I forgot how to travel

Stay in bed for a month and you forget how to walk, I stayed on the beach for a month and I totally forgot how to travel.
It really didn’t seem like to difficult of a challenge. All I had to do was walk from my cliff dwelling to the taxi I had booked. He was going to take me to the station where I got the pre booked sleeper train for my 24 hour journey to Delhi. The train was leaving from the state above Goa which meant crossing a river which meant catching a ferry. Which typically, being a little pushed for time was on the other side of the river when we arrive. ‘No matter’ said my driver ‘we get special ferry’
I scanned up and down the river but could only see the one ferry. Special ferry meant driving to the front of the line of cars and trucks down by the river bank and flashing out lights and tooting the horn, indicating to the ferry captain that we were prepared to pay 50 rupees if he came across now instead of waiting for his tiny deck to be full of bikes, passengers and cars before he departed.
It worked, the ferry slowly chugged across the river for us to board before chugging back. All the time I'm looking at the clock on the dashboard which is now showing that it has gone 11am. The time I was told to be at the station to get the 11.25 express train. As we sped through villages and along country roads the minutes ticked by and there was still no evidence of any thing railway related. Now the clock was 11.15. Out of nowhere a tiny station appeared. As I leave the taxi I have 4 minutes left until departure time. The amount of people congregated around the station and on the platform suggested that the train was yet to come. I bundled myself into a stinking toilet cubical trying to touch nothing that wasn’t attached to me and keep my backpack off the ground. When I came out the train had just pulled into the station. ‘Well that was good timing’ I think to myself, they are so long, Indian trains. I find carriage B1 and jump on, it leaves almost immediately. Right, ok, relax I'm going to be here for the next 24 hours. I'm directed to my seat, it’s already at its full capacity of 6. But that's not unusual, from memory seat numbers never meant much to the travelling natives. Although I do question the validity of my dodgy black market ticket. Loud giggling girls with camera phones take photos of each other and shriek at the results. Well this is going to be a fun journey; the hours are simply going to fly by. I put on iPod, get out book and wonder who is in the wrong seat. The ticket man arrives to sort out the discrepancy. It’s a straightforward mistake. I'm in the wrong seat; in fact I'm on the wrong train. This one goes to Bombay not Delhi. This is quite a significant mistake. I hadn’t looked at the time since I left the taxi. The clock on the dashboard it appears was wrong. To ensure punctuality or induce panic in the passengers I'm not sure of the reason but wrong it was, fast. It’s still not 11.24. I gather up my stuff and at the next station, I’m led to the Station Masters office. Much discussion is made about my situation. There is no transport here, if there was a rickshaw it could take me back to the station I just left in time to catch my train which is running late by half an hour. So it is decided that I should continue to the next station, and there jump on a southbound train and head back to my original boarding point. I try to apply my western logic; there surely is a station where both this train and the Delhi train stops, but if there is the information is classified. So I get back on the Bombay bound train, hang out of the open door and try to explain my predicament to the inquisitive Indians. God as soon as I get off of the beach and into the real India I fuck things up. I would have thought that 25 years of travel would have thought me to at least have checked I was getting on the right train or even to have checked to see what the time actually was. The train slows and stops at another desolate station I jump onto the tracks encouraged by my intrigued observers. I glance for oncoming trains but the horizon is free of steel wheeled transport. I climb up into a carriage and explain all over again to the southbound passengers exactly what this crazy foreigner is doing. I was so clean and fresh a few hours ago. White socks on tanned legs and trainers laced on beach hardened feet, both worn for the first time in a month, hair washed and platted, pockets holding small denomination money for the chai sellers. It all seemed so strategic and organized.

