Tara Bariana recalls his long walk home to India

Ramblings

BBC

Science, Nature, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.6 • 732 Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2013

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Clare Balding walks on Cannock Chase with Tara Bariana who recalls his extraordinary walk home to India.

Tara Bariana was born in Punjab, and at the age of 13 came to the UK with his mother. His father and older brother had arrived four years earlier, in 1958.

In 1995 Tara decided he needed an adventure and made the decision to walk from the Midlands - where he'd grown up, married and settled - back to his home village in India.

He walked to Southampton where he caught the ferry to Cherbourg. There he realised he didn't speak any French, he couldn't even say 'bonjour'... but, despite being hit by the reality of what he'd decided to do, he couldn't turn back.

Nineteen months later, of almost non-stop walking, he arrived in his home village but instead of returning home, remembers thinking 'is that it?', and stayed in India for a further 18 months.

On this walk, around Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, Tara is accompanied by his son, Clive, Clive's wife, Jodie, and their two children.

Producer: Karen Gregor.

Transcript

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0:00.0	11 climbers appeared to have died on the world's second highest mountain K2.
0:06.4	It was one of the deadliest days in mountaineering history.
0:09.9	Rock falls, avalanches.
0:11.6	Huge pieces of ice.
0:12.9	All are big enough to kill you.
0:14.3	He just flew out into Devoid, and he was gone.
0:17.3	How did it all go so wrong?
0:19.2	And is it really worth risking death to feel alive? Why would
0:23.1	somebody pay to go to a place called the death zone on vacation? Extreme, peak danger. With me,
0:29.9	Natalia Melman Petrazella. Listen to the full series now, first on BBC Sounds. This is a BBC Radio
0:36.4	for download. You're listening to me, Claire Boulding,
0:39.5	with another edition of Ramblings. In this series of ramblings, we have been exploring the notion of
0:46.7	being in search of something, in search of love, in search of a challenge, in search of ancient ways.
0:54.0	And today, I'm walking with a man who,
0:56.6	in 1995, stepped out of his front door in the West Midlands and went in search of home.
1:02.5	And the only problem was that home was 10,000 miles away in India, and he decided to walk there.
1:09.8	And Tara Bariana is with me now.
1:11.9	We're in the West Midlands.
1:13.0	We're actually, we've come to Canuck Chase,
1:14.6	which is Ordnance Survey Explorer Map 244.
1:17.5	If you look at that, you see this huge expanse of woodland.
1:21.5	This is Canick Chase.
	...

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