Silk Dreams Troubled Road
Autor Jonny Bealbyen Limba Engleză Paperback – 5 iun 2003
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780099414698
ISBN-10: 0099414694
Pagini: 320
Dimensiuni: 129 x 198 x 19 mm
Greutate: 0.38 kg
Editura: ARROW
Locul publicării:United Kingdom
ISBN-10: 0099414694
Pagini: 320
Dimensiuni: 129 x 198 x 19 mm
Greutate: 0.38 kg
Editura: ARROW
Locul publicării:United Kingdom
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Notă biografică
Jonny Bealby was born in Lincolnshire in 1963. He has visited more than fifty countries and has had articles featured in a variety of publications including, the Observer, the Daily Telegraph, Traveller, and Manchester United Magazine.
Extras
PART ONE: A Suitable Girl
'Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans'
—John Lennon
Chapter 1: False Dawn
The first time I met Rachel I knew I was in trouble.
Passing through Islamabad on my way north to investigate the possibility of setting up a travel company offering adventure holidays in the Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains, I'd been invited to spend the weekend with an old friend, Hen, and her partner, Johan, who both worked for the UN. When Hen told me a female colleague would be joining us for dinner I thought nothing of it. After all, I was in Pakistan, hardly a place I'd imagined meeting a potential girlfriend. But Rachel enthralled me. Seating ourselves at one end of the table, we soon became absorbed in conversation. On the surface it was simply superficial connections: we shared favourite books (The Alchemist, Captain Corelli's Mandolin), films (Cyrano de Bergerac, The Apartment), music (Radiohead, Morcheeba); enjoyed similar recreations (travel, photography, wine), parts of the world (India, Provence, New York); even cherished the same dream (to own a little farmhouse in France), but beneath that there seemed to be a more base connection. Much of the conversation took place without words.
If it makes any sense, Rachel was the most feminine woman I'd ever met. The way she sat, held her head, her slender arms, elegant hands, sexuality oozed from every pore of her body. Not only that, but she was very beautiful: fine dark hair, a wide and sensual mouth, delicate nose, and deep brown eyes that sparkled with mischievous fun. And, whether intentionally or not, she used her eyes cunningly. While she listened to what I was saying she locked her gaze not on my mouth, as is usual, but on my eyes, seeming to search inside to read the words that I wasn't using as surely as her ears heard those that I was. Whether she smiled, laughed, became suitably serious, amazed or annoyed, I was left with the warm sensation that I'd got it right, that whatever I'd said really was funny, intelligent, poignant or wise. There was never simply a polite little chuckle or impatient 'umm'. When she listened, she really listened. In short, Rachel had the ability to make me feel like I was the only man alive in the world and she was the only woman. Intoxicating Bewitching. And very dangerous. Towards the end of the evening she asked if I wanted to accompany her driving a Land Rover back to England at the end of the year. Without a moment's hesitation, I agreed at once.
Big deal? Well to me it was. Recently, relationships had been things that happened to other people, not me. Following the death of my fiancée, Melanie, almost a decade earlier, and one bizarre and short-lived episode — which saw me stumble through an extraordinary marriage — I hadn't had the slightest interest in becoming seriously involved with anyone I'd met. I'd had flings, of course, but these had usually been drunken affairs lasting days and weeks rather than months and years, and on the whole had been far more dispiriting than fulfilling. With Melanie things had always been so easy and for five years we'd shared a wonderful relationship — flatmates, bed mates, best mates, soul mates — but while travelling together in Kashmir, just two months before we'd planned to marry, I'd awoken to find her breathing her last. She'd suffered — so an autopsy report later informed me — an asthma attack brought on by high altitude and a bout of bronchitis, and after a brief struggle she'd died in my arms. Since then a basic connection had always seemed to be lacking; the ability to feel totally natural with someone I found physically appealing, the feeling of being at one.
Until now?
It certainly seemed so three days later while out horse riding on the edge of town. Rather than driving a Land Rover home, Rachel suggested we ride instead. That we happened to be in Pakistan at the time, with home lying 5,000 miles away across some of the world's meanest mountains and cruellest deserts, through lands struggling with economic stagnation and political unrest — at least one still reeling from the crippling effects of a vicious civil war — and among people whose reputation for thieving and banditry was almost as fabled as their generous hospitality, didn't seem to concern her in the least. If I'd been interested before, now I was hooked. No one had ever suggested such an outlandish — and patently crazy — adventure to me before. Usually it was the other way around.
