I woke up early at 6:30, carrying a slight nervous anxiety about meeting my self-imposed high expectations. With no dependency on a formal B&B service, breakfast was lightning fast— cereal, a banana, and vegan yogurt without a proper dining setup. I convinced myself that this minimalist fuel was entirely sufficient for the mammoth morning walk. By sheer repetition, it seems you can successfully cheat your own brain. I don't fully understand the internal psychological mechanisms, but my wife swears it works, when she keeps our wall clock ten minutes fast to ensure she gets ready on time.
The pub was dead silent when I stepped outside into the crisp morning air. I was ready for the 36km stretch down to Crackington Haven, packing over 1,650 meters of relentless elevation gain. What goes up, comes down, so it is a pure quad-burning punishment. In my head, however, it was the grand act of an epic saga. My family and friends were meeting me in Bude by noon, and we were going to trek together. The anticipation was already built up. Swathi has constructed a visceral narrative of Rama finally marching to meet Sita, backed by the noisy, unpredictable energy of the Kapi Sainya. The mission gave every single step an electric, cinematic urgency. I had a short road walk before rejoining the South West Coast Path. Near the beach, I crossed paths with a runner and a dog walker. The runner was far too fast to intercept, but the dog walker briefly heard my ambitious morning itinerary. He noted that I was tackling one of the single toughest sections of the entire coast path and advised me to be careful. I ignored since I heard that many times before. He warned it isn't normal to cover that much distance in a single day, but seeing how energetic and eager I was to reach my family, he applauded and acknowledged those emotions would carry me forward with unprecedented ease.
The path pitched upward almost immediately, proving him right within minutes. Running strictly against my own deadline, there wasn't much time for deep reflection and self corrections. I simply dialed up the pace. When I reached Marsland Mouth, I was officially crossing the border from Devon into Cornwall. I had been to Cornwall and Devon many times, but I'd never bothered to pay enough attention to understand where one actually ends and the other begins. The distinction between north and south Devon was much clearer now. Climbing out of the valley towards Morwenstow, the incline was brutal. I resorted to walking on all four limbs to make it easier; it felt like a far more natural and vastly superior approach. Human bipedal evolution suddenly looked like a genuine design flaw.
Further along near Hawker's Cove, a local man stopped me for a short talk. I told him all about my walk so far and made sure he picked up on my excitement about meeting my family. Almost everyone reacts favorably to an emotional story—I've watched enough Indian reality TV to know how that logic works. He began sharing his local field expertise as a regular walker, advising me to be careful near the cliff edges and to keep an eye on the geology. He explained the ongoing dangers of coastal erosion and landslides, even pointing out a section where a fresh slide had collapsed just two days prior. I pushed myself hard to make Bude by noon, but no matter what I did, time never seemed to favor me. I consistently underestimated how much time I actually spend taking photos and talking to strangers. But skipping those felt like doing an injustice to the experience of solo trekking.
As I approached Stanbury Mouth, I saw a woman in her thirties taking rest with a massive backpack. It was clear she was on a mission to hike the entire coastal path. I stopped to gather some intelligence on her trek. She was doing a solo, full SWCP push, aiming to complete it over three months. She was camping most nights and booking a B&B only when conditions got too harsh to get a warm bath and proper rest. I shared my own adventure, but realizing it sounded completely amateur next to her three-month epic, I quickly pivoted to the emotional angle of meeting my family. When that also failed to impress someone who was intentionally escaping society for a quarter of a year, I resorted to the standard protocol that always works in Britain: the weather. I remarked that the weather had been really great and that it hadn't rained for eight full days. But I managed to mess that up too. She immediately gasped, "Shh!", looking frantically toward the sky as if pointing out an invisible deity. "They might hear you!"
I laughed at her tribal belief and started walking down the gradient. I hadn't moved more than five minutes before the sky opened up and started pouring. I had to stop to haul out my waterproof jacket. I looked back up the trail wearily; she was walking down behind me, laughing out loud, and shouted, "I told you so!". I increased my pace trying to disappear from her sight and then the rain stopped.
Shortly after, I caught sight of Bob — a tall 6.5ft man in his late sixties, formidable pace and unmistakable aura. He had crossed my path earlier heading in the opposite direction, and my photo breaks had allowed him to catch up. He began recounting his extensive walk journey, finishing full SWCP years ago, on both directions, then the Wales Coast Path, conquering northern sections aiming for John o' Groats, and an 80-mile east-to-west coastal push. Facing a severe credibility gap, I countered with my own late-bloomer credentials — three peaks, marathons, Kilimanjaro. They weren’t standing on their own, so started injecting extra emotion into the pitch to compensate. The sheer intensity of our walking jugalbandi while waiting in a corner started attracting a crowd of onlookers. We concluded our quiet competition with great mutual respect. I felt like touching his feet in reverence, but settling for cultural compatibility, I shook his hand and took a photo.
Sometimes these obsessions mesmerize me. He had started walking early in his teenage along with his dad. I don't recall ever going for walks with my father. But growing up in the remote village of Heranje, with zero public transport, it was a standard routine to walk 7km whenever we visited my father's ancestral home. I also routinely walked 5km just to sell a liter of cow milk. It was diluted with an equal amount of water, doubling the burden to two kilograms—and I was only seven years old. In that way, my mother taught me the art of walking very early in my life too.
As I rounded the final headland toward Bude, I came across the Bude Sea Pool — a semi-man-made tidal structure built in the 1930s where the high Atlantic tides naturally refill it with fresh seawater. A few people were swimming in it like an ocean basin carved into the rock face. A short distance further, I encountered a stone artwork monument where walkers would leave the memories of their loved ones. One inscription from someone named Ruth — remembering her father who always took them for walks — brought a sudden drop of tears to my eyes.
