Somewhere as if in a dream the bell rang. The long pealing note of a cathedral bell. I woke up suddenly. I didn't know where I was. I could be in any Catholic city. In the past one year I have been in and out of so many cities that sometimes the only constant is the church bell prodding through my dreams. And so even as I wake, I ask myself, where am I? And then it would come to me that I was yet again on the road.
I would then reach for my mobile, search its screen for messages, for missed calls, for an inkling of change and a blank screen would pause my worry quotient for the moment. Knowing there was no reason to do so, I would still call home. I have often wondered how they do it. The legion of travel writers from Ibn Battuta to Fa-Hien to Robert Louis Stevenson to T E Lawrence to their more contemporary counterparts - Eric Newby, Paul Theroux, Pico Iyer, Bruce Chatwin and William Dalrymple…I wonder how they set about on their travels.Does the thought come upon them one day and do they pack a little bag and their lives in one neat and precise movement, lock the doors and set upon their adventures? Or do they dwell and ponder on should they? Or shouldn't they? Drawing little columns of figures and expenses; contemplating on perils to their own mortality and the ones they leave behind; making little lists of instructions for the milkman, newspaper boy and household help; leaving telephone numbers in case of an emergency on post-it notes on fridge doors and bathroom mirrors…. And then in spite of everything, the pros and cons and the intrusive voice of common sense, do they go because it is easier to leave than to stay?

I have always been a wanderer-of-sorts. Dating back to the time when I was in school, I was forever running away. All through, the rush for me was not getting to a point but the thought that I had done something to break the monotony of everyday routine. That I had travelled to a place where I had no reason to go to. In my 20s, travel acquired a whole new dimension. In those days, I didn't see myself as a writer gathering experiences; every little episode to be marked and filed as grist for the mill for some future day. Instead, travel became a way to still the restlessness that is part of my mental make-up. I ceased to be a daughter, sister and wife...I became this anonymous person soaking in every new sensation, thought and word. I felt my senses bloom and my mind open.
Then the writer in me surfaced and I made a new discovery. To be rooted to one place dulled my mind and hindered my creativity. But there was a minor problem. My son, Maitreya. So began the epoch of family jaunts. Fiercely planned, every little detail accounted for; itinerary schedules and advance reservations confirmed and reconfirmed; contingency plans made, our travels began to resemble military operations. Often I would look at the pile of baggage and sigh. My consolation those days was the thought that when Ibn Battuta had travelled, he had with him a large train of attendants and followers and also his own harem of legal wives and concubines. What was one husband, one child and an extra piece of baggage?
Then came a call to travel by myself again. My son was not so little anymore and I said yes with only a few misgivings. Women colleagues - educated, sophisticated, well-travelled souls themselves - made little 'O's of their mouths: 'How can you go without your son?' they demanded. 'We could never do something like that!' My parents offered to pitch in while I was away for two months; 'Do it while you can. Once you get old, travelling won't be such fun!' I came back from my peregrinations energised and quite content to stay at home. For a while. That is the other aspect to going away. You come back with a greater sense of value for what you have.

Late last year my Norwegian publisher called wanting to know if I was interested in visiting. ‘Sure’, I said feeling that prickle down my spine that portended a journey and all the time wondering how I was going to pull it off. Eventually I did make that trip. In many ways, it resembled the trip I had wanted to make for a long time. I had the name of the hotel I was to stay at and very little information except what I could find on the Net. I knew that Norway was home to the painter, Edward Munch and I knew that writer, Roald Dahl had a Norwegian ancestry and I had read somewhere that in the course of travels, author, Tolkien had encountered the gigantic gnarled trees of Norway and that is how they found their way into The Lord of the Rings. Funnily enough, anything regarding the facilities offered in my hotel or how far away it was from the airport was missing. I had no agendas, no preconceived notions about what I was going to do or a reason, save a whim, for going. I was going, I reasoned, because I had never been there before. So I packed a bag with a pair of walking shoes and some clothes and went.
I saw a fjord, a majestic stream of water, snake its way through the overwhelming Norwegian mountains and chatted to a 55-year-old Bruce Springsteen groupie. I saw a well-known woman writer in Norway sip a cup of coffee as I cut a sliver from a reindeer steak. I went tramping through Norwegian woods and plucked wild cranberries. And snapped a small twig of wild myrtle, its spicy, scent, staining my finger and hurling up my nostrils, to press between the pages of a book. I did what I always do best – just be myself.
One night as I sat in a mountain cabin high up with Norwe–gian mountains looking down at a lake that remains frozen four months a year, I thought of all the travel writers I had read and pondered on the fact that most of them were men. There was one Jan Morris but she/he was in a class by herself/himself. I wondered if they had been women, would it have been any different for them? Would they have been rushing to make that call every night and every morning to check on the reality of their lives? Or would they (to echo that song in every traveller’s heart) have stared some more at the leaping shadows that the log fire threw up on the wooden walls of the cabin, swirled the cognac in the bottom of the brandy balloon, taken a long deep swallow of the fiery alcohol and then told themselves: Keep Walking.