the road is actually like. So this is a tale about a single day on my walk through India, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. I wanted to describe any day on the road, from any journey like this. It could have taken place anywhere, at any time since people began taking on these questing adventures. This is why I have removed all dates, time frames and names. Everything in this book is true. I have only re-ordered the incidents to build up my “day”. It’s a bit like Morecambe and Wise. They defended their terrible piano playing by saying they had “all the right notes, although not necessarily in the right order.”

Most travel and adventure writing focuses on the occasional extraordinary stuff that happens amongst all the humdrum ordinariness. By definition, these incidents are not how most of the time on the journey is spent. The greatest expeditions in history are nothing more than a string of single days, most of them pretty uncomfortable and mundane. Perhaps long adventures are about nothing more than mining for the extraordinary? I don’t think so. The average day on the road, the hundreds and thousands of normal days that make up the majority of my adventures, has a magnetism that draws me back time and time again. The terrible food, the sore feet, the repetitive conversations, the fungal rashes and the pummelling heat. The happiest days of my life. Any day, any journey. One day on the road.

There are many reasons why I chose to self-publish There Are Other Rivers. It may be interesting to share some of them here. I self-published my first book. I didn’t do it through choice. I did it because no agents or publishers were interested in my story about cycling round the world. Trying to get my self-published book stocked in bookshops on a meaningful scale was futile and frustrating. Eventually though I found a publisher and began selling books in the traditional way. I will continue to do this where I deem it appropriate.
Fast-forward five years and five books and I am choosing to return to self-publishing. Why?
I love bookshops but they account for a tiny percentage of my book sales. Almost all my sales are online or at my talks. This book will not be for sale in any bookshops. What I lose by that I make up with the freedom I gain. Self-publishing gives me total control. I can share the story however I want. This is a linear, chronological journey but I wanted to share it in a non- linear way. That might not be sensible. It probably won’t appeal to a mainstream audience. It may not even be a good idea. But it was my idea and I am willing to stand by it. I have produced this book as a Foldedsheet “mappazine” (which I really like), as a book of photography, a Kindle version, a PDF download, an audio book and even as a good old fashioned “normal” book. The schedule for getting all of this work done was determined solely by how hard I chose to work, how much coffee I drank and how little sleep I could survive on.

I wrote this book myself. I edited it and proof red it two. I will do all of the sales and marketing on my own. I acknowledge that the book would definitely have been better with the help of an editor, a proofreader and well-chosen test readers. But my walk through India was alone. I accepted that out there I would stand or fall by myself. This project is the same. It is risky. It is a bit stupid. But there are no excuses to hide behind and I like that. Self-publishing is an opportunity for simplicity, hard work and personal responsibility. Exactly like the journey I am writing about.

Another important aspect of self-publishing is that it can provide value for money, cutting out all sorts of middle men. I have priced all the versions of There Are Other Rivers as reasonably as possible. I am aware that this is only a short story and that I am not Shakespeare. But I hope that you feel it is value for money. Get in touch if you don’t and I will send you a refund.

The internet makes self-publishing so simple. This returns a degree of power to normal people. I can never compete for the publishers’ penny against celebrity travel authors or people who have had their trips on the telly and then dashed off a hasty book. Self-publishing gives a voice to people who have an interesting story, though perhaps one that will only appeal to a small niche. I am not a famous author hidden away behind PA’s and PR teams. Send me an email or get in touch on Twitter. Tell me what you think of the book. I’ll reply in person.

On the subject of the internet and social media, one of the hardest parts of self-publishing is informing a wide audience about the book. I would be extremely grateful if you could help spread the word about There Are Other Rivers: tell your friends or mention it online. Most helpful of all would be if you were willing to leave a quick rating and review on Amazon for this or any of my other books. I’m not looking for fake feedback – leave your honest opinion! If you already have an Amazon account this will take you less than a minute.

I hope you enjoy There Are Other Rivers. Thank you!

Alastair Humphreys
England, November 2011

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Escape

Episode 10

Wednesday, April 15, 2020 • Duration 03:54

Escape

“For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that makes it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.”

Head thumping heat shimmering sun beating. Loneliness in crowds of foreign tongues staring at one foreign face. Bruised feet dragging spirit bruised shoulders slumped. Can’t think. Can’t speak. Just walk. The monotony of the open road.

These are common complaints on a difficult journey. I often get them all in a single day, and know there will be more of the same tomorrow. Most days involve very little except for this carousel of discomfort. It doesn’t sound like much of an escape.

