places, but I’d already learned that in big towns, travellers weren’t very friendly. And I didn’t even really want to see Udaipur, Ahmedabad and Bombay, anyway. I mean, a city’s a city.
If I could just grit my teeth and make it on my own to Goa, I’d be able to hang out there and meet some new people. I was bound to find someone who’d travel with me. Maybe even a female. A lot of that kind of thing went on in Goa, apparently.
I turned to the map of India at the front of The Book and worked out from the scale that the width of my little finger corresponded to roughly two hundred miles. I then measured Pushkar to Goa, and it came out at six little-finger-widths. That couldn’t be right. One thousand two hundred miles? I didn’t even know the whole country was that length.
Whatever. I closed the book. This was clearly a long journey. But it would be worth it in the end. After all, I still had precisely two hundred condoms left. (Fortunately, the condoms were in my rucksack, and whatever happened when we finally separated, I was going to make damn sure that I took
With a ticket to Ajmer in my money belt, I spent the rest of the day phrasing my farewell speech to Liz, and finally settled on:
‘I realize that things have been difficult, and that whatever happens we’ll never be able to say that we parted on the friendliest of terms – but I just want you to know that I forgive you for what you’ve done to me, and I won’t hold it against you that you abandoned me. I wish you all the best on your spiritual journey, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity to travel alone in Asia.’
Unfortunately, when I woke up the following morning, she had already left. I found a note on the floor of the room which said,
D,Bye.Peace,L
I crumpled up the note angrily, then decided that I wanted to keep it and flattened it out on the floor, folded it up and slipped it into The Book.
With a start, I realized that I had overslept and was late for my bus. Liz had normally taken charge of the getting-up-in-time-to-catch-buses side of things. Shit. In fact, she had taken charge of everything.
I got dressed, threw the stray piles of scattered clothes into my pack, put my shoes on, checked under the bed, then paused for a second, threw my stuff out on to the bed and counted the condom boxes. Yup. Thought so. There were two missing.
Some fucking ashram
I contemplated the pile of condom boxes on the bed, all of them with the Cellophane still intact, and felt briefly paralysed. I was a failure. My life was a mess. I belonged in a monastery.
However miserable I felt, it dawned on me that missing my bus wasn’t going to improve the situation, so I forced myself to repack my bag and head for the bus station. I arrived almost a quarter of an hour late, but fortunately the bus was still there. To my horror, though, I saw that the front three seats of the bus were already occupied by Liz, Fee and Caz.
My seat was in the row directly behind them, and as I got on, Fee and Caz smiled at me in the way you’d smile at a naughty leper. Liz looked the other way.
Despite the fact that it was only a short journey, Caz managed to puke out of the window twice. Due to the speed of the bus, a significant portion of vomit flew out of her window and back in through mine, splattering me in the face.
How apt, I thought, as I wiped half-digested flakes of lentil from my face. First you steal my travelling partner, then you puke in my face. Do you have any other desires? Would you like to crap in my bed?
Ajmer isn’t the kind of place where you’d actually want to stay, and given that Fee, Liz and Caz were on the same bus as me to Ajmer, it seemed a fair bet they’d be heading on somewhere else by train. We didn’t speak on the bus, not even, for example, to apologize for vomit shrapnel, so the details of their onward journey remained a mystery.
The bus stand in Ajmer turned out to be small and almost empty of buses. This made it pretty clear that they were going to be continuing their journey by rail. The bus station was on the opposite side of town to the railway station, and having seen the three of them squeeze into a rickshaw with their rucksacks, I got a separate rickshaw on my own and followed them across town.
I lost sight of them during the journey, only to find them again at the railway station, right in front of me in the queue for trains heading south to Udaipur. None of them turned round to look at me, but I could tell that my presence had been registered by the way they all stiffened up and started exchanging fevered whispers.
After about ten minutes, Liz spun round, bright red with anger.
‘Are you following us?’
‘No.’
‘Just tell me why you’re doing this, Dave. Precisely what do you think you’re getting out of this?’
‘Nothing. I’m just travelling south, and this is the way.’
‘Is it some twisted form of revenge?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where else am I going to go? Back up to Delhi?’
‘Very funny.’
‘It wasn’t a joke.’
‘You’re not going to intimidate us, you know.’
‘I’m not trying to intimidate you, for God’s sake. I’m just making my way to… to… Udaipur and Ahmedabad.’
She eyed me suspiciously.
‘I thought you said you were going to Goa.’
‘Yeah, well I’m stopping on the way, aren’t I? I’m not just interested in travellers’ hang-outs you know. I want to see the real India.’
She eyed me even more suspiciously.
‘We’re getting off before Udaipur – I’m not telling you where – but if you get off at the same station as us, I’m calling the police.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘I’m not joking.’
‘And what are they going to do?’
‘That depends on what I tell them you’ve done.’
‘Oh, Liz. Give me a break.’
‘No – you give me a break.’
‘Look – I don’t know what we’re arguing about, because I haven’t got the slightest interest in following you off the train and going to your sordid little brainwashing centre. I am going, like I said, to Udaipur.’
‘I’m not interested in your lies any more, David. Just remember, I’m calling the police if this carries on any longer.’
When I got to the front of the queue, I tried to explain to the ticket-seller that I wanted to be in a different compartment to the three English girls. It took ages for him to get what I was on about, but eventually he sighed, nodded and told me that he understood.
I paid for the ticket, and he passed it under the glass with a huge wink, saying that he’d put me as close as possible.
On the train, I was greeted with more frosty glances and rigid turned backs. I felt as if I’d already finished with the lonely-pensioner phase and was now a dirty old man in a mac.
After a while, the man sitting next to me smiled and said, ‘These girls your friend?’
He was wearing a green polyester shirt, blotched with sweat, and looked as if he had recently washed his hair in lard. We were wedged up against one another on the seat, but whenever I tried to create a little space between us, his fat oozed outwards to fill the gap.
‘No. Not my friends,’ I replied.
‘You go talk with girls, yes?’
‘No. No talk with girls.’
‘Why?’
