Over the years I have come across pollution in different cities that I have been through, I thought that the North West of China was the worst. There are even some days that I look over Table Bay where I stay in Cape Town in shock at the brown belt of haze hanging over the city. This is minor compared to what I have seen over the past month in India. Nothing can ever prepare you for the extent of the pollution that one will encounter in the south of Cashmere, Punjab and Haryana provinces, it's beyond and verbal description that I can think of, you just can’t explain it.

The scenery has been getting better by the day since we have entered Rajasthan; this has helped with the running, taking my mind off the road. The villages have also become sparser, smaller, poorer, but richer in heritage, architecture and natural beauty. It was just one of these villages that Andy and I had just run into. I was explaining to him where to eat, as through experience gained on the journey so far, I had found out that the best place to eat was the shop that made home made sweets, for some reason they were always the cleanest and made the best food. Dam, some how my formula had let me down in this village as this guy did not do food, only sweets, so we split up and each went looking to see if we could find a spot. Eventually Andy called me, he had found one. Off I trotted to meet up.

Its been going well, each day you get a little stronger, each day you get a little more confident with what you eat, and so it builds. Eventually you are plodding along feeling bullet proof. That’s when everything seems to suddenly turn around and bite back.

I think I must of mentioned it a few times, but the traffic in this country is a law unto itself, there are no rules in this game, if there is a gap, take it. It does not really matter on what side of the road it is or in which lane it is. Just go for it and quickly before anyone else sees it. Another important rule is that you must never indicate as this will give away your intention and someone else might steal your gap. Never look left or right when entering into a road or oncoming traffic or at an intersection, just go for it as a glance in any direction could mean that you loose that split second and ultimately the gap. These are a few of the most basic rules.

We were in a really nice camp site, away from the madness of the roads, down a valley just on the edge of a forest right in the bend of a river. What a privilege to end a day's running by plunging into a river, letting the ice cold water rejuvenate the legs and just get the day's grime off you. Exhausted as usual, I had an early supper, full of food, tiredness seemed to lame my whole body as I just sat on a camp chair staring into the setting sun. from the forest behind me I was suddenly awoken out of this slumber by the most amazing chanting to the beat of drums and cow horns. Hidden in the forest on the slopes of the valley above me was a massive temple that we had not seen. It was now just on 6 in the evening and the evening prayers began pouring out over the valley as darkness encroached, bidding everyone a good end to the day. We sat in silence mesmerised by the soothing chanting and drumming as it slowly seemed to lift each of us off and take us into our own far away place.

When I arrived in India, I knew nothing about life here. I had purposely read up noting on the religions nor the different cultures, I do this with all my journeys, i want to go in with an open mind, I don’t want a skewed approach that I have got from some other persons perception of a country. I want to experience it in my own way and then make an assumption first hand. So, this leaves me with my introduction to the cow, and I am sure that I will be writing a lot more about this animal as my journey unfolds.

The festivities had finally died down, but the large explosions of crackers still defend us, leaving our ears ringing. People were throwing them in every direction, there seems to be a strange manic attraction to trying to wait till the fuse has burnt to the last second and then throw them into the air. A few times I saw guys with these large crackers exploding in their fingers as they timed it in correctly, running off with bleeding fingers. I could see there was going to be no end to this for a few hours to come.

We had just come through Jammu, a city that we had all been looking forward to seeing, we had heard so much about it. This was the temple capital of Kashmir, no more than me as the landscape was starting to flatten out, which meant that I could get off this diesel smoke spewing highway that I have been following for a while now. What a disappointment as I got closer as the road wound down the valley, the horizon disappeared and turned into this black polluted haze, the most polluted city we had seen in the whole of Kashmir really chaotic and just a mayhem of traffic everywhere, long dusty streets wall to wall with people and the rest. I now know what I am going to be in for on this journey, I am going to have to find a way to black all of this out, focus on the beauty that I see and draw inspiration from that instead of letting the other side eat away at me. Taking this into consideration I decided to push on through Jammu and see what the other side of town has to offer. The city was so sprawled down the valley, and I was struggling with my knee so we decided to find a site in the city, I was not going to make it out of this by night fall and a camp site was going to be a near impossibility. Ramveer, the crew driver, introduced us to a new side of India that we had not yet experienced, he managed to find an Ashram, a spiritual centre open to all, a safe haven and place to sleep. We were offered a place to pitch our tents and spend the evening.

As with any country that one travels to there are always the warnings that are dished out to you, be careful of this and that, don’t go here or there and so on it goes. The most common of these warnings is always food and water, no matter where you are traveling. Out of all my trips no warning has ever been this strong on the food and water subject as prior to this India trip. It’s sounded like a no-go zone.