Post decadent consumption fest

Its three days post the decadent consumption fest. Collectively we ploughed through 4 bottles of champagne, 2 one litre Scotch bottles, a cask of wine, 23 beers, ginger wine, mulled wine and spiced cider. Down the gullet slid the carved carcase of one capon, 2 turkeys, a joint of beef, 48 roast potatoes, 23 dauphine potatoes, 32 chipalatas wrapped in 32 slices of smoked streaky bacon, 56 brussels sprouts, 22 carrots and 14 parsnips. The collective desserts totalled one Christmas pudding, one Belgian chocolate liqueur pudding, one whisky brioche white chocolate pudding, 4 chocolate oranges and a box of chocolate caramels. Post dinner curdle was exacerbated with cheddar cheese, stilton cheese and edam. A gout ridden stream sent down the oesophagus into burning pools of stomach acid, accompanied with a glazed gaze into an acoustic abyss. The silence providing a break between the intermittent quips loaded with the histories of betrayal, bitterness and love. This was of course punctuated with hourly cigarettes and a twice daily spliff.

We are leaving. Me and the bearded twit (not a derogatory term, but a self chosen cherished pseudonym) are rejecting the free market nooses of our age group. Our nearest and dearest, the friends we have held dear since childhood, are realising their dreams in mortgages, saving bonds and reproduction; Thirty-seven hour working weeks of meetings, spreadsheets, sales, and facebook; Faith, love and open arms to the financial system. You will be cradled from student overdraft to gravestone. Shock, betrayal and flung fists at the creeping realisation that even our snug nets are weaved with risk. Human risk calculated by the animatron proponents of the Gaussian bell.

What will we find there at the end of the consumer trail? We’ve read the histories of our 1960s counterparts and have felt the warm musky call of the East; India, Nepal, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. A promised land of simplicity-What will we find?

The modern backpacker faces a myriad of selections to navigate. Backpacking is now a massive industry. Would you like to visit Asia, Australasia or the America’s? Three, four or five stops to skip around the world? Would you like to travel as a group and experience the real Japan? Or perhaps you would like the privilege of paying several thousand pounds to bask in the warm glow of building hospitals for a community who collectively earn £2 a day?

I find myself asking, are we going because that’s what we want to do-Or because it is the done thing? The fact is that no matter what far flung reaches of Asia’s corners we delve into, finding the exit to the consumer trail is going to be a travel long challenge. It seems that since the pioneering footsteps of the first starry eyed flower children, our ways have travelled with us, scattered like seeds to dig roots deep into the ground and to blossom as desires of the remotest society. Literature of second generation immigrants weave oracles of the yearning for development, the homage to convenience, shining televisions with flat screens and whizzing kitchen gadgets - the single point belief that this is the answer, this will make it better. All this, coupled with the devastating realisation that the struggle to better oneself didn’t provide the answers that were looked for. Only now, these wizened economic explorers must face their divorce from their culture, their heritage, their home, with the grey grief that their sacrifice did not make it better.

It just so happens that the twit and I know only one way to implement our itchy footed desires, and that’s our way. Both only children, we are blessed with the utter faith in our ability to shape our world that comes with years spent fashioning the creative shapes and colours of our autonomous childhoods. I think that it is this trait that made our decision to book a one way ticket so natural. People ask us when are we coming home, when is our return flight? ‘What return flight?’ we reply, perplexed at the notion that we could have any idea now when we would want to return. And I think that is the nub of why this feels great, why it feels right. The knowledge that when we step from our flight to Goa we step out to the thrill of open potential, the understanding that our adventure could take us into any of a million untold possibilities, none of which are set, and therefore, all of which exist.

We leave in 3 days. A 9pm flight to Mumbai where we change for Goa. The carnival of New Year beach parties will be silenced this year. The post-siege stratocumulus hangs around the area, termed as ‘security concerns’ by Indian officials. The twit sits and sews hidden pockets into his combat trousers. His dark hair hangs across his concentrated gaze. His domestic trance is punctuated by a scratch of bearded skin. His sewing career has spanned an entire twenty minutes and already his stitches are neater, cleaner and more aligned than mine ever could be. This makes me smile. The hazy gauze of hashish smoke mimics the warm blanket that tells me I am happy, and that our footsteps will always be planted somewhere we want to be.