Bad Vibrations

Hello sahibs, how are you…
(Firstly, please excuse any undue negativity: sleep and me are going through a messy divorce.) Eighteen days into the great ‘what the fuck was I thinking’ expedition to the subcontinent and I am starting to learn that ‘getting out of this madness’ should not be a motivation for moving on to the next destination, the great myth of there being some sort of haven from traffic, shouting, random animals appearing in the street or the bathroom and the constant reek of ammonia somewhere along the line having long been exploded in my increasingly porous mind. The efforts to get around an area someone could cover on a standard atlas with the tip of their little finger do nothing for the spirit: over the last week there has been a 3 -hour bus journey (Pushkar – Jaipur, on a machine that might once have had a gearbox and suspension, but certainly now has more bad vibrations than a Brian Wilson relapse), followed by a 14-hour train journey (Jaipur to Jaisalmer, on which I miraculously slept), followed by a 6-hour train journey (Jaisalmer to Jodhpur), and in the last day two journeys of 9 and 7 hours respectively (to Ahmedabad and Junagadh). Having ranted thus, there is promise: the meal in A’bad was the best yet and cost about 80p, and since Jodhpur there has been a definite shift in people’s focus, ie they are more interested in going about their lives than trying to sell you tat. And whatever happens, I will always be happy when I remember that I won’t see that stupid Coca-Cola advert on TV this year. I just hope that Diu, the fabled island where beer costs 30p a pint won’t seem a hallucination by the time I get there, and that when I get there I won’t hallucinate that I am stuck in Woolworths being slowly killed by Slade whilst helping to support the annual Buy-your-loved one’s-love Big Crimble Swindle.