India, March 2 -- As the new year dawned, I recalled what a friend, John, had mentioned a few years ago. You could walk, he'd said, all the way from Bandra to Versova. This, by road, is around 11 kilometres, a good 45 minutes in peak traffic. It is quite a journey in logistical and aspirational terms. In my coastal home town, Mumbai, you hang out at the seashore. The sea is part of your existence if you live anywhere within whiffing distance of it. The idea that you could commute on foot as a novelty awakened in me a primal urge to explore. The story about a mountaineer scaling a peak "because it was there" may or may not be true, but it makes sense. And this journey is probably undocumented. That it was no mountain but level sand did not...