The Man Who Tried to Walk to India and Turned Back at France

I read a story in the Sunday Tribune on February 24 that I found to be quite inspirational. It was about a Donegalman called Saoirse, who was planning to walk from England to India without any money. He had set aside two years of his life to carry out this journey. His plan was that everything he needed along the way would be bartered for by carrying out odd jobs and the kindness of strangers.

The first thought I had as I read it was of a story I heard on the radio last month about another Irishman who was about to head off on an adventure holiday in which he was going to travel from Ireland to Australia by bus. When I had heard of the Ireland to Australia journey first I thought it sounded like a real adventure; until I read up a bit about it and it turned out to be a package holiday (Ozbus). While it is still a fantastic trip the fact of it being a package took away the adventurous feel of it for me.

So when I heard this story about someone who was going to genuinely rough it and spend two years walking from England to India without touching money it caught my attention. As I read I saw that this adventure was not being done simply for the thrill of it either. It was being done to promote a philosophy that he called Freeconomics, basically a world without money.


I’m still enough of an idealist to be interested by something like that so I went onto the Internet and looked up their web-site and went to Saoirse’s blog to see how the walk was getting on.

Saoirse is a wordy blogger and it took a while to read down through the post as he recounted the recent events. The mission to travel free ran into a hitch straight away at Dover as no ferry company was prepared to bring Saoirse and his fellow pilgrim, Eric, to France for free. I’d never have considered it an option in the first place to ask a ferry company for a free ride but apparently they are willing to do it under limited circumstances.

A solution of sorts came when a third pilgrim, Katie, joined them and her mother offered to pay for their tickets. They accepted the offer and were off to France.

The glorious adventure failed very quickly afterwards. None of the pilgrims could speak the language and since the French people they encountered couldn’t or wouldn’t speak English they had a difficulty in explaining their purpose to people.

I understood the problem immediately. To be honest if I was approached by a new-age-traveller-type who asked me if I wanted any odd jobs done and who said they’d work for food or a bed for the night I’d politely decline the offer. My inbuilt suspicion would be that there was something wrong with them. This obstacle was multiplied by a factor of many times in another country where they couldn’t speak the language.

It was suggested to them that they would get a better reception in Belgium where people would be more willing to speak English but they didn’t have enough food to last them for the journey through France. Eric decided to turn back. Katie, who was only accompanying them for a part of the journey anyway also decided to turn back at this point and offered to get Eric and Saoirse tickets home.

So the effort to walk from England to India failed. I was genuinely sad to read this so soon after hearing about it for the first time!

Saoirse now plans to build up to another attempt to walk to India by first of all walking around Britain spreading the message there first. His hope is to build up enough of a movement and publicity that it will be possible to carry the message ahead of him the next time he tries the international walk.