“I am Chella Duri, I come from Tamil Nadu,” translated Saji. “I look after my master’s goats on this land. Now I call them for the night. I sleep here with them.” The goats milled around us, nibbling the wall, the grass, my feet, the path, everything.

Jamie asked what was wrong with his foot.

“I broke it on a stone while climbing.” We could see blood stains on the rag. Jamie wondered why he had not seen a doctor. “I earn 4000 rupees (around £46) a month, and that is all for my family. There is nothing left for doctor.”

Five people on five horses won a silver medal for Great Britain at the Olympics this week. Twenty years ago five people on four horses and a dragon went hacking in Windsor Great Park. Names have been changed to preserve the dignity of the innocent (horses).

To the north, a utilitarian concrete bridge flies down from the mainland onto Bolgatty’s eastern shore, races across to the other side, then takes off towards neighbouring Vypeen island. A community of Harijans (aka ‘Untouchables’) has made its home under the bridge on Bolgatty, leaning bits of corrugated metal up against the bridge’s concrete piles and, covering them with plastic sheets and old rags.

A wide and well-tended path stretched upwards to the main group of buildings. We had walked into another country: there were no plastic bottles, crisp wrappers, bright blue tangles of frayed nylon rope, plastic bags, sweet wrappers, turds or stinking puddles anywhere. Just nice green grassy borders either side of the well-trodden path, and a hand-built wooden stairway.

Every month in the Itinerant Writers Club we write a 500 word essay on a given theme. This month it was “on the road”.

You have a cold? Try a pinch of tiger, or a smattering of red panda. A Chinese medicine maker’s pantry is spread over the hills of Darjeeling, but this zoo is doing all it can to protect the animals.

The vendor wanted ten rupees (about 12p) for a gloopy crimson drink in a hastily wiped glass. In a nod to hygiene the sidekick wore [read more]

In New Jalpaiguri station, on a sticky pre-monsoon night, I drink sweet masala chai, while fat mosquitoes stab my ankles. My woollen shawl, useful for [read more]

Kolkata’s South Park Street Cemetery, with its 18th and 19th century monolithic tombs, is full of the tales and tribulations of Britain’s earliest pioneers. I [read more]

For those who don’t already know my story, I live on a boat with my partner Jamie, and our cat Millie. During the past six [read more]

Since I jacked in the rat race and headed east for a life on the Big Blue, I haven’t been back. But Jamie and I [read more]