assumed that anyone who was my age must be immature, and I kept on spotting them smirking when I spoke, which really got on my nerves. I felt I couldn’t really talk about what I’d done, because they’d all been on the road for months and had amazing stories I couldn’t possibly compete with – about how they’d got lost in the Thai jungle with heroin smugglers, had fought off kitten-sized cockroaches in an Indonesian prison, or had done the entire Everest trek dressed in flip-flops and a Bondai Beach T-shirt.
They hadn’t swallowed any of the hippie Mother India crap, but had just gone all over Asia acting like Australians and generally drinking lots of beer and having a laugh. Even though I didn’t like them, I had to admit that they were pretty cool.
For the first time, I kind of wished that I’d done more travelling. I’d never been jealous of the older travellers before, because most of them were such transparent social failures. The people in their thirties who were still trudging around India had so obviously cocked up their entire lives that there wasn’t much to be jealous of. And most travellers seemed to be either my age or of the sad, beardy basket-case generation. It was when you occasionally bumped into the mid-to-late-twenties crowd that things got a bit scary. There was something about them that always made me envious. When they were around, I always felt like a bit of a child. I couldn’t relax when I was talking to them, because I was always worried that something naive would slip out.
There was only one evening in Goa when I really enjoyed myself, and that was when one of the Aussies almost got into a fight with a Swiss hippie. It was quite late, and everyone had been drinking for several hours in the resort’s only hang-out: The Jimmy Hendrix Bar Experiance. The Swiss guy was talking at the top of his voice, trying to impress some girl with a story about how he’d risked his life trying to get into Tibet, but how in the end it had proved impossible.
Garth, one of the larger Australians, interrupted him by tapping him on the shoulder. ‘Hey – Pinktrousers,’ he said, ‘could you turn it down a bit. We’re trying to play riotous drinking-games over here.’
This made all the Aussies (and me) laugh.
‘What is this?’ replied the Swiss guy.
‘It’s just a small thing, but (a) you’re talking far too loudly, and (b) you’re talking shit.’
‘This isn’t shit, my friend. I spent a month almost starving in a prison in Golmud after trying to hitch down into Tibet. This is not shit.’
‘Listen mate, I don’t mean to brag, but any arsehole with two brain cells to rub together knows that the Golmud route has been closed for years. I managed to get into Tibet only a few months ago, using the southern route from Kashgar.’
‘That’s bullshit. I researched this route, and it has even more police road-blocks than from Golmud.’
‘Golmud’s got a whole economy running off travellers who want to look as if they’ve tried to get into Tibet, but can’t actually be arsed to try anything dangerous. Anyone who’s serious about it goes from Kashgar.’
‘Bullshit. I’m perfectly serious about Tibet, but you can’t get past the police.’
‘Not if you sit around in cosy Golmud and act like you’re on some package holiday, doing whatever the police tell you.’
‘Golmud is not cosy!’
‘If you’re a real traveller, you’ll use a bit of initiative and take a few educated risks. I hitched a ride with a trucker who knew the location of the road-blocks, and he dropped me off before each one. I trekked round behind the police, and he picked me up on the other side.’
‘That’s not possible. This takes weeks, and there are no towns to buy food.’
‘Damn right it takes weeks, and I lived off porridge which I shared with the driver, but it’s possible. If you really want to, you can get to Tibet.’
‘You are a lying, stupid Australian. Everyone knows that Tibet is closed to travellers.’
‘Sure it is – officially.’
‘You’re lying. No one would let you stay there.’
‘I didn’t say I stayed there. I just said I got there.’
‘To Lhasa?’
‘Sure.’
‘You’re a bullshitter.’
‘It’s fucking true, mate, so I suggest you shut up and sit down.’
‘You… you… and I suppose you’ve been to Burma as well, have you?’
‘As it happens, yes. I trekked over the border from Thailand. Stayed a couple of weeks with the mountain rebels.’
‘That’s easy. I know hundreds of people who’ve done that. I trekked into Afghanistan and spent a month with the mujahedin.’
‘Well, bully for you Mr Pinktrousers. You’re a real hero.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic with me, Australian idiot.’
‘Who are you calling an idiot? I’m not the one who couldn’t even get into Tibet.’
‘If you think I believe this story, then you
‘Fuck you.’
‘No – fuck you.’
‘No – fuck
The two of them traded insults for a while longer, with Pinktrousers eventually switching into Swiss German, which is a damn good language for insulting people. They were moments away from a punch-up when one of the Aussies dragged Garth away, thrust a fresh beer bottle into his hand, and told him that he should take a bit more acid.
After almost a week of semi-loneliness and mild boredom, I bumped into two English girls on the beach, who were on their summer holiday from Newcastle university. One of them, called Claire, was a bit ugly, but her friend Sam was a genuine bollock-tighteningly sexy woman – and not in an aloof way, either. She honestly didn’t seem to realize how staggeringly fit she was. With her cropped black hair, spindly arms, kissable mouth and twinkling green eyes, she must have been either blind or stupid not to fall in love with herself every time she looked in a mirror. After the aloof Australians, it was a relief to find someone of roughly my own age who I could actually talk to – someone willing to sit down and have a proper conversation which didn’t revolve around the exchange of life- threatening-situation anecdotes.
It turned out that they were staying at the next resort down, but had already been there for almost a fortnight, and were preparing to make the journey south to Kerala. I immediately chipped in with a prudent half-lie and told them that I was about to go to exactly the same place myself. I didn’t want to look like too much of a sad git and give the impression I was desperate to cling on to them, but the truth was that I simply couldn’t face doing another big journey on my own. Looking only mildly enthusiastic about the whole idea, they agreed to meet up the following day to go off in search of train tickets. I couldn’t tell what they really thought, because I hadn’t given them much of an option to turn me down, but I felt reasonably sure that I could make them like me, given enough time.
Goa to Kerala is a long way, and we decided to take a night train to Bangalore, spend a while there, then head onwards when we were ready.
Our train pulled out of Margao station late in the afternoon and was due to arrive in Bangalore around the following lunch-time. I was so relieved to be on a train with the protection of other people that I had to fight with myself to stop the happiness showing through. If I came across as too pleased to be with them, I thought I’d seem a bit of a loser.
I sat on one side of the compartment with Sam, while Claire faced us from the opposite window-seat, slowly dozing off over her book. Sam and I started chatting the instant the train pulled out, and after an hour or so it turned into one of those talk-about-your-family conversations in which you always end up inventing traumas to try and make yourself sound interesting. I described how the person I loved most in the world was my Down’s syndrome brother, and how he was far more sensitive to human emotion than anyone else I knew. She talked about her boyfriend (boring), then about her parents and how she couldn’t help feeling that their marriage was going
