Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle Page 9

  In a restaurant I lay on a bench. Someone turned on a fan and felt the caresses and licks from the slight whooshing of its rotations. Outside, I could hear a crowd of young men around my bike, prodding and poking it, the bell rung continuously.

  CRUNCH!

  I sat up to see to a tall plump young man knocking about a young boy by the ears who was stuck under my bike having tried to ride it. I laid back down, forearm resting over my eyes. Moments later I felt my arm being tugged off my face. Upside down in my vision was the tall plump man.

  ‘You have a beautiful bicycle,’ he said, looking down at me. ‘I want this bicycle. How much you give to me?’

  ‘It’s not for sale.’

  ‘I am much wanting your gear-cycle.’

  ‘I said it isn’t for sale.’

  ‘But it is so beautiful. What price can you give me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But I am wanting your bike.’

  ‘I told you. IT’S … NOT … FOR … SALE!’

  He blinked. ‘Yes, yes. But how much you want to give it to me?

  ‘PLEASE! GO AWAY!’

  He slinked out and went back to staring at my bike.

  I swung my arm back over my eyes, trying to wrestle the headache. I began to shake uncontrollably.

  The malarial fevers had returned.

  9

  JAISALMER

  February

  In the late afternoon of the next day, I wobbled into Jaisalmer a shaking, sweaty mess and half delirious. I’d spent the night in the desert burning up in my tiny one-man tent and right now all I wanted was a bed with clean sheets. All I wanted was to be cool. All I wanted was a bit of peace and quiet, to be left alone. All I wanted was to just cry! That’s all!

  But, oh no.

  First, I had to get past a large American tourist in a loud Hawaiian shirt (let’s not live the stereotype shall we) in the foyer of our hotel, standing there like some kind of Lara Croft Tomb Raider goon. As I wheeled my bike in he belted me about the head with questions.

  ‘OH, MY GOD! ARE YOU LIKE, CYCLING INDIA!?’

  I blinked. ‘No.’

  ‘NO? OH, HAHA! I SO WANNA DO THAT! WHAT KINDA BIKE YA GOT?’

  ‘Can we do this later?

  ‘SO IS IT SAFE? HOW MANY KILOMETRES CAN YOU DO A DAY? HAVE YOU LIKE, BEEN ROBBED OR ANYTHING?’

  ‘No, look – I’m not feeling well. I’ve got malaria.’

  ‘MALARIA? I HEAR THAT’S PRETTY BAD. I DIDN’T GET IT WHEN I WAS IN KOREA. YOU BEEN TO KOREA?’

  I went upstairs, his questions biting at my heels, the last of which was ‘HEY, SINCE YOU’RE NOT USING YOUR BIKE, COULD I HAVE A RIDE?’

  I snapped around.

  ‘WOULD … YOU … FUUUUUUCK … OFFFFFF!’

  He stood there, his face like a big child. ‘No need to be rude, buddy. I was just askin’.’

  But things got even worse. As I lay there burning up in my penthouse (okay, it was a bungalow on the roof of the hotel), an Australian woman, sitting near my window, barked racist views about aboriginal entitlement to other travellers for what seemed hours. In the morning, she dropped down at my table like a dirty bomb.

  ‘I hear you’re from Australia.’

  I looked around and saw the American fumbling through his Lonely Planet. I felt betrayed. In a low voice I said ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Ya don’t sound Australian. Ya must be from the toff end of town.’ And then, for some reason, went on in great detail about her constipation. Which was ironic because just listening to her gave me the screaming shits!

  It was only after feigning death that I managed to be free of her, and escaped to get another blood test. It came back negative, the doctors at a loss to explain my strange fevers.

  When I felt well enough, I explored Jaisalmer. I weaved in and out of its narrow streets and ornate havelis, dodging cows slouched at street corners like bored teenagers on holiday, strolling through market stalls dripping with silver trinkets, leather bags before finding myself surrounded by a sea of embroidered wall hangings lapping at my feet.

  I was in a textile shop and the owner, Madan, sported hair cropped short while a long plait hung down from the top of his skull. It was the Brahmin custom when a father died.