Turning my heels into my horse's side, I trotted up beside her. 'Are you serious?' I asked, doubting whether she knew the answer or not.
'Maybe . . .' Her dark eyebrows rose defiantly. 'Last night I just got thinking and the more I thought about it the better an idea it seemed. If James wants me to ship his Land Rover back to England, leaving us nothing to drive home in, why not ride?' She gazed beyond the path and across the lake to where an amber sun was setting; the Punjabi dusk was turning golden calm. 'Once I finish out here next spring,' she continued reflectively, 'I don't think I'm going to work abroad again, at least not for a while, and before I settle back down to London life I just want to do something special. That's all.' As her horse passed beneath a sprawling jacaranda, a low branch brushed her hair, sending a cloud of violet blossom tumbling to the ground. She looked up and smiled mischievously. 'Could we?' she asked again. Her forehead was creased with expectation, her bright eyes bold and daring. 'Do you think it would be possible?'
'Definitely,' I beamed, and I meant it. As I looked into her impassioned face the world felt rich with endless possibilities: drive home, ride home, fly on a carpet, what difference did the details make? Had she asked, I'd have happily walked.
'Great,' she answered with a pretty grin. 'You do know about horses, don't you?'
'What I don't know ain't worth knowing,' I bluffed.
'Good,' she said, 'then I think we should do it.'
The journey quickly began to fire my imagination. I knew immediately which route to take, east to west along the old Silk Road. 'For most travellers, and all merchants,' wrote Peter Fleming in his travel classic News from Tartary, 'the road from China to the west lies as it has lain for centuries, along that ancient Silk Road which is surely the most romantic and culturally most important trade route in the history of the world.' As a traveller of quixotic disposition I'd always hoped that one day I'd find myself bound on its story-strewn path. I just never imagined I'd find the excuse.
In my mind's eye I saw Rachel and myself dressed like Cossacks on heavenly horses, riding the mountain steppes just as Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had done; crossing the same shadowy passes and lonely valleys as the imperial players of the old Great Game; visiting the ancient cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and Merv; travelling in the hoof-prints of Alexander the Great, Tamerlane, Marco Polo, Ibn Battutah and a thousand other warriors, merchants, poets and pilgrims who had carried their dreams along the old Silk Road. Accompanied by a beautiful woman, what more wonderful adventure could there possibly be?
'Do you know which route you'd like to take?' I asked carefully, knowing. I already did.
'Not really,' she replied.
'The Silk Road would be the obvious way to go. It -'
'Oh yes.' Her smiling eyes shone even more brightly.
'Yes? Excellent.' My mind was racing now, an imagined map before me. 'Well, Kashgar would be the natural starting point from here. We could travel by road up the Karakoram Highway to China, buy horses in the famous Kashgar Sunday Market and ride the Silk Road all the way to, to . . . the Caspian Sea.' I was so excited I stood in the saddle and gestured flamboyantly towards the lake. 'What do you reckon?'
'Fantastic.'
'Yes, it'll be pretty easy to reach home from there. And it has a cool ring to it as well, don't you think . . . Kashgar to the Caspian Sea?'
'It sounds just perfect.' And with a beaming smile lighting up her face, she broke into a canter. 'Come on,' she shouted over her shoulder, 'I'll race you back to the stables.'
If it's possible to pinpoint a moment that one falls in love, that was it. How could anyone be so fantastically blasé about such a huge undertaking? After nine lonely years, I felt I'd finally discovered the person I'd been looking for. And, what's more, it seemed to be reciprocated. Three nights later we found ourselves kissing; a short while after that, romping in a bed.
The better I got to know Rachel - as friends, lovers and 'partners in crime' - the more impressed I became. She was bright, witty, intelligent, talented, and whether playing Chopin on the piano, galloping wildly through a darkening wood or chatting easily in flawless French, she carried a beauty and grace I'd seldom seen. Employed by various aid agencies, she'd worked all over the world and now had an interesting job with the UN. But there was also a sensitive vulnerability to her. On the surface she was confident, assured, in control, but the more we talked, and the more layers I managed to peel away, the more I discovered an uncertain, insecure person. To fall in love with a woman I have always had to be able to see the little girl behind the adult mask. Rachel's childhood alter-ego was always apparent just below the surface. And the more time we shared, the more in tune we seemed.
