I spent my last day in Bombay in a fairly fancy hotel near the airport, watching some unimpressing American movies; then I struggled through the airport, carrying my rucksack, my guitar, my sitar and my little bag. I think, bags included, I must have weighed at least 300 pounds. Weight wasn't the issue, though, as predicatably I wasn't allowed to take my sitar on to the plane. Instead, I was unreliably assured it would be okay in the hold. It was. It was fine in the hold from Delhi to Zurich; it was the cunt in Manchester who threw the instrument like it was a sack of potatoes onto the conveyor that broke it. I'd been politely driven off the runway, so I watched from the window as our small plane was unloaded. Out came by rucksack -thump!- then out came my sitar (UK price, about £400, Indian price, about £60). I shouted "Fucking shit!" as it hit the conveyer belt. Thankfully no one was around to hear me.

I was not in the best of moods as I waited for my instrument to come round on the stupid circular conveyor belt in the airport terminal. I picked it up, and nervously looked inside - all was well. None of the 20 tuning pegs was damaged, and the only problem I could see was that some of the strings had come loose. So I went home. When I got there, I discovered that I'd missed the great big fucking dent in the side of the resonating chamber, where that illiterate moron of a baggage handler had chucked it out of the plane. The wood (pumpkin, actually) isn't cracked, but the thing looks like it's been used to play cricket with. And Sachin Tendulkar was bowling. That's a cricket joke for you, after a fashion.

Instrument aside, my flight was as pleasant as sitting in a small metal tube hurtling through the air at hundreds of miles an hour is ever going to be. I slept most of the way. On the train, I listened with amusement to the small extended family sitting around me, on their way to Blackpool. During the train journey, at no point did anyone start grabbing my foot and asking for money, nor did anyone come by and shove onion pakoda in my face. But sadly no one came on selling chai, either. The British Railways have a long way to go before they reach Indian standards.

Seeing my family again was odd, but of course pleasant. I told my them they were much paler than I expected, which was true. And also greyer and older; I think we remember people how we want to. My brother was fatter than I remembered, too: which was odd, as I'd always thought of him as fairly thin. Just having come from the country of the emacited, I think everyone in England looks like they could lose a few pounds.

So now comes the part about how I've spiritually changed through my experience of great mother India. Well, not really. When I read other traveller's descriptions of the country, in guidebooks or around the 'net, I was irritated by this idea that everyone has a love-hate relationship with India, when they visit it. I've never really understood the concept of love-hate, as generally I'm either one or the other or somewhere in between. But, as it turns out, love-hate does perfectly describe my feelings towards India; so much of it I trully hated, so much of it I loved. But I didn't go on this trip because I wanted to commune with the nation; I don't believe in the nation state as anything other than a politcal entity. We're all individuals, regardless of which national anthem we try to avoid singing at New Year's Eve. I went to India because I felt like going away to think for a while, or perhaps more accurately because I was looking for an excuse not to think. And certainly when you're travelling thousands of miles each month, not thinking about your 'life' or 'career' is pretty easy to do. You're too busy trying to get rid of the man selling onion pakodas.

When I went to India, I told myself I'd be open to the supposed spiritual element; that is, I wouldn't walk around like a smug atheist, looking for interesting photos of the god-fearing natives. But they was no danger of having my opinions about 'spirituality' and religion changed; Hinduism is without a doubt the most commerical religion on the planet. Forget Catholicism or even Christianity - the fucking Brahamins had it all sewn up before we'd even invented electricity, nevermind Televangelism. Religion is the excuse for everything, and karma is really just a more developed form of American individualism; this time, instead of blaming people's misfortune and poverty on their supposed laziness, it's blamed on their 'past lives'. It's also the excuse for the disgusting and still prevalent caste system; you're born into the caste, so therefore you're destined to stay there. In India, there are people who've been beggars for generations, because they're not able to do any other work.