Yet escape is a key part of the appeal of the road. All my adult life I have felt the need to get away. Its intensity and frequency ebbs and flows but it has never gone altogether. Perhaps it is immaturity, perhaps a low tolerance threshold. But there is something about rush hour on the London underground, tax return forms and the spirit-sapping averageness of normal life that weighs on my soul like a damp, drizzly November. It makes me want to scream. Life is so much easier out on the road. And so I run away for a while. I’m not proud of that. But the rush of freedom I feel each time I escape keeps me coming back for more. Trading it all in for Simplicity, Adventure, Endurance, Curiosity and Perspective. For my complicated love affair with the open road.

Escaping to the open road is not a solution to life’s difficulties. It’s not going to win the beautiful girl or stop the debt letters piling up on the doormat. (It will probably do the opposite.) It’s just an escape. A pause button for real life. An escape portal to a life that feels real. Life is so much simpler out there.

But it is not only about running away. I am also escaping to attempt difficult things, to see what I am capable of. I don’t see it as opting out of life. I’m opting in.

On this walk my feet and shoulders are the vital parts of my body. My face, my looks and my hairstyle are irrelevant. Out here nobody knows who I am. Nobody knows what I have done well in my life. Nobody knows what I have failed at. I’m just a guy on a walk.

Simplicity

Episode 10

Thursday, April 16, 2020 • Duration 04:13

Simplicity

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.”

A couple of years ago I was out on the crumpled ice of the frozen Arctic Ocean. It was bitterly cold. And I was deliriously happy. It was the stark simplicity of life out on the ice that I enjoyed so much. I had very few things to focus on each day, but I had to do each one to the best of my ability. If I did not then the consequences in those conditions could be severe. I decided, as my hands and nose thawed out back in the tent, that when I become King of the World this would be a good decree to run the world by:

• Concentrate only on the stuff that really matters. Cut everything else.

• Do what you do to the very best of your ability. Do this every single day. Otherwise you die!

Walking across India was not a case of life or death. But it was a similarly refreshing draft of straightforwardness away from the noise and clutter of the 21st Century.

As I walk upstream towards my goal the river becomes smaller and smaller. There are fewer diluting, polluting branches or confusing tributaries. Slowly I am moving away from the broad, stagnant channels of the delta towards the single holy well at the source.

I wanted simplicity. Simplicity of purpose and to travel as light as possible. I wanted to pare life down to the basics again. India was a crash diet for me after the creeping lassitude of easy living.

Simplicity of possessions felt difficult to achieve, accustomed as I had become to life, liberty and the pursuit of stuff. Yet it is liberating and enriching. Carrying all my possessions through a hot Indian day is a sweaty penance for materialism. It helps me focus on what I need. What I really need. The clothes I stand up in, plus a spare pair of socks, a lungi, flip-flops and a clean shirt now feels ample. A wise man once said that the things you own end up owning you. On the road you have few owners. Thoreau got it right, wanting to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life.”

Alone

Episode 11

Friday, April 17, 2020 • Duration 02:59

Alone

“All great and precious things are lonely.”

Odd choice, India, if I wanted to be alone. But being alone is an important part of my journeys. Alone time. A lonely time. Alone with all of India. I feel more alone when I’m jostled by a billion strangers than somewhere wild and empty. But what is alone?

Alone might be out in the hot scrub, watched by nervous deer. The only sound inside my head is my heart thumping. Everything is motionless except for the crunch of a family of wild elephants walking slowly past. I stare, awestruck, as small as a world and as large as alone.

Or alone might be on the roof of a cheap guesthouse at sunset, having walked for hours through the crowds and chaos – like a murmuration of starlings – to reach the centre of the city and this brief moment of sanctuary. I watch the busy streets as parakeets dash madly for home, whooshing past in clusters. The call to prayer drifts lyrically across the city on the hot breeze. I feel a sense of exhilaration swelling inside me that howls,

“Woohoo! I can’t believe I am here, in India, doing this. This is special. I am lucky.”

I love this kick, the rush and buzz of joy and freedom. Just being in motion for the sheer heck of it. This is the unbeatable intensity of solitude that keeps me hooked on travelling alone.

I love the continual exposure to new people, new faces and new ideas. And I appreciate being forced to make my own decisions and accept their consequences. I have to trust myself, encourage myself and boss myself all at the same time. The effort, the responsibility and the opportunity are all mine.

Being alone forces me to be resilient and flexible. There can be no coasting, letting somebody else make the decisions, work out the route and find somewhere safe to sleep. And there are no ties, constraints or compromises. I can do what I want, go where I want, be who I want. It is an undeniably selfish pleasure.

I miss those I left behind. Being alone adds a lick of lonely melancholy to the lovely moments. I can never share these memories with anybody. But being alone also adds a sheen of silence to each sunset and moonrise; the greedy pleasure of having it all to myself. Nobody within thousands of miles knows who I am. Nobody knows my name. I can be intimidated by that or relish the freedom it offers.

