After studying at a grammar school in Birmingham, he won a municipal scholarship to Leeds University to study comparative religion. Aitken then did an MA in Gandhian Theology. ``I was going to be a priest but I did not have the vocation. You had to hear the voice of God, asking to come on board. Compared to my friends, I was more honest or just hard of hearing,'' he says.

Instead, Aitken decided to explore the religions he had studied. After having stayed in Calcutta for a year, he became interested in the Bhoodan movement of Vinoba Bhave and went on a padyatra along the Brahmputra valley. He continued his experiments with spirituality at a Gandhian ashram in Kausani, near Almora, for four years.

It was after this that he had a `Road to Damascus' experience. ``I nearly died but the experience opened my eyes to what life was all about. Sarla Ben, an English disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, promised me to nurse me back from typhoid provided I stuck to homeopathy. I nearly kicked the bucket, but went without food for 30 days. I had feelings of ecstasy during the treatment. I was high up there writing poetry, pouring forth extraordinarily. The moment I had food, it vanished,'' he says.

Aitken then moved from this Gandhian to a Vaishnavite ashram, also in Almora, and spent seven years working on the farm. ``This may be difficult for many to believe, I worked my butt off at the ashram. From six in the morning to 10 at night, I did farming, cooking and gardening for seven years,'' he says.

In the ashram, Aitken fell in love with fellow disciple Prithvi, who is now his companion. In 1972, having spent 12 years at the ashram, his guru ordered him to ``go back to the real world, find a job and pay taxes''.Aitken decided to pursue a career in writing to earn a living. Hundreds of travel articles and ten books later, he has no literary pretensions. ``I get up and write from 6 am to 11 am straight into my typewriter. I don't spend time polishing my copy and have a hack's mentality,'' he says.

Aitken has not done too badly for a pen pusher. His Exploring Indian Railways sold 1,000 copies in hardback in one year and has since gone into third impression in paperback. The author of Seven Sacred Rivers, The Nanda Devi Affair, Travels by a Lesser Line and Literary Trails is now working on Branch Line to Eternity, for Penguin. ``The feeder lines that go to the broad gauge and the fast trains have a charm of their own. I've always gone for the slow line to experience the magic of the countryside. Non-air conditioned is the way to relate to reality. It is in these coaches that I found so much real religion,'' says he.

Aitken is nostalgic about the declining number of steam engines in the country. ``India has the biggest diversity of steam locomotives than any country in the world. There is a variety of engines with history and colour. Nobody recognises their worth. In 1970, there were 10,000 locomotives in the country. Today there are just 300. They have been thrown away when these could have been sold to collectors for millions,'' he laments.

Robert Pirsig, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, has been an inspiration for Aitken not only for his work but for his perseverance and belief in his writing. ``I consider him a modern Plato. His book was rejected by publishers for a record 123 times and went on to become an all time great,'' says Aitken.

With age, Aitken has curbed his wanderlust in recent years. But then, at the age of 50, he first took off on a motorbike to the mountains. ``The railways don't penetrate high into the mountains. In order to go there, the mobike gave me range. For instance, travelling in Arunanchal Pradesh in a bus may not be half as interesting,'' he explains.

The bike trips that resulted in Riding the Ranges began in 1986. A friend of Aitken's had done a book of photographs called Profile of the Himalaya and wanted him to write the text. ``After doing that I set off to see those parts of the Himalayas I had not seen. Having done that I also traversed the Western Ghats from Kanyakumari to Gujarat. Unfortunately, I could get only as far as Pune as I dislocated my shoulder after a freak accident,'' he recalls. The author sees trains as a metaphor of his life. ``From childhood I grew up with railway noises. In Delhi, too, the railway line is just across the road from my home. You don't meet the divine head on; you have to do it by a circuitous approach.''