Now I'm a sweaty, stressed mess. The train I've jumped onto stands still, my Bombay one leaves for its destination. I'm not sure I've made a good decision here, getting on it was not right but getting off it seems even wronger.
My new train is not moving and I can’t possibly work out how, despite the lateness of my intended train, I will be able to catch it. Nothing moves, ‘Sit down’ I'm invited, but no I would rather stand here anxiously looking out the open door, down that track and waiting to see what I don't want to, but what common sense is telling me with each passing minute is inevitably going to happen. I know why this train is not leaving the station. Its waiting and I know what it is waiting for. Bugger. Sure enough with loud horns blaring, thundering power, lightening speed and unstoppable force the mighty engine hurtles towards us on the track I was just walking on. It’s the Delhi Express, I only caught the first 2 letters it’s the only thing on my booked train that I did catch. It was painted like a carnival. Like a circus train. A blur of murals and colours just too really rub in what I was missing. That there, that just blew the hair that had already fallen out of a plat, was, with my pre paid, over paid dodgy ticket, my accommodation, food and transport to met my friends in Delhi who have already booked for me my onward journey to Nepal. Well bollocks. Inevitably as soon as the train of dreams had left leaving nothing but dust and a desperation in the vacuum, and the nightmare scenario. The south bound train I'm on that is heading for a time and place that is too late, starts to move and it is suggested I get off it now. Well I'm pretty fucked whatever I do. They seem to think it will not take me back to my starting place, so I get off.
I go and see the Station Master. Something I should have perhaps done in the first place but was under the impression that I had to jump trains quick and had no time for a plan B.
‘Hello, Station Master?’
‘Yes’
‘Big problem’ I have to explain why I am on his station. Every few minutes a bell rings and he presses buttons, lights change colour on his big map of railway lines. I wonder if he had the power to stop my train so I could have got on it. But it’s too late now. The best he can do is organize a rickshaw for me to take me back to my original station so I can get a 50% refund on my ticket which is actually 33% because I paid over the odds in the first place. And where I can book a train to Bombay and then catch another to Delhi. It’s all sounds quite improbable; anyway I have just got off a train to Bombay. So I thank him for his help, one thing about India, at least English is widely spoken. Until I get in the rickshaw that is. But as we crawl back the way I came. We pass the labours working on the roads. Carrying baskets of cement and stones on their heads, breaking rocks into stones with hammers and true grit, hard physical labour in the burning sun. Thin and bony, their sun blackened flesh matches the tar; they perform their task with wiry mussels and with the strength of survival. We pass their camp, a triangle of blue tarpaulin on a dry dusty floor. Not even a proper tent. The hottest shade, the least secure protection from any elements, flies, mozzies or snakes. As I look at their miserable existence I realize what an insignificant spoilt western brat of a problem I have. Perspective is a wonderful reliever of stress. I don't think my situation would even get comprehension let alone any sympathy from these man machines. They don't seem to know its Friday, everyday is Labour Day. What I wasted on a ticket they wouldn't earn in a month, what I spend on a flight takes me high above their earning capacity.
My rickshaw driver takes me to the bus station, ‘No, train station’ I say, then to reiterate I make train noises, I do all things train I can think of, including showing him my useless ticket. I of course attract a crowd. My ticket is passed about until someone says ‘Railway’
‘Yes railway’ why didn’t I think of saying that?
‘100 rupees more’
Oh you speak some English then? It’s no surprise I'm not arguing for less than two quid.
I explain my situation one more time at the station and fill out a ‘cancelation/refund form’ and get back 1000 rupees, the next train to Delhi is the day after tomorrow, well this will not do. I think I’ll go back to familiar Goa, reassess the situation and start again. I can’t do anything here, not without an internet connection. So I go find another rickshaw to take me back to the river. I say ‘ferry’ and draw a picture in the dirt of it crossing the river. ‘Goa, ferry, river’ what is the word you need to hear? Why am I not getting through?
‘Arrhh ferryboat’
‘Yes ferry boat’
‘250 rupees’
I have to haggle, just have to,
‘Ooo that's sounds expensive’
‘Ok 200’
Principal’s intact, I get in, and we are on our way. I look out at the palms, my 3 hour excursion out of the comfort of Goa and I fucked it up totally. How much is this costing me, taxi, rickshaws, missed trains, food and lodging? Oh well.
I stand in the shadow of the bridge that is not yet finished. The bridge that will illuminate the need for the ferry and even the special ferry. When I was first in Goa there wasn’t even a railway came this way, now I'm waiting for a bridge, the progress is phenomenal but still a little too late for my needs. The ‘not special ferry’ appears to be free for foot passengers and a bus waits on the other side, for the price of a cup of chai I'm back. A long walk down a hot road and with all the discomfort and dirt of a long distance traveller who didn’t really go anywhere, I'm back in beach land and logging onto a cheap flight website.
One more bonus sunset. One more consolatory pina colada. One more night, 2 more flights and tomorrow I will be where the train would have taken me, same time same place, somewhat more expensive.
I call my taxi driver ‘what happened?’
‘I’ll explain it tomorrow; can you pick me up at 4 am please?’