Consumed by this passion for both Rachel and the trip, I began to read up on the area, study maps and make basic plans. I quickly realised just how exciting the journey would be. The route would take us through the very heart of Asia, through cultural and physical extremes, from the ancient towns with their teeming bazaars, Islamic mosques and palaces, peopled by the sedentary Uzbeks, Tajiks and Uyghurs, to the surreal landscapes of mountains, steppes and deserts, in turn inhabited by the nomadic Kazak, Kyrgyz and Turkmen tribes.
Sitting up late, with glasses of wine, we worked out the route. Having travelled overland by bus from Islamabad to Kashgar and the Chinese province of Xinjiang, we planned first to ride over the Torugart Pass and into Kyrgyzstan. From here we'd make our way due west, taking a course directly over the Tian Shan range — the much-fabled Mountains of Heaven — to Osh at the northern end of the 200-mile-long Ferghana Valley. Once there we'd cross the border into Uzbekistan, travel south through the valley, Central Asia's rich agricultural heartland, take a short cut across a thin corridor of Tajikistan, before re-emerging on the Uzbek plains. Here, sticking wherever possible to small tracks and nomadic trails, we'd journey through some of the most culturally wealthy and historically important towns in Central Asia: Khodjent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Merv. Then, having crossed the Amu Darya — formally the River Oxus — and entered Turkmenistan, a gruelling 800-kilometre slog across the bleak and baking Karakum — or Black Sands — Desert would carry us to the Caspian Sea. It was a journey of approximately 2,500 kilometres and would take, we figured, some four months to complete. If we left in early June, we'd arrive on the Caspian's eastern shores by mid-October latest.
'The trouble with journeys these days,' wrote Peter Fleming in the 1930s, 'is that they are too easy to make and too hard to justify.' Maybe so, but with Rachel there seemed to me plenty of reasons for making the trip. Not only did it venture through a part of the world I wished to explore, and use a method of transport I'd always wanted to take, but it offered me the perfect opportunity to bring my story full circle. Having written two books about my travels and life after Melanie, I saw now a chance to write the closing episode of this traveller's tale: from love, through loss, to love again. Not only could it prove another cracking adventure, packed with exciting characters and the challenges of an ancient road, but also with a little luck it might end up providing the concluding chapter to a story that began in Kashmir more than nine years ago. The last part of a decade-long trilogy, I thought grandiosely.
Over the course of the following nine months, both as a journalist and with my new adventure travel company — now called Wild Frontiers — I managed to spend a good deal of time in Pakistan, and my relationship with Rachel developed. But for all the charismatic edge she possessed, it didn't take long for me to discover a darker side lurked just behind — perhaps that was what made her so intoxicating — and as far as our relationship was concerned, I spent a great deal of the time rather confused. With a smile and a kiss she'd lead me in one direction, and a few minutes later drag my emotions in quite another. With great precision she'd define the road ahead, only to leap from its course to another path entirely. She would love with a passion and then push away, hold on tightly and then let go. She was the type of person Milan Kundera, John Fowles or Leo Tolstoy based their characters on. She was the most exciting woman I had ever met; she was also the most dangerous. I knew very well what a vulnerable position I was in and yet seemed totally powerless to do a thing about it. Retract from Rachel to win her love? I could as soon have kissed the moon.
There were often other men craving her attention — at parties, hanging around the house, even flying in from New York or London specially to see her. Though she pretended not to, it was obvious she enjoyed the attention. One day, while I was staying at her house, she came home and casually announced that some guy had proposed to her over the phone. I had no doubt at all that he had been serious. It was just the kind of reaction men had to Rachel. Only after a few moments did she realise I might be hurt by such a statement. 'Don't worry,' she said, placing a reassuring hand on my arm, 'I turned him down.' I just laughed anxiously and carried on. Rachel was a drug to me. And I was addicted.
