In 2013 I bought a ticket north with no plan beyond the first two nights. No group, no guide, nobody to check in with. I had never travelled alone before, and I remember standing at the bus terminal genuinely unsure whether I was doing something brave or something stupid.
It turned out to be neither. It was just the beginning of everything that followed.
Why the mountains, and why alone
Northern Pakistan is not a soft introduction to solo travel. The roads are long, the phone signal is a rumour, and the weather makes the decisions. But that was exactly the appeal. I wanted somewhere that would not let me stay on autopilot.
The valleys did the rest. There is a particular quiet up there in the late afternoon, when the light drops behind a ridge and the temperature falls with it, that I have never found anywhere else. I have been chasing versions of that quiet ever since.
What Kashmir taught me
Kashmir was where I stopped feeling like a tourist and started feeling like a traveller. The difference, as far as I can tell, is that a tourist is looking at a place and a traveller is paying attention to it.
I spent more time talking to people than photographing things. Tea with a shopkeeper who wanted to know what Karachi was like. A driver who explained the entire local politics of a valley in the time it took to cover twenty kilometres. A family who fed me because I happened to be standing nearby at the wrong hour.
The best part of that first trip was not a view. It was realising how many people will help a stranger who is clearly out of his depth.
The habit it started
I came home with sunburn, a broken pair of shoes, and a very specific problem: I now knew that I could do this. Once you know that, staying put becomes a choice rather than a default, and it is a much harder choice to justify.
Every trip since, in about thirty countries, traces back to that bus terminal and the version of me who was not sure he should get on.
- Go somewhere that makes you pay attention
- Plan the first two nights, leave the rest open
- Talk to more people than you photograph