Going Down and Bowing Out

So after all it turns out I’m not a terrorist, so I’m not going to prison again.

But it’s not a happy ending, because its resulted in the end of my journey. This court case has cost me €6000. To put it in perspective; from the UK to India I spent about €3000 on 3 months travel. India was meant to be one of the cheaper legs of the journey. My contingency cash is wiped out, and quite a lot more besides.

While I could afford to carry on for a bit, but I could only get to a place where I couldn’t afford to come back from, so I’m going to head to Nepal and then finish the trip and then head home via the lowest carbon route possible, unless I can find some cash sponsors here in India that can save the expedition.

It took 18 months to get the sponsorship together to set off for this trip, and most of that was support in kind. The vast majority of the cash was my own savings, so I know how hard it is to raise cash from organisations, and I’m under no illusion how difficult it will be.

However I am able to muster a lot of press interest here, and during the last few months I’ve met some pretty influential people who have been very supportive so perhaps they will be able to call on their networks to rally the support needed.

The final insult is that it looks like I won’t be able to get my €600 bail bond back either because I’m a foreigner which means I fall into yet another Indian bureaucratic catch-22. That, and I still have to undergo the timely, costly and dehumanising make-it-up-as-you-go-along procedure of getting my visa changed so I can actually leave India.

No one has admitted responsibility for the decisions which resulted in the case becoming such an unnecessarily costly affair and no one has apologised, and this has added to my bitterness and anger over the whole affair. I’m trying to let go but it’s really hard, and it’s certainly no fun for me being this angry.

Getting my phone back only served to vindicate that this has all been an unjustifiable waste of time and money at the hands of idiots. Under Indian law, I’d have had an easier time of it if I’d been dealing drugs to school kids.

I’ll be gutted if I have to can the trip here over this bad luck. It was going so well. Almost 20,000km without using fossil fuels, and more fuel-from-waste supplies lined up across India ready for the next leg into South East Asia. It would be terrible if it had to end over something as stupid as this sat phone case.