The Backpacker by John Harris Read Free Book Online

compartment. As I was sandwiched between him and the exterior window, the chances were that this would be a relatively beggar-free journey. Most of the limbless tend to stick to the people nearest to the corridor for obvious, logistical reasons. Only if they spotted a suit would they bother to crawl into the depths of a compartment on the off-chance of a rupee. They definitely wouldn’t bother for a labourer.
    Man in Suit (or Death by a Thousand Questions as he’s also known) is a nightmare come true. To the unwary traveller he looks like the best choice: clean when compared to the labourer piled in one corner, and uncluttered when compared to Couple with Kid who’re spilling all over the place in the other corner. And when you first sit beside him with an ‘Excuse me,’ he replies, in the very best English, ‘Oh! Please,’ and wipes your place clean with his spotless handkerchief. ‘Great!’ you think, ‘I’ve got the right compartment this time.’ Wrong! What starts out as idle chit-chat: ‘How long will you be staying in our beautiful country?’ and ‘Which places have you visited?’ soon turns into a non-stop barrage that drives into you like a dentist’s drill on low speed. Budget travellers have been known to upgrade to first-class, just to get away from Man in Suit. The effect of twenty hours sitting and answering questions about the price of a car or a washing machine, or the standard of English in India, or how to cook a spot-on tandoori can induce suicide. I once spent four hours under such duress and almost collapsed at the end of it. I was tempted to throw myself out of the window to escape.
    Husband and Wife (one child), also known as Couple with Kid, present the third choice. Like all Indian families they seem to be unable to travel without taking the whole of their household contents along with them, including the kitchen sink. Not a terrible prospect in itself, and even the child, seven years old in this case, shouldn’t shit herself or cry too much. So what’s the down side here? Food. If you choose to sit next to them you’ll be force fed until you explode or puke, whichever comes first.
    Couple with Kid (and occasionally couple without) always take enough food to feed the entire occupants of all twelve carriages of the train, and still have leftovers for their relatives. They’ll offer to share a mind-boggling array of different curries, breads and sweet desserts, all of which, unless you are visibly ill, you’ll have to eat. Fat travellers vomit, skinny ones die, and Couple with Kid still scoff merrily in the corner.
    So, I had the Labourer, Zed had the Suit, and Dudley chose the food scene from Caligula . Within an hour of the train leaving the station the three of us were out of our seats and standing by the open door at the end of the car to escape the torture. Oh, and we wanted to smoke a joint, too.
    TWO
    Snowflake’s in hell . That’s how one of the other travellers in our guest house described our chances of getting an audience with the Dalai Lama. He knew someone who’d spent a month up here waiting for a chance to meet the Big D and hadn’t even caught a glimpse of the man. ‘Flies in and out in a Lear jet,’ he’d said, leaning in the doorway to our room. ‘Unless you’re the leader of a foreign country he’s not interested. Dope’s pretty good up here though.’
    Three rain-soaked days later, Dudley, having not left the room except to eat and shit, was busy testing that last comment. With a truly obsessive zeal, and a kind of ‘proof of the pudding’ logic, he had lined up three different types of dope on the cabinet beside his bed and was trying each one in turn. Some days he even mixed them together to see just how they affected him. To us the effect was the same, or at least the end result was: he mooched around the room all day in a