Snapshot

Episode 12

Saturday, April 18, 2020 • Duration 05:16

Snapshot

“The Earth teaches us more about ourselves than all the books in the world.”

All the clichés about India are true. Clichés always are. But there is so much more. There always is. India: so vivid and loud. Energetic and mad. Charming, ingenious, squalid and callous. In my head I see all this. I suspect that anyone who has been to India and not just stayed in an International hotel will do too. But I fear that if you haven’t been to India then I am going to fail you. I don’t have the capacity to bottle the extraordinary essence of India. This is a pity as India is among my favourite of all countries, even though I have seen little of it.

My first impressions of India, like generations of travellers before me, were intense and conformed to stereotypes. The filth, the chaos, the poverty, the stupid driving. The bright saris, the delicious food, the instinctive, gentle civility.

After a few weeks on the road I’m settling in to India a little and getting used to how things work. I sit in the shade at a street stall drinking chai. The day feels oppressive. Heat. Dust. Noise. Glare. Stares. Music. Engines. Cell phones. Car horns. I need to hide from it all for a few minutes.

A lorry beeps Silent Night loudly as it reverses. Oh, the irony. There are grubby finger marks round doors and half-removed bill posters and election flyers on half-painted walls. There are crates of empty glass bottles awaiting collection and strips of shampoo sachets hanging above shop counters. Bicycles squeak by, daring to compete with the lunatic drivers. They all have old sprung saddles, rod brakes and a bell.

I flick through a newspaper, mostly reading the small articles and adverts. In the same way that I chose to walk an unglamorous slice of India, I prefer the small oddments of news rather than the main, attention-grabbing, Taj Mahal-esque headlines.

There have been surprise checks at various government offices to improve punctuality and attendance of staff. All officials were found to be absent from the Chemmedu Agriculture Extension Centre and Sericulture Department Office.

Morning

Episode 13

Sunday, April 19, 2020 • Duration 06:17

Morning

“And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy.”

The water in the emerald paddy fields glints as I walk. A confetti of butterflies flutters in the air. The roadside palms are painted in black and white checks. I enter a village with music blaring from speakers rigged on bamboo poles. I always like places that play music out loud (it’s quite common in parts of Eastern Europe, China and Latin America), even in the countries where it’s done with Orwellian undertones.

This feels like a happy town, a happy morning, except, I guess, for the goat who is about to be butchered on the roadside. I stop to watch. The knife is sharp and swift and one elegant slice ends the goat. How fragile, life! So very easy to die. So final. Is this a beautiful, musical morning to die? Or so beautiful and musical that the thought of death feels too sad to bear?

The goat is dead. It lies in the dust. There is very little blood. The butcher works swiftly, turning the animal into joints of meat. His customers wait patiently. I am fascinated by the neat and tidy compartments of organs inside the goat that had, until moments before, been working magically well.

Morning on the road is about the satisfaction of committing to action. Of being in motion and not yet demoralised or tired. The nerves have passed. It’s a positive time of day. Everything is still fresh. It is up to me to fill this day. I picture what I would be doing back home and what my friends might be doing right now. I’m glad to be out here (as opposed to later in the day when I’m longing for home and an easy life).

I am rarely without company. People always want to talk to me, to find out about this strange Englishman walking briefly through their lives. I walk from one identical conversation to the next. Why don’t you take a bus? Do you know Freddy Flintoff? Every day I see children playing cricket in the fields, the pitch scratched out on a patch of flat earth. They are always delighted if I stop to join their game.

“England against India!” I declare as the boys squabble over who will bowl at me first.

Curiosity

Episode 14

Monday, April 20, 2020 • Duration 03:26

Curiosity

“I’ve never been content to pass a stone without looking under it. And it is a black disappointment to me that I can never see the far side of the moon.”

Go somewhere new, try something different and life fizzes with questions. What will happen? How will my life change? How will I change my life?

No imagination has ever conjured up anything so unique, vivid and complex as any view on this planet. I am fascinated by what lies around the next corner. Like the lucky dip at a fairground, I was eager to delve into India, a country I had not been to, and rummage around in the sawdust with no idea what prizes I would pull out.

The Explorer, by Rudyard Kipling, tells of the lure of the unknown. The mountain ranges called to the explorer until he was drawn to find out what lay beyond them, even when people told him not to bother, that it was not possible. Curiosity took him “along the hostile mountains, where the hair-poised snowslide shivers” and through “the big fat marshes.” The hero, paradoxically, is content not to be a hero. He lets others take the plaudits and the spoils from his accomplishments. What then was his reward, if we assume rewards to be necessary? Primarily, it was a satiation of his curiosity. It never made him rich but the explorer ends his journey with a sense of satisfaction.

