ISTANBUL (NOT CONSTANTINOPLE) AND THESSALONIKI UPS AND DOWN

Well I have been back in Europe for less than a week and its been a roller coaster! Lots of adjustments.

The final leg of my journey from India to Istanbul (not Constantinople) was a wonderful one. For some reason on the plane I felt full of love and light, as if everything from India was synthesising into something magnificent. I felt I could walk on air. Happily, as the plane was quite high in the sky I didn't give it a try but the experience was magnificent. My mind felt fully illuminated.

As the plane started to land I wasn't prepared for the fact that it was pelting with rain. I seem to have picked the wrong time to come to Turkey and Greece. I was expecting blazing Mediterranean sun and magic. Instead I have hit the tail end of winter. After three months of India I don't have a single item of winter clothing. A few fleeces, yes, but no coat or umbrella or even socks! I had to crack out my smelly sneakers and improvise. Not good. I have grown used to the magnificent light of the sub continent.

I have been to Turkey before, but both times in Anatolia on the south coast, once to Kalkan, once to Side, when I found myself able to travel to Konya, the town in central Turkey where the great Sufi Mystic Rumi lived and practised. Good times. But I have never quite hit it off with Turkey. I don't know why. For some reason I have never been able to connect with the people. Maybe a trip to the great city of Istanbul would help...

Alas, disorientation set in almost immediately. I had been warned about the shock of returning to the West but still wasn't quite prepared for my arrival. If anything, the shock was the LACK of shock. Kemal Attaturk Airport was like any other international airport. The only surprise was that it wasn't full of Indians. Everything felt totally different and I realised how much India had seeped into my blood, completely transforming me. I am not the same guy. The rythmn is completely different in the West. The wealth is everywhere and the vibration is totally different.

A little confusion over hotels meant my initial impression of the place was a little jaundiced. I couldn't understand why what had seemed easy in India suddenly seemed complex in Europe. I have found, now I am in Greece too, that the hotels feel totally different, less homely and friendly (although no shit on the corridors) and the staff less warm. For all my comedy adventures in Indian hotels, there was a warmth and lack of pretension that meant for the few days you were there they could feel like home. For some reason I grew to love their ramshackle character and the sense of mucking in. Maybe I am sentimentalising but there is an anonymity back here I don't like!

After 48 hrs of travel from Madikeri to Istanbul I was shattered and this kind of coloured my experience of Istanbul. Instead of doing what I had done in India which was to leap out of bned and fill my day with activity I was like a zombie for most of my time there. A real shame as I think had I been a bit more alive I might have had a magnificent time. What was lovely was that I met up with a Facebook friend, Turan, who had promised to show me around. We went to the Haghia Sophia together and the Blue Mosque.

They were magnificent and I had always wanted to see the Sophia but in my brain dead mood - and my disorientation from not being inIndia - they didn't impact upon me as powerfully as they might have done. The Blue Mosque was majestic, but my experiences in Agra and Delhi with the Taj Mahal and the Tombs of Akbra and Hayuman it didn't offer me what I had hoped. And, alas, the Sophia had bloody great scaffolding everywhere, so its full effect was lost. So that's three trips to Turkey without quite hitting the bullseye. Bollocks. I know this is a great country. Must try harder next time!

Grappling with my head being in India and my body in Istanbul was very hard, as was the need to sleep when really I wanted to be up and about and doing things. Its very early days but coming back has felt like a very schizo experience. In India my mind expanded further than it ever had done before. My experience of life had suddenly taught me so much. Coming home to affluence, bars, security, wealth, materialism, a different pace of life - all of these threw me. The sensation carried on into Greece...

But a highlight in Turkey was seeing a performance of Rumi's Whirling Dervishes. That was magical, even though it took place in a room in a Railway Station. As the dancers turned and their arms opened up like flowers, I almost found myself crying with its beauty. A special occasion and, in a sense, the completion of something which had started in Konya three years before. Turan, of course, had seen the real Dervishes in Konya itself, that being where he was from.

Meeting Turan was lots of fun - and illuminating. He is interested in the same things I am interested in, but is exploring them from a Muslim perspective. That in itself was fascinating and interesting. It was also lovely to meet his charming fiancee. May they both have many years of happiness!

The journey from Istanbul to Thessaloniki was hellish, far worse than anything in India. I was horrified when, leaving the Dervish performance in the railway station and going to book my ticket for the next day, I was told it would take 16 hours to get from A to B! Zoinks! I woke up early the next morning to catch the 8.30 to find all the electricity on the front desk down, so I couldn't pay with a card as the computer etc was down. I had to go off and find a cashpoint somewhere. Somehow I managed to catch the train, but even that was heavy going. I missed the solidarity of travellers I had encountered in India. Ok so the station wasn't covered in poo, there were no flies buzzing about and lepers weren't asking me for rupees but hey, nobody's perfect...!

