Last India Overland by Unknown Read Free Book Online

Scotch and Glayva from the duty-free, and Patrick was telling me all about this international model he left behind in Somerset and I remember telling him some about Nancy Pickles and how I was sort of sorry to say goodbye to her because it wasn’t that often I’ve found a woman who actually got jealous over me. I remember Rob getting back with the booze with Jenkins in tow. And I remember it didn’t take the four of us too long to knock back the new bottles. And I remember that furrow of water stretching out behind the ferry. But I don’t remember chundering into the waves.
    That’s what the Aussies call puking. Comes from the navy. Short for watch under.
    I don’t remember getting off the ferry. Apparently it was Jenkins who helped me off. Don’t remember getting on another bus or driving into Bruges or Pete telling us to pick our tent mates or Rob sitting down beside me, asking me if I’d like to bunk in with him and Jenkins. This is what Jenkins said he said, and he said he should know since he was sitting right behind me when it happened. Or me saying yeah, sure, okay. Or helping to set up the tent. Or drinking for two hours in the camp cantina.
    All I remember is waking up the next morning with my head throbbing like a jack hammer and my mouth drier than one of my mother’s breakfast martinis. With this naked female body beside me and this grey canvas twilight pounding down at me and this retch climbing up the back of my throat like a snake in heat.
    I knew I had to move fast. I scrambled out of the sleeping bag and over to the tent flap. In the process, kneeing somebody in the stomach.
    “Hey, what the bloody hell,” says a female voice with an Aussie accent. So that little question at the back of my mind is answered.
    I get through the tent flap in the nick of time.
    After that I go back inside, grab some clothes and head through this early morning mist that reminds me of Vancouver in early winter. Takes me a while to find a can. WC in big red letters above the door. Few minutes later I’m making like the Luftwaffe during the blitzkrieg and it’s not till I’m through that I notice there’s no toilet paper. So I decide to take a shower. Take off my clothes, turn the knobs. What comes out would freeze the nuts off R2-D2. But I know I don’t want to ride the bus all day with creeping underwear so I go for it and I must’ve turned bluer than B.B. King in the thirty-three seconds I was in there.
    WEST GERMANY Bruges—Heidelberg
    Day 2
    Departure: 7:30 a.m.—9 hrs.; 560 km.
    Camp: Heide; Ph. 06223/2111.
    Points: 1. One thing you could point out, on the way out of town—in fact, you could drive across it—is the bridge over the River Reie, which gives Bruges its name. That castle in the near distance was built by Boudewijn, Count of Flanders in the ninth century. Yeah, you got it. Time to ease into the history. Things were fine in Bruges up until the fifteenth century, which is when the Zwin inlet silted up and made it difficult to trade with England. By the end of the sixteenth century the city was dead, almost. But then in 1895 a new harbour was built at Zeebrugge and a seven-mile canal was built, connecting the harbour to Bruges, and the city suddenly jumped off the table it was on, down in the morgue. And that’s all you probably need to say about Bruges.
    2. My favourite town on the trip is Heidelberg. A nice romantic little university town at the head of Neckar Valley (or is it at the neck of Heider Valley?) where for some mysterious reason the beer always tastes better than anywhere else in the world. If by any chance you’re lucky and there’s a woman on board the bus who has grabbed your fancy, have a little chat with her while the sun goes down and you’re both gazing down at Heidelberg from one of the parapets of the Schloss Heidelberg. It works like a charm every time. The castle itself was begun in the thirteenth century by King Ruprecht III. Henry the Magnanimous built the beautiful