In 2022 I was traveling by motorcycle through the southern part of Scotland and so naturally wanted to visit Edinburgh as part of my journey. I found it a walkable friendly city and surprisingly small, smaller than my own town of San Francisco.
As tourists will I tended uphill through the narrow cobblestone streets and in a follow-the-crowd way found myself in the forecourt of the castle which is perched on a very high hill in the center of what now is the town, a perfect site if, for instance, you want to ward off intruders or fend off rebels.
Before me were the castle gate and (of course) a ticket booth for admission. The area was a bit jumbled because there was also some construction of some sort going on which seemed to involved the raising of a grandstand or other temporary structure.
Nestled between the castle and the construction was a modest monument of some sort and out of curiosity I strolled over to see what that was about. It turned out to be The India Cross and there was an explanatory panel at its base.
For me the incongruity leapt out of that inscription. This was a memorial to the soldiers who died fighting Indians who objected to British rule and had “mutinied.” As I looked at it and thought about it being 166 years ago and looked down the funnel of time from that day to this I thought: “Whose side am I on?” I can respect a memorial to soldiers who themselves chose to do battle for their country. But that was just as true, more so, for the soldiers of the Indian army who wanted to overthrow British colonial rule of their country.
It is easy to say, “that was then” but here I stood now and, as with so many things, I did not feel my own view owed anything to colonial rule. And just like that I thought of British rule in Scotland, how only recently a vote for independence had been narrowly defeated, and that the current party in power in Scotland wanted to call for another vote, a vote now blocked by the British Parliament.
As an American who grew up steeped in the story of colonial independence from Britain and believed I lived in a country which stood for the independence of people all over the world from colonial rule (oh how writing this down in 2026 feels like a trip down the River of Irony!) I found myself rethinking so much of what I had thought traveling to other lands was all about.
It came to me with renewed clarity that so many tourist sites are memorials to and palaces of rulers over ruled, of the few over the many, of the haves dominating the have-nots and which side of that triage am I on?
I did not buy a ticket to Edinburgh Castle and instead walked up to Arthur’s Seat, a high promontory on a hill overlooking Edinburgh with a splendid park surrounding it and almost certainly a place where King Arthur (if he existed) never sat. It turned out to be a grand day.
I didn’t yet know I would on another visit to England go to Westminster Abbey and— after spending time in the main hall where the graves of not only kings and queens but scientists and writers were to be seen—found myself in a courtyard where another plaque was on the wall.
I have not visited any castles or grand homes or other such sites since then with no regrets. My interest in traveling, as it has been for some time, is in the life of the people where I am visiting in this time not in some mythical past as retold by the victors of that bygone day. All of us today living in organized societies live under some rule and it seems to me the question of the day, the question which has been asked since at least 1776, is whose rule?