one travelling day
In Jodhpur it is 46 degrees celsius at the station.
A woman sits with her two kids. A group of skinny teenageers stares at me.
On the train platform is an Indian family sitting on a blanket. Mom and daughter talk, and Dad plays with his mobile. A small boy plays with a bottle. The furnace wind clatters the bottle off across the platform. The boy, wide-eyed, steps off the blanket island into the flat sea of hot stone. He waddles after the bottle. Thirty yards from Mom, he grabs the bottle, and realises how far from shore he is, and gets the quizzical pre-cry look. Mom looks up, Dad puts the mobile down, and the boy, lost at sea, stares at me. I point to his family. Ha waddles halfway back, starts to cry, stops, looks around, and gets home, to cheering.
A huge fat man comes and shoves his crotch in my face and begins barking in Hindi. This must be Sister Fucker's brother. I ignore him and he goes away.
A skinny man in a purple shirt comes over and says
"C-c-c-c-clean? C-c-c-c-clean?"
I have no way to respond to this so he goes away.
The woman's two kids remove their shoes and come over to me, asking for money and pens. "Bhago!" I tell them. When this doesn't work, I use this skill that I learned from a friend of mine who teaches. It's called The Look. Works in all languages for all children. They run back to their mother.
Next morning in Delhi an Indian comes up to me and gives me an Englishman's passport and credit cards. I take them and tell him I'll call the embassy. At eight in th emorning--on a cloudless day-- the sky is gunmetal grey and still. You can taste the air. You can smoke without using cigarettes and get out of breath just by walking down the street. From the rooftop where I eat breakfast, I can see one kilometer before Delhi vanishes into smog.
At the chai wallah's, I meet Robert, a Frenchman whose right arm is in a thick cast. His pack-- and all ID, and money belt, and passport, and cards-- got jacked on the train, and, furious, he punched the wall, and broke his arm. Two days later, when he got to the doctor, they had to re-break it to properly set it. They put the anaesthetic in the wrong place, and so the simple operation screwed up cos he screamed in pain and moved his arm, etc etc. So now he's drifting around Delhi, waiting for money to come on the wire, bumming smokes. I buy him some Marlboroughs and a cup of chai.
The airport is a whole other Universe. It's ice-cold, err, I mean, room temperature. There are no beggars.
Kathmandu, Nepal, is cool, quiet, calm, and empty. Rumours fo the Maoist rebellion are keepign the billions of tourists away. I get a palatial room for $3 Cdn. and ample food for the same. Nepalis generally don't hassle you, there are no cows shitting in the street, and there are no blaring smoking honking rickshaws. In the night you can hear the Classic rock Napalis are partial to, and in the distance, snowy and hazy and still, the Himalaya.
Time to plan a trek.
A woman sits with her two kids. A group of skinny teenageers stares at me.
On the train platform is an Indian family sitting on a blanket. Mom and daughter talk, and Dad plays with his mobile. A small boy plays with a bottle. The furnace wind clatters the bottle off across the platform. The boy, wide-eyed, steps off the blanket island into the flat sea of hot stone. He waddles after the bottle. Thirty yards from Mom, he grabs the bottle, and realises how far from shore he is, and gets the quizzical pre-cry look. Mom looks up, Dad puts the mobile down, and the boy, lost at sea, stares at me. I point to his family. Ha waddles halfway back, starts to cry, stops, looks around, and gets home, to cheering.
A huge fat man comes and shoves his crotch in my face and begins barking in Hindi. This must be Sister Fucker's brother. I ignore him and he goes away.
A skinny man in a purple shirt comes over and says
"C-c-c-c-clean? C-c-c-c-clean?"
I have no way to respond to this so he goes away.
The woman's two kids remove their shoes and come over to me, asking for money and pens. "Bhago!" I tell them. When this doesn't work, I use this skill that I learned from a friend of mine who teaches. It's called The Look. Works in all languages for all children. They run back to their mother.
Next morning in Delhi an Indian comes up to me and gives me an Englishman's passport and credit cards. I take them and tell him I'll call the embassy. At eight in th emorning--on a cloudless day-- the sky is gunmetal grey and still. You can taste the air. You can smoke without using cigarettes and get out of breath just by walking down the street. From the rooftop where I eat breakfast, I can see one kilometer before Delhi vanishes into smog.
At the chai wallah's, I meet Robert, a Frenchman whose right arm is in a thick cast. His pack-- and all ID, and money belt, and passport, and cards-- got jacked on the train, and, furious, he punched the wall, and broke his arm. Two days later, when he got to the doctor, they had to re-break it to properly set it. They put the anaesthetic in the wrong place, and so the simple operation screwed up cos he screamed in pain and moved his arm, etc etc. So now he's drifting around Delhi, waiting for money to come on the wire, bumming smokes. I buy him some Marlboroughs and a cup of chai.
The airport is a whole other Universe. It's ice-cold, err, I mean, room temperature. There are no beggars.
Kathmandu, Nepal, is cool, quiet, calm, and empty. Rumours fo the Maoist rebellion are keepign the billions of tourists away. I get a palatial room for $3 Cdn. and ample food for the same. Nepalis generally don't hassle you, there are no cows shitting in the street, and there are no blaring smoking honking rickshaws. In the night you can hear the Classic rock Napalis are partial to, and in the distance, snowy and hazy and still, the Himalaya.
Time to plan a trek.
posted by Butch at 1:07 PM
1 Comments:
Finally a good day, eh?
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