Learning to glide.

The courtyard in front of the temple shuffled with movement in the late morning light. Top heavy tourists fresh from elsewhere but weary from travel lumbered around as they looked for new homes, whilst local touts lugged sacks up awkward concrete steps, set at odd angles with arbitrary heights. A white skinned woman with red hair under a silk scarf - a clear convert to Indian spirituality - sat silently on the temple steps with postcards for sale whilst local boys attempted to sell their services to anyone they could make eye contact with. I was not one of those people. I walked through all of them with a helmet in one hand, some keys in the other, a peppering of apprehension in my chest and a daggered focus on a poker face.

My bike stood like a domino of chrome in a line of the same all glistening on the stage of gravel and dust. Still obscenely unfamiliar with my machine I briefly imagined the effect of an unfortunate bump on the line of local vehicles and then scalded myself for my own frightful and unproductive imagination. I removed my bike from the coral with enough care to make sure I didn't get in trouble but with not so much that it would appear that I should be taking even more.

Recalling the required parts of yesterday's not-quite-crash course I threw my leg over it and with a sharp kick and a flick of the wrist her voice rumbled into the slowly heating air. All I wanted was to get out of this courtyard and beyond the staring eyes that that cast their gaze from shadows of shops and from the layers of steps that grew from the ground in every direction like an awkward auditorium designed for people watching. My mind's voice echoed the memory of the Englishman.

Clutch in, up to first, little throttle, clutch out.

With the promise of promise itself I rolled towards the courtyard's only exit and snaked down the hill with the shining pairs of inquisitive eyes fading behind me and as they did so every sense devoted itself to me, the machine and the meters ahead. Free of a waiting teacher and stagnant eyes that never hide their own blatant interest, we wound down the hill in jerks and gushes as a skipping memory, a light grasp of logic and a complete lack of experience loosely controlled this rumbling chariot.

Despite being without any advice, help or support I relaxed just a little. Out on the road, all errors are ephemeral, well, at least those that don't involve grievous bodily harm. If you miss a gear, stall, run through an intersection or almost hit someone, the witnesses are soon gone and so is the memory of your foolishness. Learning in a fish tank is laced with pressure and a witness that both serve to stifle but wish to aid.

The road cracked and bristled before me in its various textures, occasionally smooth and consistent in colour and shape, but more often than not an old patchwork quilt of potholes, gravel and rocks. There was no defined edge to the road, just a fringe of grit and a ditch well worth avoiding. I looked at it, but not too hard. My engine screamed.

Throttle out, clutch in, foot down in second gear, clutch out, increase throttle.

The road was an obstacle course in and of itself but its static pitfalls - although requiring their degree of care, caution and respect - were mere pebbles compared to the rumbling boulders with which we shared the road. Indian road rules echo a tumultuous stream; a confronting tangle of chaos, ebbing and flowing in its slides and vortices but somehow all bound together by a transcending order that is understood by no individual but is recognized and responded to by every particle within it. If there were any definable attributes to this liquid flow they are these:

* Big things have the right of way (unless small things risk their existence by darting and weaving through the miniature tears in traffic flow)

* All particles must make all other particles aware of their position, desires, directions and intentions through the intrinsically limited language of the monosyllabic horn; beep for "hurry up", beep for "slow down", beep for "hello", beep for "Fuck you", beep for "Get out of the way" and beep for "Hey mate your stand is still down and you are likely to kill yourself.

Throttle out, clutch in, back to first, clutch out, apply brake, clutch in, stop.

I looked down to see that I did in fact have my stand still down. I had wondered what that grating metal on gravel sound was.

Kick stand back, increase throttle, clutch out, engine growl, clutch in, second, throttle, repeat, third.

Everything moved at an increasingly brisk rate as the traffic thinned from the trucks, buses, jeeps and rickshaws that spilt over the bridge from the town and the road bent as it swayed and rolled as it rose through the smaller pockets of villages. As the speed increased my mind still clambered to process and calculate my position and relationships with the bike, the road, and the picture into which I plunged. My mind struggled to swallow and interpret the cascade of input fed to it through all its major senses that seemed both alive yet dulled due to the rate of movement. Images lasted seconds, if not split seconds, whilst I tried to extrapolate the important from the pointless; was that a bump in the road or a slip of the transmission? A beep of caution or a horn of scorn? A sign of danger or just visible noise?