I get on the right plane all by myself. It’s a miracle but its short lived, at Bombay as I pass through the metal detector they find the Swiss army knife I forgot was in my hand luggage and Goan customs failed to find. I've forgotten how to travel. I’m not giving it up boy, not to you, you wouldn't appreciate it and anyway I've this for 15 years. From a time when I could and did take it on flights, regularly, along with lighters and cigarettes which could be lit and smoked. I go back to the check in counter but it would have to be checked in in my hand luggage I'm not checking laptop and camera. So I stash the knife between a lens and camera and take it through a different metal detector and it is not detected. I skulk around the departure lounge feeling watched and guilty. But I'm not approached, and armed with an assortment of utility attachments I board the 2nd plane.

Delhi has a brand new underground system the line from the airport has only been opened for 2 weeks. I kind of recognise New Delhi station. But I'm not on the side I think I am on. The people, it’s a bit of a shock, the cycle rickshaws, the crowds, the bustle. Thankfully the heat at least I have become accustomed to. Wearing my packs front and back it’s impossible to disguise what I am and where I am going. A little knowledge and little sense of directing and a 7 year absents. It’s the ideal recipe for walking the long way round to where I’m heading. I refuse to be led, carried or taxied, it can do this and eventually I do, a sweat soaked victory with a pounding head, and aching shoulders from a straining creaking back pack, packed to stay put on a beach, but a month of inactivity was too much I can’t do a second, especially when the opportunity to travel with some friends overland to Nepal presents itself. A keyboard and Spanish books, hammock and other ridiculously heavy non travel essentials. I drag myself up a flight of stairs and lie on my solid mattress; as the sound of the bazaar crashed through the open window like waves have been for the previous month.


Cows in the street and food sellers push their carts, open fronted fly infested restaurants, the vague vagrants in suspended transit, plot well and truly lost. The roof top restaurants offer a better view of the smog and hazy chaos below. The traders of all things tat and the symphony of this combination of commerce is a novel annoyance.
But in this city of millions I meet to familiar faces and we fill our smiles with veg kofta and for one showing only I tell my disastrous tale of double travel and ineptitude.
I remember this place, from several visits over 2 decades. I enjoy it like a movie I've seen before. Refreshed memory and no need to participate. I could go out but it’s been a tiring trip and a half. And for the first time since I left home there is a TV in my room. I'm going to have a quiet night in, under a ceiling fan watching a movie I have seen several times before. And feeling a little guilty at not going out into the realist experience a capital city can offer. A calling for food eases my guilt and my hunger. I head into the street lit bazaar for a samosa. Look that's where I stayed in 97 to pick up a message form a friend to arrange a meet in Rajasthan. That's where I stayed in 2004. That's enough, that's the vibe, the smell, the memory recharged, refreshed, revisited. The dogs bark and the cats walk on the cooling tin roves.