Six interminable hourse later in which I grappled with exhaustion, the cold and some low spirits we were all offloaded in a zero-horse town called Pythion to wait for our connection. I shared the ticket office with a group of English girls, three Australians and two grumpy Greeks lost in their own world. Then, brilliantly, the ticket guy revealed that we all had to pay a supplement of 6 and a half Euros to get to Thessaloniki. We were all aghast as no-one had said any of this in Istanbul. I had no Euros and took it up with the guy.

ME: 6 and a half Euros? Nobody told me about that in Istanbul!
GUY: (shrugs in that way only a Greek can)
ME: I don't have any Euros. I didn't know I needed them.
GUY: (shrugs)
ME: Is there an ATM nearby?
GUY: ATM? 22km to next village.
ME: Well do you take cards?
GUY: (as if its my fault) No cards.
ME: Well how am I supposed to get Euros?
GUY: Borrow from your friends (indicating English girls).
ME: They aren't my friends! I am travelling alone!
GUY: (shrugging again)Get taxi to village with ATM.
ME: A taxi?!?!? Now hang on! No-one told me about any of this in Istanbul! How was I supposed to know?
GUY: (not knowing he's near death, shrugs)

Before turning into the Human Torch and blasting the guy and his bushy moustache one of the girls stepped forward and offered to lend me the money. With everything - the stupid situation, the bad weather, the endless trip, my exhaustion and this colliding with obstacles the like of which never happened in India - I was getting angry and more down. Where was the warmth and friendship I had got used to? The energy? The electricity? Instead here I was in this cold country which I had always loved with these cold people. I guessed that maybe this idiotic scenario with the Euro supplement was some kind of warped expression of how Turks and Greeks don't like each other. It seemed absurd, not only that it was happening, but that no-one had said anything in Istanbul about it or that any provision was made for travellers who were unfortunate enough not to have developed telepathy and who therefore didn't have any Euros. After all, this can't have been the first time people had arrived without knowing they had to pay a supplement. Ah well! Thanks anyway to the girls.

Another lifetime later we arrived in Thessaloniki, but two hours late at the dead of night. I staggered out of the train and got into a taxi, having found an ATM, paid back the girl and bought myself a turkey baguette. I was excited to be in Thessaloniki, but not at midnight and was relieved to get to my hotel. Exhausted, I got to my room on the seventh floor to find it utterly tiny, although lavishly furnished. You could have fitted it twice or three times into most of the places in India. But who cared? I was knackered and, still confused by all these new impressions (they felt new, having been thoroughly Indianised), I wanted to just go to sleep. And sleep I did.

The bed was very comfy so when I woke up the next day I felt hugely refreshed. I went downstairs for a lonely breakfast, negotiated some laundry (again, I had got totally used to having luandry done in hotels everywhere in India)and was amazed to discover that no-one in the hotel knew where the Tourist Information Centre was. I love Greeks but for some reason these guys were doing everything in Slow Motion, seeming to take ages to reveal that in fact they didn't know anything and were helpless to aid me? Where was my hard-earned Indian patience and detachment? Worse, I was picking up this new rythmn and feeling very heavy with it. And for the first time in a LONG time, I felt alone and lost in a foreign country.

But never mind. The weather was improving outside so I went for a walk along the beachfront. Alas, Thessaloniki felt like anywhere else. No major historic vibe at all, which was odd as it is steeped in history. Maybe I just like the rustic. I had loved every Greek Island I had been to - Crete and Keffalonia especially - but this felt like another affluent, well-fed European town with no priorities other than enjoying itself. Cafes were everywhere with people sitting about chatting and posing like they do everywhere else in Europe. A bit of a shame.

A few churches, a browse in a bookshop (where I bought a much-needed Guide!, a ruin and a cup of tea later my spirits were lifted a bit. But my head has been whirring. What have I come home for? Where is the wonder I had found? What was the point of India if I am just going to have to go back to the old way of living which had seen me go to India to escape in the first place? I just felt very disorientated. I am no longer interested in a life of sleeping, waking, working, eating, chatting, sleeping, waking again etc. I had left Europe for India because that was no longer nourishing me and I couldn't fit into it any more. There had to be something more. It can't be worse than when I left! Or maybe it wasn't the West that had changed but me? Maybe all the growth and flourishing and sense of belonging I had found in India meant that I was more acutely aware of my sense of not fitting in back here? Who knows?

This was clearly going to take some getting used to, but I expected that. I am going to have to decide a lot of things. Do I stay and give it a go or do I go back? We shall see. All I know is I want what I found in India to continue to be part of my life. I want that specialness, that wholeness, that wonder, to be with me wherever I am. I have grown and I have changed and I am not prepared to compromise that. For me, it has to mean something. I am not putting it all back in the box.

I also don't want to be a Jeremiah. I don't want to be some moaning minny endlessly going on about 'India! India!' I will have to find a way to do carry the joy and beauty I have experienced on with me... But it may mean going back for good. Who knows? Even if I don't, I know it is going to become a permanent feature of my life from now on...

And it has only been a few days. We don't know what awaits. Maybe tomorrow the heavens will open and Greece will reveal its genius to me again...

But I am not giving up what I have gained. I am going to continue that journey....