  For some reason we got talking about the 1998 underground nuclear tests, detonated 200 metres underground and 100 kilometres from here in the Thar Desert.

  ‘They used onions,’ said Madan, making a patting action with his hand, ‘to control the … how do you say? The boom? Metric tonnes from all over India. Normally onions are six rupees a kilo, then the price go up,’ he whisked his hand up like a salute, ‘to sixty rupees per kilo! Very bad. The poor use the onion to take the heat out during the summer, but they cannot get.’

  Onions. It was the strangest thing I had ever heard. I imagined hapless farmers being buried alive by piles of burnt onion rings falling from the sky.

  I decided on two blood-red-and-ochre embroidered hangings that, according to Madan, were made up of pieces from the traditional wedding dresses of Rajasthani tribal women. Some designs were garish – mirror beads and elaborate stitching – while others showed images of elephants, peacocks and flowers.

  We began a battle of wills, wits and wallets as we bartered the price, passing the calculator back and forth, tapping out figures.

  When it was all over he shook my hand but then became sullen.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You cut my head off.’

  ‘What?’ I didn’t believe him. Textile sellers were notorious for their shark-like behaviour in Jaisalmer. He carried on with the act.

  ‘Maybe you should go into the textile business. You want parcel?’

  I agreed. He turned to a worker who had only one good eye and told him to make a parcel for the hangings, a sewn cloth sealed with wax, and stitched me for the service four times the going price!

  Madan put his hand on my knee.

  ‘You want camel safari?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said automatically. Every five minutes I was pestered for a camel safari. I couldn’t go anywhere without a tout hanging off a doorway or an auto-rickshaw driver whistling at me.

  On the way home I stopped off at a government authorised bhang (or marijuana as we know it) shop. Bhang was sold openly at stalls around the town and it was government authorised, because apparently the Hindu god Lord Shiva used to take the male plant for its slow effects (unlike the more hallucinogenic female variety). The bhang was mixed in lassi (watered-down yoghurt).

  I downed three of them, and with great effort stumbled back to my room only to dream all night of camel touts coming out of the sandstone walls demanding I take a camel tour.

  ***

  As the sun rose the next morning I looked out across the golden brown desert while in the distance, eight wind turbines clocked slowly over.

  ‘They do not work,’ said Suresh, the owner of the hotel, Laxmi Niwas, waving his hand at them. Suresh had a cheery, cherub face, grey hair and a round belly. He reminded me of a happy baby hippopotamus.

  ‘Sometimes moving, sometimes not. These are unreliable.’ He shifted his feet and the conversation. Wind power may have been unreliable (according to Suresh) but so was India’s fossil fuel power. Blackouts were caused frequently by poorly maintained grid structures and, as Suresh told me, the ‘power thieves’ who illegally re-routed power for anyone with some flappable cash.

  I had ridden out to the wind farm the day before and met Kamal, the engineer. I sipped chai with him in a cramped space in one of the supporting poles while the sound of the whirring blades cut through our conversation.

  ‘We are waiting for the – WHOOSH! – hot season,’ said Kamal. ‘Strong winds – WHOOSH! – and we expect – WHOOSH! WHOOSH! – maximum output. Oh, but then. It is so – WHOOSH! – hot! Oh, much – WHOOSH! WHOOSH! – wind!’

  Even now, in late February, a cloud of brown sand rose a metre high above the des
ert, scourging the city, blasting sari’d women who huddled in groups by the side of the road and hid their faces in their veils, and whipping the legs of shorts-wearing tourists as they ran to the nearest curio in the vain hope that it all might end.

  Though I was feeling better I was struggling to decide whether or not I should cycle to Pushkar, a small town by a lake and surrounded by sweeping hills. Though the fevers had gone, strenuous cycling seemed to bring them back. And there was another thing: to get to Pushkar I would have to pass through Pokaran, a town near the atomic test sites. I asked Suresh to help put my mind at ease.

  ‘Ah! Very safe!’ he implored, chewing on a betel nut. ‘This is just newspaperman make this for story to sell paper. Yes, very safe. No problem. They do the test 20 kilometres from the road. Remember, we are only 65 kilometres from the blast and we are fine.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried about the contamination?’