I am also drawn by the randomness and unpredictability of horizon chasing. I like having to respond to new situations. Out here I do not just have the opportunity for spontaneity; I am compelled into living spontaneously. I often fear this in anticipation, but love it in hindsight.

I know that these are the fun times, the mad times, the exciting times. Living by my wits. Trusting them to keep me alive. Standing on a hilltop and singing at the sky with no idea where I will sleep tonight but with enough chutzpah to be confident that it will all work out and enough positivity and humour to accept that the worst thing likely to happen is a long uncomfortable night. Morning will come. The sun will rise. And I will sleep extra well tomorrow because of tonight’s travails.

There is enough in this world for many lifetimes. But if the flavour of the ocean is contained in a droplet why can I not just be satisfied with all that is around me right now? Why am I constantly probing for something else? Is this the trait of an optimist or a pessimist? Am I always hoping for even better round the next corner? Am I just dissatisfied with the present, with my ‘now’? Or am I somewhere in between? In purgatory, searing away the bad, the weak and the superfluous in the hope that I’ll find a solution at last. The road rolls on and on. On towards the next horizon. It’s the most enticing page-turner I’ve ever known.And all I have to do is walk on to try to find out if the far-off jasmine flower really does smell sweeter.

Food

Episode 15

Tuesday, April 21, 2020 • Duration 02:35

Food

“What does a man need, really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment.”

A boy asks me about English food. I find it hard to describe, particularly without mentioning the delicate subject of roast beef.

“Is it burger? Pizza?”
And because it is hot I just agree with him.

Indian food is even harder to summarise. It is certainly very different to the Great British Indian Takeaway. It is rarely fluorescent orange. However, although there is undoubtedly a vast variety of food across the whole of India, in any one place, at any one time of the year, the poor people will eat a very limited repertoire. Most places serve the same one or two dishes. I eat them every day until a hundred miles or so later a new option emerges. The general theme, however, is always “curry”.

I eat curry for breakfast. I eat curry in the mid-day heat. I eat it three times every day. And I eat a lot of rice. I eat rice served on broad green banana leaves. I eat it in compartmentalised tin thali trays. I even pour water over it, mush it up with my hand and eat it that way. I eat idli (steamed rice cakes) and dosa (crispy rice pancakes) and rice served with various sauces (sambar) and curd. I eat in places where the rice keeps coming until you are full. I eat in places where I am presented with a banana and a smile at the end. The charm is that I never know what I will get next. Everything surprises and amuses me.

After eating curry every day for weeks I am sick of it. So one day, when I smell a different aroma, my taste buds explode. In greedy excitement I follow my nose to a stand where a boy is stirring a sizzling pan.

The smell of the spices is so different to what I am accustomed to.

Chilli, garlic, onions...
I am drooling and excited. It smells new and delicious. Excited, I call out to the cook, “What region is this food from?” “China.”

Learning

Episode 16

Wednesday, April 22, 2020 • Duration 02:14

Learning

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”

My life really got going the day I finished formal education. I began enjoying learning at about the same time, when I began wandering the world. Knowledge became gold dust. No longer was I learning stuff merely to regurgitate it in hot exam halls. I do appreciate the benefits of the little bits of paper I earned, but school on the road is different. Geography, culture, history, politics, religion: the way of the world begins to fit together. And the more I learn the more I learn how little I know.

Travel far from home and even mundane, ordinary events become out of the ordinary and fascinating. Knowledge and exciting fresh perspectives are thrown at me all the time. This doesn’t happen when life’s normal routine is ticking over. But I do have to caution myself to travel slowly. If I rush my journeys, one eye on the clock, eager only to tick off miles, countries or sights, then I’ll accumulate lists, but I won’t learn much. Truman Capote would dismiss it out of hand: “that’s not travelling, that’s moving.”

But backpackers and other holiday makers will learn at least as much about India as I will on my walk. And I hadn’t even particularly cared whether I did this walk in India or any other place on the planet. So I am not really doing this to learn specifically about India. What I want to learn from this experience, spending time amongst lives very different to mine, is about myself and the direction of my life. The slowness of a walk is a good chance to reflect on the past and contemplate the future, two things I never get round to doing at home. I am yet to find a better recipe for really learning about myself than a physically difficult, uncomfortable adventure thousands of miles from home.

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There Are Other Rivers – Details, episodes & analysis

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Apple Podcasts

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There Are Other Rivers – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Amazon1

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Amazon1

Apple Podcasts

Spotify