In 1962, Satish Kumar set off from India on a peace walk that took him to Moscow, Paris, London and Washington DC. Sarah Baxter met him in Devon to hear about the power of putting one foot forward
Movement. It’s essential, Satish Kumar tells me as we stroll along the North Devon coast, sea air swirling, waves smashing the rocks, wildflowers quivering in the breeze. “Only by moving can things change and transform. And walking is movement of the body. When you’re walking, you’re transformed. Your mindset, your health, your ideas. You get new, fresh thinking.”Now 84 years old, Satish has moved more than most. Born in Rajasthan, northern India, he started walking as a child (“My mother was a great walker. If somebody offered her a horse, she’d say, how would you like it if a horse rode you?”). Then, aged nine, he became a Jain monk: “For nine years, no bicycle, no train, no car, no nothing,” he recalls. “Just barefoot walking. It became second nature.”
But it was the journey on which he embarked in June 1962, then aged 26, that put him in the perambulating premier league. It was the height of the Cold War, and Satish and his friend EP Menon set out to walk from Delhi to the four nuclear capitals – Moscow, Paris, London, Washington DC – to spread a message of non-violence. A journey of around 8,000 miles and two and half years.
In 2021 he’s finally published an English-language book about that mammoth journey: Pilgrimage for Peace. So I have come to the Hartland Peninsula – a wild hunk of uncompromising cliffs and jagged shards squaring up to the Atlantic Ocean – to find out more. Satish, still a prominent activist, speaker, author and educationalist, has lived here for four decades and takes me on one of his favourite walks: not 8,000 miles, but a lovely little circuit from Hartland Quay.
Devon – The Hartland Peninsula
The ‘museum of nature’
“When I’m in nature, my mind is clear, my heart throbbing with love,” he says as we gaze across the waves to Lundy Island, hazy in the distance. “I’ve been here years and I never get tired of it. This is the great ‘museum of nature’. I don’t have to go to the National Gallery. Van Gogh’s sunflower is wonderful. But hundreds of sunflowers in a field, that is something amazing.”
Satish saw much to amaze on his epic hike. He walked over the mountains of Afghanistan, into the deserts of Iran, along the Black Sea, through the frigid Russian winter, across a politically divided Germany. He visited Imam Reza’s shrine and Canterbury Cathedral, went to the Bolshoi Ballet, saw the Mona Lisa. He met Bertrand Russell and Martin Luther King (“you could feel all around him a kind of presence; he was an embodiment of love”). He covered a remarkable number of miles. But, most remarkable of all, he did it without a single rupee.
“If I’d had money, the journey wouldn’t have been so rich,” Satish reflects. “When you have no money, you have to be creative, polite, accepting. It was a great way of learning humility and experiencing human generosity.”
Satish Kumar has published a book about his historic walk (Photo: Geoff Dalglish)
It’s uplifting that people of all ethnicities, religions, classes and dogmas offered hospitality to these two curious young Indian men with their well-worn clothes, translated peace leaflets and brimming idealism. It helped affirm one of the mantras Satish chanted over and over: the Sanskrit dictum ‘so hum’ (‘you are, therefore I am’), a recognition of the ultimate connectedness of all things. But surely he sometimes wished he’d picked an easier option?
“There were days when my feet were bleeding and blistered, I was hungry, we were going up and down in the mountains, and I said, I can’t do it. But then your mood changes and you say: but we are going for peace. We have to reach people and do what we set out to do.”
Embracing the fast
Satish recalls how, at times, he did not eat for 48 hours – not least due to his resolve to remain vegetarian (a particular problem among the meat-dependent tribes of the Hindu Kush). “We were hungry, yes, but I always thought: I’ll see it as an opportunity to fast. I’m going to enjoy my hunger.”
Even though we only walk a couple of miles, I’m glad today is no such opportunity. We end our stroll at the water’s edge Hartland Quay Hotel, chatting over (veggie) soup. I look at this sprightly, engaged, thoughtful man and ask: did you never feel frightened?
“Not really. Because there was nothing to lose but our lives.”
That seems enough to me…
“The only encounters we had [threatening] our lives were in Paris and America. Not in Afghanistan or Iran or Russia. And when we did encounter a gun, it did not fill me with fear. I left home with a big aim and I knew it would not be easy; that I may not come home alive. I was prepared for that.”
Although today’s world is very different, Satish’s campaigning continues – if he was in his 20s now, he says, he’d walk from London to Beijing for climate peace. “In the 60s, nuclear war could happen at any time. Now we are talking about climate change. This crisis is still very dangerous, and time is short. Therefore, we have to work on people’s awareness.”
And that’s one of the reasons for writing the book now. “I would like young people to read my story and be inspired,” Satish says. “I want everybody to be creative and imaginative. Be adventurous, take risks. Do something that speaks to your heart – it could be for peace, ecology, global warming. Take a difficult path and embrace the difficulties. Do something extraordinary.”
Pilgrimage for Peace: The Long March to Washington by Satish Kumar
Satish’s tips for pilgrims
- Go with a companion You can share, you can talk, you can support each other.
- Go without expectations Accept things as they come. Things are not fixed, they emerge. Embrace that.
- Always have water Take a reusable bottle, which hangs from your shoulder so that even if you don’t have your rucksack, water is with you.
- Learn a few words of the local language The moment you speak to people in their language, they become friendly. It not only helps you, it opens the hearts and doors of the country and the people you are meeting.