  ‘My friend, we don’t worry about such things.’ He reached over and put his hand on my shoulder to reassure me. ‘This is India.’

  10

  PUSHKAR

  February

  I took the bus.

  I know, I know.

  And as punishment, getting to Pushkar was hellish. It wasn’t just the overnight bus ride through Pokaran – contaminated, no doubt, by radioactive killer dust, me trying not to breathe when the bus stopped there – but having to cycle over a sizeable mountain at three in the morning when the bus terminated at Ajmer – 15 kilometres short of Pushkar.

  My headlamp barely shone the way as I pedalled on a flat road before beginning an ascent with dogs upon me, barking and biting at my bags. Two shot up ahead then veered me into the hard shoulder. I swerved just in time, avoiding a deep pothole but colliding with the leader’s tail, causing it to give a startled yelp. I made off into the night, the rear pannier nipped at by a determined straggler. I could taste an exhausted rawness in my throat and sweat trickling off my helmet.

  But my troubles weren’t over: four more dog attacks followed before I reached Pushkar. During one, when I was surrounded by the sound of barks somewhere in the darkness, I picked up some rocks and began throwing them wildly around, sparking off the bitumen. Just when I had scared the dogs away, I went to get back on the bike and lost my balance and went over, falling hard on the road. It was the dogs’ perfect moment to surround me and bark inches away from my face.

  As if the journey to Pushkar were not bad enough, the fever turned up, hitching a ride from Jaisalmer with a bounty on my health, no doubt. When I went in search of a doctor, a Brahmin priest was suddenly by my side thrusting a flower into my hand. He didn’t look like a priest of any sort – well, not in that Catholic kind of way. He wore normal clothes, and the only thing that gave him any sense of spiritual legitimacy was a sandalwood marking daubed in the middle of his forehead.

  ‘Come down to the water and make puja. Many good things for you.’

  I don’t believe in a god, but I had tried everything else to get rid of this fever – medication, Ayurvedic herbs, my own urine – so why not a prayer? If divine intervention was going to … well, intervene, then I was willing to be the most religious zealot you had ever set eyes on.

  The priest led me down to the steps towards Pushkar Lake, past an archway filled with langur monkeys lazing in the sun like clothes hung out to dry. The lake was so small that it should have been called Pushkar Pond and once so infested with crocodiles that Brahmin priests had been known to knock a few on the head with a stick while they went through the morning rituals. Under British rule, the army had had the crocodiles moved rather than shot, to respect local sensibilities.

  ‘Many good things for you, sir,’ the priest said, then smiled like one of the evicted crocodiles, ‘if you give donation for puja.’

  Ah, there was always a cost for one’s faith.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two thousand rupees only.’

  I scoffed.

  ‘Many good things for you, more like it,’ I said and moved to go, but he grabbed my arm, firmly.

  ‘How much you want to give?’

  ‘I am not Brahmin. I am just looking.’

  ‘Does not matter. We are same, same. Eyes, legs, arms, mouth. We are same under God.’

  ‘That’s an interesting theological point, but I’m going now.’

  He grabbed me again.

  ‘One thousand rupees!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But this is great blessing for you. Good karma.’ He cut me off, moving up the steps towards my hiking shoes, which I had been urged to take off and was now quite worried about.

  ‘Okay, how much you want to pay?’

  ‘Let’s see … nothing.’

  ‘Nothing is no good for Brahmin. Many people give to me for blessing.’

  ‘That’s because they don’t know about charlatan Brahmin priests.’

  I ducked passed him, then managed to get to my boots and started lacing them up.

  ‘You are not good man. You come here and disgrace my sacred water.’

  I looked at the sacred water – a stagnant pool of grubbiness.

  ‘Okay, 500 only,’ he said.

  I got up and started walking up the stairs.

  ‘Okay, okay, 250!’ He grabbed the back of my shirt and this time I snapped his hand away, hard.

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  This enraged him.

  ‘You, chelo! (go!) You … you … European!’

  I escaped up the broad marble stairs. Strangely, the altercation with the Brahmin priest made me feel better.