Occasionally, persuaded either by her own anxieties or by me, she did try to talk about us. For various reasons, she didn't feel ready for a full commitment, to me or anyone else. There were painful experiences with ex-boyfriends she still had to resolve, there were worries over the fact that she lived in Pakistan while I didn't, and much to my dismay she read Running with the Moon — the book I wrote about a journey around Africa, relating in part to my life with Melanie — which, as I thought it might, made her concerned about living in the shadow of a seemingly perfect person who had now passed on. Did she want a relationship at the moment or did she want to be single? She said she wasn't sure. Excuses? Undoubtedly — there were probably many more — but while I had more or less what I wanted, it was relatively easy to bury my head beneath the soft and cosy blanket of intimate friendship, sex and laughter, and dream of the epic journey that was to come. After all, if there was one sure-fire way of resolving the affair, surely it was to spend four months of both extreme adversity and soul-surging pleasure together. I focused my hopes and fears on the journey.
An innocuous telephone call I made from London one night ruined everything. Some throw-away comment she made about being unable to take a short beach holiday we'd planned — 'Oh yeah, we've got to talk about that' — was all it took to have the demons of despair leap from nowhere to spit acid in my face. Following that, everything changed. The e-mails and telephone calls that had flooded in at a rate of two or three a day dwindled to a miserable trickle and their tone was hardly encouraging. 'I'm worried you're expecting too much out of this trip,' she wrote in one correspondence, 'I think it would be better if we go on it as devoted friends, rather than anything else.' Right.
It took a month of denial and self-delusion before I finally accepted the shattering reality. I was given little choice. A few days before I was due to fly out to see Rachel again, two months before we were set to leave for Kashgar, I logged on to pick up my e-mails only to discover that I'd finally been dumped. I sat staring at my computer screen, my mouth dry, my hands shaking, my heart pounding like timpani drums. I read the words again. I stood up. Sat down. I felt hot. I felt cold. I read them for a third time, looking for some shred of hope. There was none.
A few days later, feeling pitiful, I flew out to Pakistan. When I saw her — looking, it has to be said, painfully gorgeous with a sun-kissed face setting off those sparkling eyes — she cried. She told me she was sorry, that she still loved me, that she'd never connected with anyone more deeply in all her life, that she was always so happy when she was with me, that she didn't know what she was so scared of . . . and that she was seeing someone else. I put a brave face on the proceedings, didn't cry . . . much . . . and, still entranced as I was by her powerful presence, departed wishing her well. The next day, miserably tearing up all plans for adventures on the old Silk Road and a life together with the woman I loved, I flew back home to England.
'Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans'
—John Lennon
Chapter 1: False Dawn
The first time I met Rachel I knew I was in trouble.
Passing through Islamabad on my way north to investigate the possibility of setting up a travel company offering adventure holidays in the Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains, I'd been invited to spend the weekend with an old friend, Hen, and her partner, Johan, who both worked for the UN. When Hen told me a female colleague would be joining us for dinner I thought nothing of it. After all, I was in Pakistan, hardly a place I'd imagined meeting a potential girlfriend. But Rachel enthralled me. Seating ourselves at one end of the table, we soon became absorbed in conversation. On the surface it was simply superficial connections: we shared favourite books (The Alchemist, Captain Corelli's Mandolin), films (Cyrano de Bergerac, The Apartment), music (Radiohead, Morcheeba); enjoyed similar recreations (travel, photography, wine), parts of the world (India, Provence, New York); even cherished the same dream (to own a little farmhouse in France), but beneath that there seemed to be a more base connection. Much of the conversation took place without words.
If it makes any sense, Rachel was the most feminine woman I'd ever met. The way she sat, held her head, her slender arms, elegant hands, sexuality oozed from every pore of her body. Not only that, but she was very beautiful: fine dark hair, a wide and sensual mouth, delicate nose, and deep brown eyes that sparkled with mischievous fun. And, whether intentionally or not, she used her eyes cunningly. While she listened to what I was saying she locked her gaze not on my mouth, as is usual, but on my eyes, seeming to search inside to read the words that I wasn't using as surely as her ears heard those that I was. Whether she smiled, laughed, became suitably serious, amazed or annoyed, I was left with the warm sensation that I'd got it right, that whatever I'd said really was funny, intelligent, poignant or wise. There was never simply a polite little chuckle or impatient 'umm'. When she listened, she really listened. In short, Rachel had the ability to make me feel like I was the only man alive in the world and she was the only woman. Intoxicating Bewitching. And very dangerous. Towards the end of the evening she asked if I wanted to accompany her driving a Land Rover back to England at the end of the year. Without a moment's hesitation, I agreed at once.
