We don’t meet anyone by chance*

Harry. “Harry, like the Prince,” he says to me, introducing himself, “Harry, like Potter.” Harry is a 23-year-old from London, fresh out of university and an expert in everything, from literature to  philosophy to finance. He lectures me on Aristotle and the existence of alternative realities, on the proper footware for the Camino. I can’t wait to lose him along the way.

Joan. She walks slowly and encourages you to walk ahead. She will catch up at the next village, she says. And she does, always. She is 79, bird-like in body with eyes that dart everywhere and take in everything. At dinner one night, a raucous pilgrim meal in an impossibly crowded room, she asks for a second bottle of wine, even though our little table hasn’t polished off the first. And she gets up and takes the bottle over to a table with four South Korean girls we all know from the trail, and she pours them each a glass. And then takes the bottle over to the next table where three guys, Italians, sit. One gets up and hugs her. Another smiles, slyly, “You want to get us drunk and take advantage of us, don’t you?” he says.

Alexander. He injured a tendon and has been sidelined for a week in a tiny village inhabited by more goats than people, an outpost with one church, one restaurant, one bar. Every day he borrows a guitar from the guy who owns the bar, sits in the sun and plays. He asks me what I’d like to hear. I tell him Dylan. He sings it in French. I think: I could stay here for a while.

Maria, from the Netherlands, who carries her demons with her. Yevgeny, the son of Russian Jews who fled to Israel. Michael from Derry who has his first of a half-dozen beers at 10 in the morning. Emily, quiet and sweet. Jo, who never seems to have a down day. Andre, a young man in search of himself. Hans, from Norway, the big tough guy who calls his 6-year-old daughter every night.

On the Camino, enmeshed in the intimacy of that fluid community, you learn a lot about people. I don’t mean the facts of their lives, although there is that. I mean what kind of people they are: humble or vain, talkers or listeners, people who observe, who are curious and struck by wonder. Or not. People who think you are interested in seeing the x-rays of their bunion surgery that they happen to have saved on their iphone. People who tell you they went to the same middle school as Joan Didion and assume, oh-so-correctly, that this will forge a bond.  People with a sense of humor, with a sense of purpose, with no sense at all.

*Avijeet Das, a poet and a writer from New Delhi, India.