I have a strange and troubled time with London east of the city. Inspired by Iain Sinclair I've wandered some fairly strange paths, and visited places I'd never dreamed of heading for in search of the curious corners of the city. But more than anywhere, wandering here makes me feel something separate from the City - an outcast, albeit quite often in a sea of other temporary citizens. Here, especially, authenticity is brought into sharp focus. With so much written and spoken about the legends of the territory, from ancient plague-grounds to modern murder myths, its hard not to feel like a tourist. The grim reality is that the Hoxton art student posing his way along the queue at the Beigel Bake, or the carefully designed media type lurking around 93 Feet East is more at home here than I will ever be. For someone who tries hard to read the City unconditionally and walks with a degree of perhaps pathetic reverence, this is a crushing defeat of style over content.

A bit of recent reading though has reassured me that this area is far from out-of-bounds to the outsider, and reminded me that these boundary lands have been contested spaces and seen multitudes of populations share the streets and alleyways over centuries of change and redefinition. So today's walk, tagged onto a trip further east into incongruous rural Essex, was an attempt to reclaim my little bit of Spitalfields and Shoreditch and to walk shoulder to shoulder with everyone else who didn't really belong but had gravitated here for sometimes unfathomable reasons.

I started at Aldgate Station, turning east into Whitechapel High Street and falling into step with the low pulse of the market and the throb of deep music from passing BMWs with shaded windscreen glass, before swinging left into Osborn Street - ostensibly the southern entrance to Brick Lane. There is a boarded-up, closed-for-business feel here, almost an attempt to turn back the casual tourist - this is not what you thought it was. A friend of mine who I sometimes travel with would call it "a dump" for certain. But peering through the cracked hoardings into a deep excavation, the old foundations can be seen. Encouraged northwards, I press on into Banglatown. A bewildering but not unwelcoming combination of scents assault the senses - diesel, curry, hot coffee, bad drains. Quiet, alien sounding music pours from a nearby restaurant - one of hundreds all imploring the passer-by to enter, even at this early hour. Onward, passing the entrance to Flower and Dean Walk, sanitised and erased except for the archway which gave entrance to the model dwellings which replaced the seething rookery a century ago. I try to get a haircut, but I'm refused in a case of embarassed but good-humoured racism by the proprietor - and I respond with equal good humour and a handshake. A little solidarity, and a moment of awareness of how alien we both are here. I press on, Christ Church School with it's tiny Star of David emblem hidden on a downpipe betrays the last great wave to sweep the area - where church became Synagogue, and in turn has become a great Mosque.

Beyond Fournier Street, with its painstaking heritage treatment measured by balooning property prices, Brick Lane changes. The curry houses dwindle and the former Black Eagle Brewery begins to dominate both sides of the street in a warm glow of yellow brick and shadow. Here in Dray Walk are the painfully hip bars and shops which are perhaps where I am most truly out of place. I slip apologetically into Rough Trade East in the hope of finding a fairly obscure American release I've been looking for. It's hard to understand the store - all space, pastries and sofas - not like the happy clutter of their West End locations. I slip out, negotiating the crowds of in some instances genuinely beautiful people, and regain the main line of the lane. Here, where the railway crossed before the bridge was dismantled, I head into Pedley Street to find the remains of Shoreditch Station. On my previous foray, this is where I bailed out, not fully grasping my bearings. Closed for a year or more, the station is decaying. Beside it, a glimpse over the wall allows sight of the ancient and long abandoned Bishopsgate Station platforms deep below, and which my train into Liverpool Street had passed just a little while before. The cutting in which the East London Line ran now accommodates a sweeping concrete bridge taking the gradually forming extension high over the Great Eastern Lines. I pass under this, through a narrow tunnel in the scaffolding and hoardings which divides the two sections of the lane almost perfectly. Tiny, expensive shops full of intricate, innovative and artistic goods sit comfortably beside the Beigel Bake. Young professional families stroll by, making the most of a cold, bright winter morning. What little of the market is out today straggles along to the Cheshire Street junction before petering out entirely as I turn west into Bethnal Green Road. The sign for Shoreditch Station twisted back on itself, perhaps not accidentally pointing to the vast concrete box bordering Sclater Street which will eventually be part of the new Shoreditch High Street station.

I head into familiar territory, Commerical Street with its grime, traffic and gleefully down-at-heel edge. Self-aware rich kids jostle me on their way into pubs, thankfully devoid of Ripper Tours today. I'm aware that I'm ill - the cold I've been nursing for nearly a week has finally overtaken me. I'm light-headed with hunger but not particularly wanting to eat. I lean against a railing, not realising until I reorient myself that I'm beneath the awesome frontage of Christ Church. A private function prevents entry today. I cross and re-cross the road, looking for inspiration for an ending to the walk. Eventually, after more false starts, I return to Brick Lane via Fournier Street and walk south - this time feeling more at peace with my surroundings. Via a staggered route through the abandoned metal stall frames of Petticoat Lane market I stumble back to Liverpool Street and gulp welcome hot coffee. I've made sense of much I've read during today's walk - and beyond the photographable landmarks which remain, almost everything has changed. I belong here as much or as little as the over-polite restaurant tout, the cheerfully racist barber or the studied self-aware art student.

Perhaps we are all shadows?