Blind corner. Brake, clutch, gear down, clutch out, straight, clutch in, gear up, throttle, repeat, repeat again.

The smaller villages were peppered with activity and oddities. One stretch of road was deliberately covered with a carpet of straw inches thick so that passing vehicles would thresh it with their rolling rubber. Further on a construction site of grey gravel and mud bricks required a little looped convoy of teenage men to walk up and down and across the street to collect basketfuls of grey stones from a large mound and then take them back to the site balanced with dexterous and oblivious confidence on their sweating craniums.

Tight bend. Gear down, brake, bank left, straighten, hold, gear up.

I approached a metal bridge where large vehicles sorted out a direction of flow with an absence of words whilst a man minus a mask welded a loose sheet of checker plate steel back to a girder, seemingly oblivious to the vehicular conversation. We nipped through the discussion.

Bank right, clutch in, gear up. Calculation error. Wrong gear. Recalculate. Clutch in, gear down, back on the right page, out on the open road.

I felt the air ripple up my arms that sat baking in the dancing sunlight. I thought I was flying but a quick glance at the dial showed a steady 50. I'd ridden faster on a pushbike. I thought about how it would feel to do 100 but the thought was cut short by something in the middle of the road. Black red and underfed a dog lay fast asleep, unconscious to the world but surely conscious of its position. Not yet dead, it basked with languid, careless abandon, baking on both sides from the bite of the mountain sun and the roasting conduction of the black strip. Neither the growing piston fires, nor a sharp brassy blast troubled the kipping canine as I altered my trajectory.

Corner right. Brake, clutch, down, throttle, clutch, up throttle, clutch. New frame.

With a straight road came a dash more speed and my eyes glimmered and shook like an erratic housefly as they tried to be everywhere at once. They soaked random slivers of the picture and tried to assemble the whole, like the beam of a torch shaking furiously through the darkness. My mind almost touched on the consequence of a fall but the thought was caught before it landed by a distraction of the mind's light. In front of an orchard, al least two miles from the nearest house stood a grey old man with lines carved on his face from many years of breathing. His thousand yard stare, pierced the air, pierced the mountain, pierced the light. He wore a black robe that ran to his ankles and was bound with a crimson scarf. His stare and his stance stood as still as the sun but in his hands a ball of twine he spun.

'Strange' I thought before dodging a cow, and with an end to the straight rolling towards me like a wave of earth the calculations appeared again and the body obeyed.

Brake, clutch, down, clutch, wait, clutch, down, clutch, wait, bank right, throttle, clutch, up, throttle, clutch, throttle, clutch, up, throttle.

The primary feelings felt were physical, the purpose; input. I felt the weight of the bike, the velocity of the wind, the groove and click of the undulating gears. I felt the surface of the road creep with sharp arachnid fingers through the chassis and various mechanisms up into my skin that relayed them with an army of electrical charges. Besides the Physical, far from parallel and lagging behind like tin cans and boots strung up to a honeymooner's car clambered some shadow of a fear and a suggestion of an intense enjoyment as yet disallowed to breath unrestrained. Beneath me and between me was a machine of a thousand parts I died not understand, but temporarily controlled on pure faith. I sat on the shoulders of physicists, chemists and engineers, bulleting into a frame of chaotic, biological beauty.

I avoided a pothole and overtook a scooter laden with three Indian men, one of which held a computer on his shoulder. A hill rose sharply ahead and the engine shrank in relation to it.

Clutch, gear down, throttle, clutch out.

The engine stubbornly grunted as though it had lowered its head and dug in its feet as it charged upward and onward. At the top of the rise there was a bend and beyond the bend was space… kilometers of space...a valley of space. On the other side of the space was a mountain and on the near side of the space was a fast approaching absence of anything except a few tall pines that marked the edge of the road and a cliff as steep as their trunks.

I proceeded with caution. The space grew bigger as the road grew shorter.

Brake, clutch, down, clutch, hold, bank left.

