Adventure before Dementia India 2012

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04.30 Hours Monday 19 March 2012

The first bus I gather is going To Delhi. And the next one I think I hear it before I see it. It looks like it has been used as a decoy in the green zone in Baghdad for the last 10 years.

I listen (remember it’s pitch black and the middle of the night) intently and think I hear Agra shouted.



Bharatpur is on the way to Agra and any Agra bus must go near Bharatpur.



I turn into an Indian and say everything twice Bharatpur Bharatpur I call. A man does that funny nodding that Indians do and I am in.

04.45 And on a bus to Bharatpur after the morning so far things are on the up.

Have a look at the pictures of the bus. It was a mess. The steering wheel was the size of the London eye and it had a gearstick to match.

Everybody on the bus was wrapped up in woolies and coats. It looked like the support bus for James Cracknell's artic attempt

I look as out of place in short sleeves and shorts as Salman Rushdie at a book signing in Iran.

I really don’t know what to say in print about the journey. We had not gone far when he took out a diversion sign and we had some really bad swerving due to over exaggerated turns of the London Eye.



The Jaipur – Agra highway is a dual carriageway toll road. But that does not stop traffic coming from the wrong way. It splits villages in half and all manner of things cross the road as we plummet along it.



I was happy to get off in Bharatpur at 08.30 some 45 minutes before the first train arrived.

I am in one peice

Surely the day must get better

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