The first Chinese woman to backpack across India, Hong Mei says the impact was both emotional and spiritual.

Hong Mei bought journals stamped with Ganeshas in Pahar Ganj (New Delhi) to be able to write during her long train journeys. The first Chinese woman to backpack across the country, she took home a year-full of memories and wrote The Farther I Walk, The Closer I Get to Me, a travelogue that is warm and full of sharp and honest observations about a country so close and yet so far away from her own.

From meeting Aamir Khan during a chance movie shooting to spending long days in the sleeper class of India’s bustling trains, Hong Mei’s stories are fascinating and personal. “Very few Chinese go backpacking in India, and even fewer women. It’s not that we have an unfavourable view of the country. We are simply oblivious. For most Chinese, India is just a country that existed long ago in fables like Journey to the West,” says Mei. After a year of backpacking across 33 Chinese provinces, her first trip abroad was to India in 2009.

She had several experiences that year — watching protests by sugarcane workers, watching Indian politics unfold on election day in Mumbai, meeting Chinese immigrants in Kolkata and trying the local food. “Fifth-century Chinese explorers like Faxian and Xuanzang might have been the first Chinese to travel to India but, sometimes, it felt like it was me” she explains. “Pretty much everywhere I went in India, the people could not believe that I was Chinese. Some would pull out their Chinese-made mobile phones and smile; others would do a little song and dance from Chandni Chowk to China. In Kutch, I was the first-ever Chinese to be issued an official travel permit to that restricted region. I felt like I had made history.”

The impact the country had on her was not just emotional but spiritual. “This was the first time in my life I was surrounded by so much spirituality. China is now the world’s largest economy; we have everything we could ever want, except faith. But I never really thought about it until I arrived in India. I found myself sitting on the ghats of Varanasi all day long watching the religious processions. She was moved to tears after witnessing the Kumbh Mela. “This resilient happiness and contentment among the people here seems to spring from faith.”

When Mei was in Mumbai, she took off on her own into Dharavi at night, only to be caught by the locals and the police. “We had initially gone on the slum tour but no photos were allowed. Ao I went back the next day unescorted to photograph the patchwork of corrugated metal rooftops. I snuck into the grounds of the highest nearby apartment complex where a man interrogated me. Soon several men had arrived and wouldn’t let me leave. They accused me of trespassing, which was true, I guess,” she says. The police were called too. “An entire convoy arrived! Sirens and lights filled the slums of Dharavi. ‘Is this real?’ I asked myself. They put me in the back of one of the jeeps and we drove away. Dozens of slum children merrily chased after us. They brought me to the police station and then started filling out paperwork. In the end, they were very kind. They told me off and let me go.”

Since she didn’t have a year-long visa, she had to keep travelling back and forth from China. When she went to Orissa, she was asked not to travel down south. “All tribal tours were suspended due to Naxalites closing roads, trains and trade. India launched a military offensive in response. Our driver was uneasy because I am Chinese. There was a rumour saying Maoist weapons are bought from China. If anyone inquired, I had to say I was Japanese or Korean.”

Hong Mei took a year to finish her book and would like to come back to India to explore more places. “I hope I can return to India and visit the regions that I was not allowed to visit last time, like the Northeast. I’d love to write a sequel to my book about backpacking through places like Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, which no other Chinese has written about before.”