Big deal? Well to me it was. Recently, relationships had been things that happened to other people, not me. Following the death of my fiancée, Melanie, almost a decade earlier, and one bizarre and short-lived episode — which saw me stumble through an extraordinary marriage — I hadn't had the slightest interest in becoming seriously involved with anyone I'd met. I'd had flings, of course, but these had usually been drunken affairs lasting days and weeks rather than months and years, and on the whole had been far more dispiriting than fulfilling. With Melanie things had always been so easy and for five years we'd shared a wonderful relationship — flatmates, bed mates, best mates, soul mates — but while travelling together in Kashmir, just two months before we'd planned to marry, I'd awoken to find her breathing her last. She'd suffered — so an autopsy report later informed me — an asthma attack brought on by high altitude and a bout of bronchitis, and after a brief struggle she'd died in my arms. Since then a basic connection had always seemed to be lacking; the ability to feel totally natural with someone I found physically appealing, the feeling of being at one.
Until now?
It certainly seemed so three days later while out horse riding on the edge of town. Rather than driving a Land Rover home, Rachel suggested we ride instead. That we happened to be in Pakistan at the time, with home lying 5,000 miles away across some of the world's meanest mountains and cruellest deserts, through lands struggling with economic stagnation and political unrest — at least one still reeling from the crippling effects of a vicious civil war — and among people whose reputation for thieving and banditry was almost as fabled as their generous hospitality, didn't seem to concern her in the least. If I'd been interested before, now I was hooked. No one had ever suggested such an outlandish — and patently crazy — adventure to me before. Usually it was the other way around.
Turning my heels into my horse's side, I trotted up beside her. 'Are you serious?' I asked, doubting whether she knew the answer or not.
'Maybe . . .' Her dark eyebrows rose defiantly. 'Last night I just got thinking and the more I thought about it the better an idea it seemed. If James wants me to ship his Land Rover back to England, leaving us nothing to drive home in, why not ride?' She gazed beyond the path and across the lake to where an amber sun was setting; the Punjabi dusk was turning golden calm. 'Once I finish out here next spring,' she continued reflectively, 'I don't think I'm going to work abroad again, at least not for a while, and before I settle back down to London life I just want to do something special. That's all.' As her horse passed beneath a sprawling jacaranda, a low branch brushed her hair, sending a cloud of violet blossom tumbling to the ground. She looked up and smiled mischievously. 'Could we?' she asked again. Her forehead was creased with expectation, her bright eyes bold and daring. 'Do you think it would be possible?'
'Definitely,' I beamed, and I meant it. As I looked into her impassioned face the world felt rich with endless possibilities: drive home, ride home, fly on a carpet, what difference did the details make? Had she asked, I'd have happily walked.
'Great,' she answered with a pretty grin. 'You do know about horses, don't you?'
'What I don't know ain't worth knowing,' I bluffed.
'Good,' she said, 'then I think we should do it.'
The journey quickly began to fire my imagination. I knew immediately which route to take, east to west along the old Silk Road. 'For most travellers, and all merchants,' wrote Peter Fleming in his travel classic News from Tartary, 'the road from China to the west lies as it has lain for centuries, along that ancient Silk Road which is surely the most romantic and culturally most important trade route in the history of the world.' As a traveller of quixotic disposition I'd always hoped that one day I'd find myself bound on its story-strewn path. I just never imagined I'd find the excuse.
In my mind's eye I saw Rachel and myself dressed like Cossacks on heavenly horses, riding the mountain steppes just as Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had done; crossing the same shadowy passes and lonely valleys as the imperial players of the old Great Game; visiting the ancient cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and Merv; travelling in the hoof-prints of Alexander the Great, Tamerlane, Marco Polo, Ibn Battutah and a thousand other warriors, merchants, poets and pilgrims who had carried their dreams along the old Silk Road. Accompanied by a beautiful woman, what more wonderful adventure could there possibly be?
