After a spontaneous whirlwind of a year that saw me spending extended periods in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and traversing pretty much the entirety of India, I find myself back in Bari. Specifically, the colourful quartiere of Madonnella, where I’ve called home for the past four years, after moving there as a sort-of life experiment from South London, towards the tail end of 2019.
Madonnella hugs Bari’s Lungomare (“seafront” – it’s the longest in Italy) and is a neighbourhood where you find an abundance of nonnas (both of the friendly and rather stern variety), clan foot soldiers, young working professionals and more recently, AirBnB guests all going about their lives simultaneously, yet also minding their own business.
A snapshot of Bari life; late-summer 2023.
It’s also incredibly multicultural and on my tiny street – as well as a stray Englishman with distant Khasi (on his father’s side) and Mancunian roots (his mother’s side) – there are Chinese, Indians, Mauritians, as well as Italians. One of my most memorable Madonnella experiences was one Sunday afternoon a few years ago, when the immigration police paid a visit to the street and decided to check that a few families’ paperwork was in order. A number of the nonnas suddenly appeared on their balconies and leapt to their defence, shouting down to the police and telling them to leave them alone and move onto more important matters. Over time, I’ve developed a real affection for daily life here and all of its idiosyncrasies.
I was only meant to leave for one month. I took off for Vietnam in mid-August last year, with the intention of returning in September but quickly became captivated by its culture, its food and the heady combination of hectic cities, tranquil rice paddy-dotted countryside and stunning bays and coastal vistas. I fast-developed a taste for life on the road and the endless new experiences it offered, found that I was still able to do freelance work as an arts PR consultant remotely from the other side of the world, and one month turned into three, then six and eventually became an entire year.
After Vietnam, I ventured into Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. I still have a huge Khasi family on my grandmother’s side in Shillong in Meghalaya, North-East India (they are actually closer to parts of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos than some of ‘mainland’ India) and soon various cousins were suggesting that I tried to fit in a visit too. I arrived in late-October, was very generously offered the use of her vacant home by an Aunty who spends half of the year in the South of the country, and for the next three months set up in base in Shillong and went about my daily life there, almost as a quasi-local.
1.) Sitting down for a bowl of local steamed clams, Huế, Vietnam. 2.) Mullick Ghat Flower Market, Kolkata. 3.) Paradise beaches and the best seafood curry, Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu. 4.) Exploring Bangkok’s canals. 5.) The Manila cityscape, the Philippines. 6.) Browsing for shadow puppets, Jalan Surabaya, Jakarta.
I was kindly looked after and made to feel welcome by my Indian family, became very well-acquainted with the Evening Club (an excellent live music venue run by Jeff Laloo, and in my opinion, one of the best grassroots platforms in all of India), started zipping around the lanes of Shillong and the surrounding areas, mainly using the Rapido scooter taxi service or the black-but-yellow-roofed Maruti 800 local cabs as my means of transport, attended two Khasi weddings and three funerals, and was able to do some digging into family history, in particular finding out that my grandmother’s father was in fact raised in India and not in Ireland, as we had been led to believe all of these years.
The streets of Shillong, Meghalaya, including Police Bazar, its main shopping area. The Shillong side of the family (most people in this photo are descended from either my grandmother’s sisters or brothers).
I continued to use Shillong a base for the next few months as I explored as much of the rest of India as possible, from Puri to Amritsar, Rishikesh to Pondicherry, Jodphur to Mysore and Madurai to Delhi (and naturally, everywhere in-between). I crammed in a lot during my time, had some of the most amazing experiences and delicious food and was even able to fit in a two-month sojourn to Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, whilst I waited for my Indian visa to renew.
The trip wasn’t without its challenges though. A mysterious malaria-like illness gripped me late-last year, lingered for several months, caused me to lose my appetite and saw me lose two stone; I mislaid a debit card and had the other one cancelled by my bank’s fraud team; my first flight into Shillong from Hanoi was cancelled due to a cyclone; I suffered a sciatica flare-up in Kolkata and sustained permanent scars after coming off a scooter in Sidemen, Bali, there was an unsettling incident with a security guard in the Punjab, an argument with a rogue taxi driver in Varanasi that led to him dumping me and all of my luggage out of his car in the middle of the road, nearly causing me to miss my train and laughably, my suitcase was lost by the airline on the final homeward leg of my journey to Mangalore (luckily it was returned one day later).
In the words of George Harrison though, all things must pass and whilst I sense that I will regularly have to resist the temptation to just pack up and run off back to Asia or head towards Latin America in the opposite direction, Bari is home. As I reintegrate into the rhythm of daily Pugliese life, I’m not just returning; I’m rewriting. Fresh connections, new colleagues, potential bandmates, a reappreciation of the importance of community and various burgeoning creative projects signal a phase that’s brimming with potential. A pipe dream that’s been in the ether for a while now, may also see Madonnella becoming a more permanent semi-base for years to come. It’s all been an equal mix of the alluring and exhausting – in many respects…
However, September and October are always months of busyness, flux and change and things will settle down in November and December and then the next chapter become clearer.
Back in July 2011, I had one of my favourite trips-ever to Lisbon in Portugal with four of my oldest friends, Chris, Matty and Scott. We were young, naïve and probably rather irritating to share a room with but had a blast and attracted new friends like flies to honey. In our hostel dorm at Travellers House in the Baixa district, a young Canadian dude in his early-20s bunked in the same room as us for a couple of nights. On the day he checked out to continue his journey, he shook our hands and urged us to “Enjoy your crazy life adventure guys”. He must be in his 30s by now and probably has a very sensible career and a mortgage but that phrase has always stayed with me. Here’s to be being grateful for the past but looking towards the future.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards” –
Søren Kierkegaard
Read this (in many ways the prequel to this post): https://setyourownscene.com/?p=1895
Listen to this (‘Never Lose Your Sense of Wonder’, a little-known 2005 single by Yeti, a band fronted by John Hassall, bass player of The Libertines. An excellent Byrds-esque jangle of a tune and a mantra to live your life by): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NAso8g5rKk