About me: Daniel Robinson, 38 years old, left England for China over a year ago. Since then he has prepared for and undertaken a magnificent and sacred journey, the like of which few men have even dreamed of in a lifetime, and fewer still attempted. His pilgrimage has taken him, firstly in the company of a group of Tibetans, along the ancient Tea Caravan Trail from China to the Holy city of Lhasa in Tibet. From there he continued alone, on foot, with only the company of his two horses, down through the mighty Himalayas, towards the source of the Holy river Ganga. On this epic trek he covered over 3000 kilometers (over 1,800 miles).
But on such daring journey, things can not always go to plan. Delayed, because one of his horses was ill and one exhausted and in foal, he lingered a month in the high mountains. With the onset of winter, as icy winds and snow on the high slopes of the Himalaya made the landscape uninhabitable, he was forced to leave quickly and move downwards. This is where his pilgrimage went horribly wrong. Daniel did not have an entry visa for India and no way of applying for one either, from the slopes of the mountains. Instead of abandoning his horses, his pilgrimage or both, he decided to move down the mountains and over the border into India. Indeed, as his journey progressed and conditions became increasingly difficult, he ran out of food for himself and his horses in the vast empty borderlands, and was eventually glad to hand himself over, exhausted and starving, to the military authorities in the second encampment he encountered, just above Josimoth. That was at the end of October.
At the encampment he was arrested and his horses taken into military custody. He was transported to Pursari Jail, outside Gopeshwar, where his pilgrimage was brought to an abrupt end. There he sat for over two months, enduring intensive interrogation from four different security services, treated like a common criminal while he awaited the long and arduous process of his case being brought to trial. His health was, and is, broken. He suffered a bout of pneumonia and a kidney infection and, since he is also asthmatic, prison conditions are inevitably and inexorably effecting his health. He shares a cell with over twenty other prisoners, most of whom smoke, and has been refused alternative prison accommodation, even though it has been requested on by the British High Commission on humanitarian grounds.
As a massive thank you to all our friends and fans, we are giving away the b-side to our upcoming single "Dark is the New Light" which is being released 10th November on Doombox Recordings.
(Click on pic above for more info including tour dates and loads more)
The B-side is called "Bows and Arrows," it's completely FREE and only a click away.
Thanks again and please download the single too!!! Its all down to you!!!