  Unable to find a doctor, I browsed through a bookshop looking for anything on malaria but instead nearly bought a Hindi phrasebook. I ‘nearly’ did because I was unsure how useful it would be to ask, ‘Will I need to wear a wool jacket tomorrow?’ or ‘Have you cleaned your musket?’ or ‘Order your sepoy to dig me a mine’.

  But the fever flushed through me again and I headed to an Internet café. When I opened my email account, I received a shock – there were over 30 messages. I opened one from my sister:

  I thought your last email didn’t make any sense. You were really rambling from one thought to the next. You sounded confused. I strongly urge you to please get to hospital, and take this seriously, your health is more important than writing the book.

  What was going on? Why so many emails? Finally, I found out:

  Dear everyone,

  Please urge Russell to get proper treatment now, before this strain of malaria contaminates his body. If he must get medical attention outside of India, then so be it. Sorry about the doom and gloom but I’m sure you’ll recognise the importance of acting now.

  Alan

  Alan! Goddamn it! What was he doing scaring everyone? All I said was that the fevers had returned (in retrospect, this was actually cause for alarm though I didn’t see it at the time).

  I spent half the day sending off emails to everyone that I was fine. Bec, of course, went nuts, so I called her and promised that I would go to New Delhi immediately.

  Thus, I found myself on the Shabti Express to New Delhi to see a ‘real doctor’, a doctor recommended by my travel insurance company and who would cost me two hundred times the going rate for a blood test that would reveal nothing. Dr Singh reassured me that I did not have malaria, and that if I did then I really didn’t.

  Yes, I was confused too.

  ‘Then, why do I keep getting the fevers?’ I asked Dr Singh.

  He sat back in his leather chair, hands behind his turban, and lorded his 30 years of Western medical advice: ‘I don’t know.’

  11

  DELHI – BUTWAL (NEPAL)

  Early March

  I liked Delhi, or, rather, Central New Delhi, as soon as I arrived. Unlike the old city of Delhi, which was a sprawling crowded mess of gridlocked traffic, Central New Delhi had wide and well-sealed roads, large green gardens, tree-lined boulevards and cafés.

  This made it easy to cycle around, which was a relief from the cha
os of other Indian towns (though it must be said New Delhi’s roundabouts often had me swinging into unplanned orbits).

  I was on my way to the centre of town near the granddaddy of all roundabouts, Connaught Place, when something hard and wet hit me in the ear. Stunned, I spun around to see that children had thrown a water bomb at me from their apartment balcony.

  I got off my bike, furious. A Sikh auto-rickshaw driver stopped.

  ‘Do not worry. This is not serious.’

  ‘Not serious! I nearly fell off my bike!’

  ‘They are only playing. They are only excited because Holi is coming.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Holi. A celebration.’

  Holi. Of course. The Water Festival (also known as the Festival of Colour). Every March, Holi is celebrated during a full moon or Dol Purnima to bring good harvests and ward off evil spirits. Water and brightly coloured gulal (powder) are thrown at passers-by by intoxicated participants (or kids, for that matter). I had seen pictures in travel books of smiling Indian men (the women didn’t seem to get involved) covered in red powder and practically assaulting each other with dye and water.

  As I cycled off looking over my shoulder, I had to admit that the kid that had got me was a pretty good shot.

  I took a private room at the Ringo Guest House. Well, a closet with a fan that nearly took out the walls to complete a revolution. It was a narrow hotel, the stairs giving me no leeway as I bumped and squeezed my loaded bike past guests.

  To my surprise I saw another mountain bike locked up against a post on the patio. I eventually met the owner, who was urged on by a 50-something, big-bottomed Yorkshire woman with fangs.

  ‘Go on, luv! ’Ere’s your chance. Ask ‘im.’

  A shy-looking bespectacled man with a pigtail greeted me.

  ‘Hello. My name is Uros.’

  Uros was a 25-year-old Slovenian engineering student who had just arrived in Delhi. He had, he admitted nervously, never done anything like this before and had no idea where to go. He was thinking about going south, but I warned him off it, as it was getting hotter by the day. I spread my map of India out over the table. His eyes swirled over the runnel of red lines and brain-like contours. A worried dint appeared between his eyebrows.