'Do you know which route you'd like to take?' I asked carefully, knowing. I already did.
'Not really,' she replied.
'The Silk Road would be the obvious way to go. It -'
'Oh yes.' Her smiling eyes shone even more brightly.
'Yes? Excellent.' My mind was racing now, an imagined map before me. 'Well, Kashgar would be the natural starting point from here. We could travel by road up the Karakoram Highway to China, buy horses in the famous Kashgar Sunday Market and ride the Silk Road all the way to, to . . . the Caspian Sea.' I was so excited I stood in the saddle and gestured flamboyantly towards the lake. 'What do you reckon?'
'Fantastic.'
'Yes, it'll be pretty easy to reach home from there. And it has a cool ring to it as well, don't you think . . . Kashgar to the Caspian Sea?'
'It sounds just perfect.' And with a beaming smile lighting up her face, she broke into a canter. 'Come on,' she shouted over her shoulder, 'I'll race you back to the stables.'
If it's possible to pinpoint a moment that one falls in love, that was it. How could anyone be so fantastically blasé about such a huge undertaking? After nine lonely years, I felt I'd finally discovered the person I'd been looking for. And, what's more, it seemed to be reciprocated. Three nights later we found ourselves kissing; a short while after that, romping in a bed.
The better I got to know Rachel - as friends, lovers and 'partners in crime' - the more impressed I became. She was bright, witty, intelligent, talented, and whether playing Chopin on the piano, galloping wildly through a darkening wood or chatting easily in flawless French, she carried a beauty and grace I'd seldom seen. Employed by various aid agencies, she'd worked all over the world and now had an interesting job with the UN. But there was also a sensitive vulnerability to her. On the surface she was confident, assured, in control, but the more we talked, and the more layers I managed to peel away, the more I discovered an uncertain, insecure person. To fall in love with a woman I have always had to be able to see the little girl behind the adult mask. Rachel's childhood alter-ego was always apparent just below the surface. And the more time we shared, the more in tune we seemed.
Consumed by this passion for both Rachel and the trip, I began to read up on the area, study maps and make basic plans. I quickly realised just how exciting the journey would be. The route would take us through the very heart of Asia, through cultural and physical extremes, from the ancient towns with their teeming bazaars, Islamic mosques and palaces, peopled by the sedentary Uzbeks, Tajiks and Uyghurs, to the surreal landscapes of mountains, steppes and deserts, in turn inhabited by the nomadic Kazak, Kyrgyz and Turkmen tribes.
Sitting up late, with glasses of wine, we worked out the route. Having travelled overland by bus from Islamabad to Kashgar and the Chinese province of Xinjiang, we planned first to ride over the Torugart Pass and into Kyrgyzstan. From here we'd make our way due west, taking a course directly over the Tian Shan range — the much-fabled Mountains of Heaven — to Osh at the northern end of the 200-mile-long Ferghana Valley. Once there we'd cross the border into Uzbekistan, travel south through the valley, Central Asia's rich agricultural heartland, take a short cut across a thin corridor of Tajikistan, before re-emerging on the Uzbek plains. Here, sticking wherever possible to small tracks and nomadic trails, we'd journey through some of the most culturally wealthy and historically important towns in Central Asia: Khodjent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Merv. Then, having crossed the Amu Darya — formally the River Oxus — and entered Turkmenistan, a gruelling 800-kilometre slog across the bleak and baking Karakum — or Black Sands — Desert would carry us to the Caspian Sea. It was a journey of approximately 2,500 kilometres and would take, we figured, some four months to complete. If we left in early June, we'd arrive on the Caspian's eastern shores by mid-October latest.
'The trouble with journeys these days,' wrote Peter Fleming in the 1930s, 'is that they are too easy to make and too hard to justify.' Maybe so, but with Rachel there seemed to me plenty of reasons for making the trip. Not only did it venture through a part of the world I wished to explore, and use a method of transport I'd always wanted to take, but it offered me the perfect opportunity to bring my story full circle. Having written two books about my travels and life after Melanie, I saw now a chance to write the closing episode of this traveller's tale: from love, through loss, to love again. Not only could it prove another cracking adventure, packed with exciting characters and the challenges of an ancient road, but also with a little luck it might end up providing the concluding chapter to a story that began in Kashmir more than nine years ago. The last part of a decade-long trilogy, I thought grandiosely.
