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It was 11 years ago yet very few travel encounters have come close to matching the experience of myself with six of my, then, close friends on a bus across the country from our university in the small city of Grahamstown...

I met a holy man in India once. Well, sort of. And not in an Eat, Pray, Love kind of way.

One of the great things about travelling is that you get to meet a lot of new people in a very short space of time. Remembering exactly who they all are and what they all look like, however, is not always easy.

The sun bathed my face and back in a warm, all-encompassing glow. I heard the rubber tyres of my wheelchair grip the wooden boardwalk.

“How did that song go?” he asked. We sat in the back of the taxi, in forty degrees of heat, not quite believing our ears. Selim had just declared his love for Tina Charles.

We sit, just a friend and I at the edge of a deserted road, edging closer to the bushes lining the road, desperately trying to stay in the shade.

‘Madam, it’s the perfect weekend getaway from Bangalore’, the travel agent had promised us.

It’s just before seven and the shadows are slowly lengthening. To the right, monolithic mesas and buttes stretch to the horizon and glow orange, scarlet and copper red as the rocky outcrops absorb the last rays of the sun.

I hate tours but this tour of Rajasthan looked awfully cheap. And I like cheap. I turf up at a decent hotel in Karol Bagh, Delhi.

In the midst of this woman’s journey she is making each day count, she is visiting Aotearoa land of the long white cloud, commonly known as New Zealand. The woman sees a clearing and she can rest once more.