The last days

This bull would park itself outside a McLeod tea shop and refuse to move
until he had been given some food...

This morning when we finally dragged ourselves into Wongden House in Delhi, I had yet another run-in with the boy who watches the desk at night. Again he wanted to hold my passport until the clerk came, and again I wasn’t going to let him. This time he became even more insistent that I leave it, and was very firm in his ‘yes’ to my ‘no’ until he realised he wasn’t going to get anywhere with me. After dumping our bags Simita headed off to Connaught Place while she could make the most of the chilly morning air (probably about 30C, or 89F for those of you who are still working in old money, predicted to rise to 37C / 102F), and I collapsed on my bed to make up for lost sleep.

Yesterday, while Simita spent the afternoon with a surprisingly good astrologer, I was with Tsewang discussing consciousness, form and attachment - nothing too heavy. And then, because I had whinged so much about having to carry our backpacks back up the Yong Ling steps, Tsewang had lined up two friends to help. As we retrieved my bag from the storeroom of the Pink House, Simita wasn’t around so Tsewang said we would take her bag too and leave a message. I suspected this could go horribly wrong, but left a message with the hotel manager to tell Simita that we had stolen her bag and gone off to sell the contents. No problem there. Tsewang’s two friends then took a backpack each while Tsewang looked at me in confusion. “Don’t you have any more luggage?” he asked. I also had a rather full hand luggage bag but, no, that was it. “Oh,” said Tsewang. “No need for two people to help.” Because of my complaining he had obviously thought that I needed a small group of Sherpas and possibly a couple of yaks. “The bags are heavy to us,” I explained, feeling rather pathetic. “They weigh a tonne!”

And so Tsewang and his two friends trotted off up the Yong Ling steps, carrying our bags as if they were nothing more than a couple of small bags of groceries, leaving me carrying nothing but sweating and puffing behind.

At half past five, when Simita arrived at the bus stand, she was in a panic because her backpack had disappeared from the Pink House. Unfortunately when she had gone to the store room, the hotel manager was not there and all the hotel boy could say to her was ‘friend’ and ‘okay’. Relieved to discover that we did have it, she joined in with the goodbyes as Tsewang hung the traditional white katas around our necks, and - dosed up on travel sickness tablets - we said our farewell to McLeod Ganj.

The bus ride down from McLeod is always worse, so travel sickness tablets are essential. Part of the problem is simply just that the drivers are able to go much faster going down than when going up, so as the driver skirts around hairpin bends on rocky roads, the bus sways from side to side as if it is going to tip over. For a long part of the journey it felt so bendy and rocky that I wondered if we had accidentally got onto a bus to Manali by mistake, and began wondering how I could get back to Delhi in time to catch my flight. But eventually, with the help of an inflatable pillow and a cheap MP3 player that refuses to play most of what is in its library, I managed to doze off until being woken by a couple of passengers shouting at the driver. Simita told me later that the driver had dared stop for a break and that two European passengers began shouting at him to drive, threatening to call the police if he did not. While the man shouted at the driver, the woman began kicking the luggage-boy, who was asleep in the bus gangway. Kicking him to wake up she demanded to know if he was the driver. Hmm.., well no he can’t be because your boyfriend is busy shouting at the driver…. Eventually a very angry driver shouted back and started up the bus, leaving me hoping he had rested enough to take on the rest of the drive. He seemed okay, but I think he also wanted revenge because I am sure that after that he was deliberately driving over potholes - especially because the shouty couple were sitting at the back where they would really get their arses slapped. And so it was with sore backs and bottoms that we finally got off at the Tibetan colony, said we didn’t want an auto/rickshaw/taxi about a dozen times, and then found our hotel.

So early tomorrow morning it is Helsinki and London for me. Simita, who isn’t due to fly out for another three days, will try to make the most of Delhi in the mornings and evenings when it isn’t roasting too fiercely. It was a short but good trip. Simita plans to go back to McLeod for sure. Me? Well right now I could murder a decent cup of tea.