To maximize the dramatic impact, I sprinted down toward the Bude parking lot where the family was scheduled to embrace me in style. Naturally, the plot had an unexpected twist: Pooja was driving the car and saw a fuel station at the last minute and couldn’t stop the urge to shop, delaying the grand entrance. But my extended family was already on site, with Swathi as cameraman and her kids directing it. Kishor stepped brilliantly into the role of Hanumantha, running toward me in cinematic slow motion to officially complete the ‘grand Milana’ act. Five minutes later, after the credits began rolling, Pooja's car finally pulled in. We staged a post credit scene with Ashwini as Sita hugging Rama, completing the reunion. Pooja remarked that the audience would be thoroughly confused, claiming I looked more like Hanumantha than Rama.
My kids were nowhere to be seen. Ashwini proudly announced kids just don’t miss me, haven’t bothered much about grand reunion and are still glued to their mobile screens. But she doesn't understand them quite like I do.
The reason they were glued to that phone was because it was my old mobile. Whenever they miss me, they play on it as a surrogate presence. It’s like hugging me. When they were younger, I used to feed them while playing games on that screen, so it became our shared language. Complex human interactions like that don't need to be explained — they just need to be felt.
We had lunch together before organizing the logistics for the final leg. Our cottage was near tintagel, 20 minutes from crackington haven. We had to come back here to collect Pooja’s car since she wanted to walk. That looked like an extremely complex puzzle to Ashwini and attributed it as my poor plan. They started modelling it as the puzzle involving grass, cow and the tiger trying to cross a river over boat. I had no plan, I didn’t needed one, I just wanted them to be here. After some complex calculations and manipulations, they decided Kishor and eight-year-old Swara would drive ahead to meet us at Crackington Haven, while the rest of the crew joined me on foot. It had been an epic 90-minute break. Everything shifted into slow motion the moment a group joined my solo trek.
As soon as the Kapi Sainya and I set off from Widemouth Bay, the sky opened up again — this time determined to demonstrate just how brutal the South West Coast Path can be. The rain escalated into a non-stop troublemaker. Downpours are particularly problematic for someone like me wearing glasses — essentially four eyes with zero windshield wipers. To make matters worse, the moisture invaded my phone, glitching the touchscreen and rendering GPS navigation useless. The hand kerchief was wet as well, we were out of ideas to make it work. I lost my way again, thoroughly humiliating myself in front of my expanded support group.
The kids quickly realized that walking in a deluge is not a heroic movie montage, and the inevitable complaints about wet socks, logistics, and endless mud began. The worst part was that they were entirely right to complain this time, rendering my standard defense mechanism — shouting back — completely useless.
I had imagined this differently. Not the weather specifically, but the seeing. Eight days of walking alone had quietly rewired something in how I looked at a cliff, a cove, a fold of rock disappearing into the sea. I had developed a language for this landscape that I didn't know I was learning until I tried to share it. I wanted them to feel what I had felt standing on the Great Hangman, or descending into Peppercombe, or watching the Atlantic do its indifferent thing from a cliff edge at dawn. I wanted to hand them eight days of accumulated seeing in a single afternoon.
Ashwini looked at a cliff and saw a cliff. It looked the same as the last one to her, and the one before that. She wasn't wrong — from the outside, one dramatic Devon headland does resemble another. But I was no longer looking at it from the outside. I was looking from somewhere inside and the view from there was completely different.
I couldn't explain why things were more beautiful than they see it. There was no logical way to explain it, especially in that mid-rain, without sounding arrogant and hyper critical. So I walked, and they walked, and we looked at the same landscape and saw different things. It was again a solo trail — not the chosen solitude of the cliffs, but the other kind. The kind that finds you in a crowd.
In a strange way, the miserable conditions worked in my favor. They had no idea how manageable the trail had been on other days, so the storm constructed a grand illusion of my invincibility — here I was, enduring this exact treacherous exercise for an eighth consecutive day. Though the physical terrain was easier than the morning leg, our boots were completely waterlogged, adding literal deadweight to every step. Sold as "waterproof," my shoes failed to stop even a single drop from entering. My new rain jacket, sourced just twenty-four hours prior, was at least holding its ground comfortably.
As water flooded our shoes, the pace of the group fragmented. Swathi marched ahead rapidly out of a genuine fear of hypothermia. She can be somewhat absent-minded while walking, and along one treacherous cliff section, she was striding forward while chatting to mom on the phone in near-zero visibility. I had to physically sprint and intercept her before she walked straight off a dead drop where the path turned sharply without warning. Her mother apparently tried to understand why I would take on these unnecessary challenges instead of living happily. Couldn’t find any sane reason, still wished me success in whatever I was pursuing.
Despite the bad weather, constant complaints and ‘are we there yet questions, we were making good progress. Ashwini was slower but steadier. By the time we finally dragged ourselves into Crackington Haven, exhausted and caked in mud, the group collectively swore a solemn oath never to follow me on a trail again. I quietly said thank you.
As much as I love them and enjoy being surrounded by their energy, I realized that on a trail, I prefer the solace of silence. Kishor was waiting on the other side, kicking off a full logistical circus to fetch the second car from Bude — a far more chaotic exercise than resting quietly in a B&B. Yet, being surrounded by everyone, laughing, and sharing a bottle of wine made the exhaustion entirely worthwhile. The landscape I couldn't share, I kept. Everything else — the chaos, the mud, the complaints, the wine — I shared freely. I certainly slept better that night than any other.
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