mixedlol

You’re switching channels aimlessly and stop on a travel show that’s hosted by various beautiful, bland young people. This one features a long-haired guy with a tan. You hate the way people like him get paid to travel to exotic places around the world. They remind you of a lot of people your age. They all have great careers, work in exciting overseas cities and have tonnes of friends calling them all the time. You don’t have any of these things and never will. All you can do is get older and live vicariously by watching...

The Travel Gang go to India

India, you know. What can you say? Everything is just so full of life. It’s like life magnified a million times, the good and the bad. I started out by going to Bombay where my meditation teacher, Sharon, from back home was holding a five day course. So I’m in there meditating for like ten hours straight and you’re not allowed to talk, which is very difficult for me. Meditation is all about seeking enlightenment. Apparently, the Buddha sat under a tree once and he gained enlightenment that way. They say you should never sit under a tree during an enlightenment storm. Ha-hah. So I just meditated in Sharon’s group for the first day. There were some great people there. Film-makers, lawyers, billionaires. I made a lot of friends and contacts. The next day I got up and just decided to chill. I don’t think I’d gained enlightenment in just one day, but I got a bit of an understanding of what it was about. Anyway I went for a walk around the city, just soaking up the vibrations of this ancient culture, trying some Indian dishes served on banana leaves. Delicious. And very different from what westerners know as Indian food. Then after looking around some shops I came back to the inn, and I’m heading for my room when I notice an old man still asleep at midday on the floor. I’m thinking gee this guy must be tired. But by about one in the afternoon he’s still asleep and he’s got blankets on and it’s like forty degrees so I walk over and shake him but he’s not moving. It turned out he was dead so I told Sharon and she asked me to get an ambulance and take him back to the village he came from deep in the jungle.

First I had to get an ambulance. They all wanted death certificates but eventually I got one who’d take the body without one. I was in the back with the body and it was getting smellier and smellier. I told the driver to turn on the siren and go faster so we could get rid of the body. Five hours and twenty million flies later we get to the edge of a forest but the ambulance driver won’t go in with me. He tells me there are tigers in the forest and that the villagers are headhunters. He says they were the only ones the British Raj had not been able to subjugate. So I went in alone, and was looking all around me in the dark for the tigers, imagining sounds in the forest. Seeing shadows. Eventually I get through the forest and I come to a clearing where this beautiful, ancient village is. I’m sure I was the first outsider to ever visit it. It was like going back in time.

I went up to this guy who looked like the high priest of the village. I knew their language and told him I had their friend out in the car, but I was worried they’d kill me if I told them he was dead, kind of like a shoot the messenger situation, so I said he’s out at the ambulance and he’s very sick. So the priest tells the villagers and we all start heading back through the forest. On the way I thought I better explain to the priest that the guy was in fact dead. He said why didn’t you say so? I explained that I thought if I told them that they’d kill me. He said now they will kill you. He said to run ahead and he would make some excuse and stall them. I started running. The other villagers wanted to know why I was running. The priest kept them for a second but soon they started running trying to keep up with me. I got to the car and told the ambulance driver to help me get the body out but he wouldn’t help me. The villagers were closing in. I bribed the ambulance driver and we lifted the body out and drove away in the nick of time. Now I’m safely back at the inn, drinking a cocktail and watching this scintillating sunset over the metropolis of Bombay. What can you say about this wonderful country? One trip can’t do justice to this magnificent place of infinite variety and I can’t wait for my next Indian adventure. Bombay is full of life and this is living. Cheers.