The cows barge past, the vendors call out and I never knew I had so many friends here, ‘Come my friend, please, look inside’ the beggars beg, the hippies loiter. The backpackers leave and arrive. The hoteliers shout and the smell of Delhi belly wafts and clashes with the street cooked sun baked, fly infested fried food that caused it in the first place.
In the sanctuary of my room I eat my masala flavoured crisps and tentatively bite into my samosa. I hope it’s safe and doesn’t keep me going through the night.


4.30am another alarm and onto the silent but not dead streets. People sleep on the streets in shifts because the city never truly sleeps. A rickshaw driver with a blanket wrapped around him is ready for our business, ‘perhaps we should get two’ but 3 packs are loaded and 3 western arses are squeezed into the seat. Oh right, we fit, I've forgotten how to travel. We pass through the predawn darkness of a time past. The streets are alive with production. Menial work, the loading of sacks of heavy, from trucks of slow into shops full of it. Cleaning of streets and teeth, bodies and shop fronts. All stick figures, all in the glow of artificial lights, all unreal, it’s the slightest view of this world, not all modernized for foreign investment, call centres and mobile phones. Some of the past remains and works through the night. The cycle rickshaws are overnight accommodation for their driver, feet balanced on the bicycle seat, bodies twisted across the passenger seat, a blanket covering the contortion. The cows still have rite of passage and the smoke from burning debris chokes all who woke to find themselves still breathing. The constitution of the morning. The ritual of the working street. The sight of a world that burns my wide eyes. I’d forgotten this bit of the movie when I forgot about the travelling.
The train station is a better class of bed. The travelling families sleep on the clean white floor underneath florescent lights, their possessions around them.

We stare at the red glow of the departure board.

Platform 5. My friends first trip to India, but they have been moving and are blasé about it all now. I'm staring like I've never seen it before. I’m conditioned by beach life and now I'm thrown into what I have forgotten. But I do remember one thing, the station chai the sweetest chai in India. For the price of a text I have my sweet milky revitalizer in a thin plastic cup too hot to hold. It’s a taste I remember so clearly and I haven’t found anything to match it not in any restaurant anywhere. Platform chai is the cure for the taste of an early morning mouth dry from a dust I dare not consider the consistency of. We stand under the sign which is alight with our destination and again I'm not checking the time. I watch the flow of people that passes me and happily await the late arrival of out train.

A fake holy man approaches us with unconvincing begging, he holds is belongings and a 3 pronged staff and spits a curse at us as we ignore his requests. Luckily my friend did not put all his faith in the Indian logic. Our train is leaving the other platform. Ignore the sign and the empty platform we run to platform 3, we jump, we land in 3rd class and the train pulls out, no warning which was audible to our ears. I almost missed another train. I blame the curse of a spurned holy man. I've totally forgotten how to travel.

Train to rickshaw, rickshaw to bus, buses to buses dust to dust.



Things to re learn. Check the time and platform of the train, check the price of the rickshaw, check the tyres of the bus, do they go round and round, and now remember to look the man who holds the reigns of the horse drawn taxi cart in the eye. Make sure he is not a crazy horse man.

The first clue is that he stops after 10 yards to have a chai, I assume its living hand to mouth, but then he wants to go before we finish ours. Next sign is him shouting something that sounds like ‘fuck India’ at everyone we pass, as he takes us to the Nepalese boarder, further evidence is the brutal way he hits his horse with a stick as it hobbles along. Poor nag, owned by a crazy man. Now I notice the eyes, now I have all the evidence I need. We pay half our fair and leave. We walk the 5kms to the boarder.

>
My pack is so uncomfortable now. I cup my hands behind my back and life the weight to rest my aching shoulders. I have to stop, oh wait, those tensions straps, I remember now, I tighten them, the creaking stops, and the weight now redistributed now disappears. I've completely forgotten how to travel; look at the monkeys,

I forgotten how good fun it is to travel, I thought id out grown backpacking, apparently I haven’t. I cross a bridge into Nepal.

New country, let’s see if I can do this one a little better.