Over the course of the following nine months, both as a journalist and with my new adventure travel company — now called Wild Frontiers — I managed to spend a good deal of time in Pakistan, and my relationship with Rachel developed. But for all the charismatic edge she possessed, it didn't take long for me to discover a darker side lurked just behind — perhaps that was what made her so intoxicating — and as far as our relationship was concerned, I spent a great deal of the time rather confused. With a smile and a kiss she'd lead me in one direction, and a few minutes later drag my emotions in quite another. With great precision she'd define the road ahead, only to leap from its course to another path entirely. She would love with a passion and then push away, hold on tightly and then let go. She was the type of person Milan Kundera, John Fowles or Leo Tolstoy based their characters on. She was the most exciting woman I had ever met; she was also the most dangerous. I knew very well what a vulnerable position I was in and yet seemed totally powerless to do a thing about it. Retract from Rachel to win her love? I could as soon have kissed the moon.
There were often other men craving her attention — at parties, hanging around the house, even flying in from New York or London specially to see her. Though she pretended not to, it was obvious she enjoyed the attention. One day, while I was staying at her house, she came home and casually announced that some guy had proposed to her over the phone. I had no doubt at all that he had been serious. It was just the kind of reaction men had to Rachel. Only after a few moments did she realise I might be hurt by such a statement. 'Don't worry,' she said, placing a reassuring hand on my arm, 'I turned him down.' I just laughed anxiously and carried on. Rachel was a drug to me. And I was addicted.
Occasionally, persuaded either by her own anxieties or by me, she did try to talk about us. For various reasons, she didn't feel ready for a full commitment, to me or anyone else. There were painful experiences with ex-boyfriends she still had to resolve, there were worries over the fact that she lived in Pakistan while I didn't, and much to my dismay she read Running with the Moon — the book I wrote about a journey around Africa, relating in part to my life with Melanie — which, as I thought it might, made her concerned about living in the shadow of a seemingly perfect person who had now passed on. Did she want a relationship at the moment or did she want to be single? She said she wasn't sure. Excuses? Undoubtedly — there were probably many more — but while I had more or less what I wanted, it was relatively easy to bury my head beneath the soft and cosy blanket of intimate friendship, sex and laughter, and dream of the epic journey that was to come. After all, if there was one sure-fire way of resolving the affair, surely it was to spend four months of both extreme adversity and soul-surging pleasure together. I focused my hopes and fears on the journey.
An innocuous telephone call I made from London one night ruined everything. Some throw-away comment she made about being unable to take a short beach holiday we'd planned — 'Oh yeah, we've got to talk about that' — was all it took to have the demons of despair leap from nowhere to spit acid in my face. Following that, everything changed. The e-mails and telephone calls that had flooded in at a rate of two or three a day dwindled to a miserable trickle and their tone was hardly encouraging. 'I'm worried you're expecting too much out of this trip,' she wrote in one correspondence, 'I think it would be better if we go on it as devoted friends, rather than anything else.' Right.
It took a month of denial and self-delusion before I finally accepted the shattering reality. I was given little choice. A few days before I was due to fly out to see Rachel again, two months before we were set to leave for Kashgar, I logged on to pick up my e-mails only to discover that I'd finally been dumped. I sat staring at my computer screen, my mouth dry, my hands shaking, my heart pounding like timpani drums. I read the words again. I stood up. Sat down. I felt hot. I felt cold. I read them for a third time, looking for some shred of hope. There was none.
A few days later, feeling pitiful, I flew out to Pakistan. When I saw her — looking, it has to be said, painfully gorgeous with a sun-kissed face setting off those sparkling eyes — she cried. She told me she was sorry, that she still loved me, that she'd never connected with anyone more deeply in all her life, that she was always so happy when she was with me, that she didn't know what she was so scared of . . . and that she was seeing someone else. I put a brave face on the proceedings, didn't cry . . . much . . . and, still entranced as I was by her powerful presence, departed wishing her well. The next day, miserably tearing up all plans for adventures on the old Silk Road and a life together with the woman I loved, I flew back home to England.