Sarfraz Manzoor

I found an undiscovered country: Great Britain

Sarfraz Manzoor finds a sense of liberation as he travels to Durness in Scotland, slipping out of the clothes of his ethnicity, and exploring what it means to be British

This summer, as a consequence of the credit crunch, rising air fares and a strong euro, more than half of all Britons chose to spend their holidays in this country. Predictably this was also the summer that proved to be one of the dullest and wettest on record. August may have been, according to the Met Office, the UK’s seventh wettest since records began in 1929, but for me there was a silver lining to the rainclouds. Like many working-class British Asians of my generation, we never went on holidays during my childhood. In recent years I have attempted to make amends by travelling as much as possible, but this has invariably meant going abroad, the idea of holidaying in this country striking me as pointless and dull. The intention of travel, I reasoned, was to broaden the mind, so what stimulation could be gained from not even leaving these shores? How wrong I was.

Earlier this month I visited the tiny coastal village of Durness on the northwest tip of Scotland. The village, in the county of Sutherland, is one of the least inhabited places in Western Europe and driving to it involved passing some of the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen. As I left Edinburgh and headed north I drove past fields prickled with purple heather, gushing brooks and foamy waterfalls. There was no mobile reception for my BlackBerry which proved both frustrating and liberating. A thin mist skimmed across the grasslands. When I finally arrived in Durness it felt untouched by much of what we call the modern world; I did not see anyone wearing a hijab or a hoodie and the local store was owned not by an Asian but by Iris, whose family had managed that same store since the start of the last century.

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