Freewheelin’ in India - Day 12: Misty mountain movements

It seemed like I’d been playing big spoon all night as I awoke with an arm floppier than a ninety year olds cock and rolled over, freeing my limb. We’d had a lovely long sleep together and felt revitalised as we made our way back up towards the temple, grabbed a small child to eat, then revisited our cheeky faced old friend for the final time. At the end of his teaching, he made his way back down the stairs towards where we were all knelt in respect of his presence, and he entered a waiting car. Sarah and I broke our stance to wave at him, and he waved back with a huge shining smile from his huge shining head.

I’d decided I wanted to go one step beyond my usual threads, after seeing my favoured style tops but in full length jacket format at a few places around town, returning to the place I’d bought the Kashmir shirt from the day previously. I tried on a fully embroidered, handmade jacket which he told me was 15000 rupees, I contemplated buying it until I realised that my conversion was incorrect, and it was £200, not the £20 I’d first thought. I went back a while later and tried it on again, deciding I liked it, but not for that much money. After some heavy back and forth bartering I managed to get him down to just 4500 rupees, less than a third. Nice, nice. A dark King will return to where a light Prince vacated.

We had an overly average pre-bus meal, and got a cab to take us back to the bus station with our respective loads, which are growing heavier by the day. Arriving, I spotted the same American guy we’d twice encountered earlier with a boy and girl friend. His name was Westin, and he and his friend Wesley were exchange students doing six months studying back in Delhi. We hung out and chatted until the bus beeped it’s horn and we boarded that brutal bastard for an even bumpier ride, as we’d now had to settle for seats by the wheels at the back. The same guy that tried to charge us 200 rupees previously for our baggage now told me we needed to pay 20 rupees for the same privilege. I gave Sarah our shared Shiva purse, telling her to put him out of his misery, but it turned out later that she hadn’t done so, saying ‘he doesn’t deserve anything for trying to rip people off’. I laughed at her boldness, agreeing fully.

After four hours of bumping around, whilst watching ‘A Night at the Roxbury’ one of Will Ferrell’s first films, and feeling increasing sick, we finally stopped at a diner, both heading straight for the toilet where we shared a romantic, bonding moment of both gagging our insides out into adjoining toilet bowls, me stroking Sarah’s back once I’d semi recovered. Anthony and Cleopatra, eat your heart out. We sat back with the two Wes’s, and we discussed our dreams, our thought processes, and what we do in order to try and control them. I said how I’m glad that after encountering each other a few times prior we ended up on the same bus and how those kind of synchronicities, which I’m growing increasingly accustomed to, make me believe there are reasons for such occurrences. We smoked half of our joint and Wes gave us some travel sickness tablets, we each took a valium and I moved onto a separate two seats that were unclaimed, to cram my long limbs into the foetal position for an uncomfortable sleep.

Awaking as the bus rolled in to a grand hotel’s courtyard, we got out for a toilet and food break, but were too weary to eat, so finished off our J with Wesley. Westin had given up weed in order to enhance the clarity of his mind, something that I’d consider doing if I had the strength to actually take in the mass amounts of ridiculousness that pop into my battered brain-box constantly through my every waking hour, and a fair amount of my sleepy-time too. I spotted a trampoline a few metres away, and couldn’t fight the temptation. Risking the wrath of the patrolling security guards I ran and dived on, waking myself up with a few minutes’ worth of bouncing around, trying to get higher, before re-boarding our bus for the final few hours of bumps back to Delhi.