Out of the bend, but close enough to feel pine needles.

Throttle, clutch, up, throttle, clutch.

The engine roared with my mind in time; the engine with so much to do and the brain with so much to consider. The world was a frenzy from my seat. So much to see, digest, judge and react to. Life was thick and tangled like a carpet of snakes. It slithered in herds of cattle alongside the road and rested in my path with dogs playing chicken. My head hummed at the brink, sat in the red, roared at R.P.M unknown. The smile on my lips masked the brain choking on the input, split into the dichotomy of manic sensory filtering and underlying logical recall. A web of cognitive function held my perception with its swollen rungs that forked on endlessly the further I delved into the rolling point of the road.

Brake, clutch, down, clutch, wait, clutch, down, clutch, wait, bank right, throttle, clutch, up, throttle, clutch, throttle, clutch, up, throttle.

The sun bore down with its electric weight upon the glowing earth. Shadows waltzed under the boughs of trees whilst my arms turned the colour of roses in front of my eyes. Although I felt no burn due to the cascading air, I saw and felt the shade lick them into a cool remission when everything changed.

What happened then is not fit for description in the paste tense. To recall it is to re-live it. To think about it is to be possessed by it, removed from this guesthouse bedroom and reborn astride the vinyl seat and single piston that cut through the scenery. To consider such a place and time is to allow these walls to melt into a flickering, evolving peripheral, to allow this pen to become a throttle, the floor a swift blur of translucent cement and this page - indeed every stroke of this pen - to become the meandering point of focus lifting the curtain on a mysterious world of light and wonder.

I look up to see that everything has either stopped or slowed. Everything moves like clouds on the horizon; gradual, harmonious, almost as if they were being guided of towed through the sky. The chaos of the world had gone from sight, removed from my ears and almost from memory itself. Even I seem to stop where I am as I glide inwards. The background noise is gone and the sound of the engine seems to have been stolen with it. Intensity is up, but saturation is down. The fluxing stream of light and mayhem shared by a million witnesses lies somewhere else now and I am alone in the shadows that envelop me as they steal my memory breath and being.

The mountains on the horizon are gone. The villages, the villagers, the fences, the cars, cows and dogs are gone too. The rambling tangle of difference, of noise, of inconsistency, of fluctuation are all absent in this place. I am in a forest removed, a forest still, a forest peaceful.

The ground is a carpet that rolls form the high ground on my left towards an unseen valley on my right. It is completely devoid of undergrowth, comprised of dull shades of brown pine needles and dark green puddles of textured moss, whilst being occasionally punctuated with the grey crests of boulders that remain almost entirely hidden under the soft, cool soil. I can see further on an immediate scale here but less on a long one, like a child inside a secret garden, fenced off from the world. In the forest's arms there is a consistency rarely found beyond it. Its elements are random in their placing but their density remains constant throughout. There is an organic harmony in the spaces between the trees and as I move between them I find their frequency possesses me.

The trees themselves are tall, strong spears that look more like the tails of arrows fired from heaven than the product of the world existing beyond their borders. I slip past them in fascination and they barely move except for a shy shimmer they inherit from the wind's altruistic caress.

The air is cool; neither wet nor dry, neither heavy nor light. Its invisible curls and pockets stroll with leisurely abandon as they mingle and dance amongst themselves and the forest's inhabitants alike. Up above, upon the tendrils of the air, a stream of white blossoms born from a gap in the ceiling flows and forks like water on round rocks, down into my private garden. One schism of white finds an ebb just in front of me and I roll through it in a humming silence, sending particles surging and swirling back to life in fluctuations behind me.

I am taken. I am swallowed. I am gone.

All is at peace here, All is connected, all things are one thing and as I move deeper into this shadowed utopia my mind and feelings merge into and beyond each other like blood and wine.

My divisions have melted into everything. My mind, my body, the bike, the road and this beautiful garden now all seem like extensions of one thing that operates freely. My hands and feet control the bike without the sharp orders of a calculating mind. They move with precision and intuition. They move with dexterity and poise. They move, I move, it moves, we move, together, like a stream of water, like the kiss of wind, like white blossoms cascading down a staircase of sunlight.