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Published: January 29th 2008
Jaipur to Barmer by Train 30/12/07
The tuk-Tuk roars its engine as we speed away into the cold night, our host family waving after the darkness. We pass one lost soul, laid out next to his overturned rick-shaw on the ground. He doesn't move, and there is nobody willing to move him. We don't stop. I guess the morning will find him just as dead.
Jaipur train station is draped in bodies, the scene of a great massacre. They are in rows, wrapped in sheets and blankets. Either they have a long wait for their train, or it's as good a place to sleep as they have. We have almost three hours til our departure. We sit on our bags on the platform, next to the tea vendor, playing cards, drawing the Indians to us like moths to a white flame. They try hard to understand the rules of shit head, but I think it will always be a cosmic mystery, because we can't even agree ourselves.
Violence against man or beast is rare in India - Hindus try hard to get into heaven by refraining for blood-letting and other such sports, but for us, this journey will be soaked in red, and we will be forced to fight great battles against creatures that suck cock in hell.
As if to give us a taste, a skirmish breaks out - the chai vendor tries to move a sleeper along the platform, and a physical beating is handed out with feminine slaps. The men in India are not macho. Their frames are light, their bodies paper thin. Here, finally, a place I could rule like a tyrant. I am no longer the skinniest fuck in any room. Shit, I can't even get my Indian clothes on and off without sending out an SOS to the Red Cross.
I feel a rush of blood to the head - maybe, just to show them how real men fight, I'll tear though the big bunch in front of me, fists and elbows flying, like a white Bruce Lee mad from the sun, smashing their bones to let them know how feeble they are. Fuck your chai, buddy, I piss on you and all your friends. They'd have to call in the army, take me down with guns and bombs and lock me in cold storage, an ice tomb for their Godzilla.
The train rolls in at 1.15am. I stay with the bags while Farouq and Sanjeev relay-rush the supplies on. As they come back for the final load, the whistle blasts and we run like fuck and make it to our carriage as the train pulls away. We check out our surroundings. It is not what you might picture when you think of taking the night train in India. It's not the Orient Express, a romantic old coin flip back to a colonial past. There's no steam, no slow chug-chug, no tea and biscuits in our lily-whites.
Our carriage has six seats come beds, in two rows of three facing each other. The middle two are folded away for now, giving our heads enough room to sit with the rest of us on the bottom beds. The mattresses are blue plastic, exactly like the kind I slept on one drunken night in England when I was detained in a police cell.
On the other side of the train there are two more beds, occupied by Indians. There are no curtains, no doors, no partitions or divisions other than the thick, hot air, and suddenly, some of become very uncomfortable. Kristin and Alicia get the top bunks, I get one on the bottom opposite Laurence. Some of us suffer from claustrophobia, so it's good to know that we'll only have to stay packed in here for around 15 hours.
Then, just as we are getting settled, things turn nasty. Someone opens a portal, and the roaches comes into our world. I spot the first one - not too big, maybe 3cm, crawling behind our heads, making straight for the brain. It gets quickly taken out, but the damage is done. There is panic in the ranks, and some are close to throwing down their arms and running for the fucking hills. Save yourself, it's every man for himself.
Well, not fucking me. I'm made of sterner stuff than that. It won't be quick, it won't be easy, but I'll go toe to toe with the fuckers, and if they take me, they will pay a great cost. I'm Michael Caine at Rourke's Drift, and the cunts won't be throwing bloody spears at me. Everybody is on edge. Some, close to tears. We sit huddled together, waiting for the rumble of thunder that will signal a million shit-eating bugs descending upon us.
Their numbers are exaggerated, but they still come in steady waves. We lash out with shoes and rolled up tissues, and send the fuckers back to hell. All of this is highly amusing to the Indians, who just shrug their shoulders and wonder what all the fuss is about. We must look like pampered western pussies, and so we knuckle down and play it tough. After the dust settles and the battlefield is quiet, hung in slow puffs of stale gunpowder smoke, we rest a while.
I wrap myself tight in my sleeping bag, sheets and pillow case, careful not to let the brown-stained blankets provided on the train touch my delicate skin. I lie awake, watching Laurence and Alicia sleeping, their panic melted into exhaustion. I get a few hours myself, buried deep in my cocoon. At one point I come up for air. I look to my left and two of the cunts are coming straight for me. I bang my fist on the partition, and they scurry away, heading upwards for another victim. Then, the cou-de-gras. One of the bastards has caught me with my pants down, clearly preoccupied with his lieutenants. He sits proudly on my face, crawling slowly downwards, no doubt intent on celebrating its victory by taking a dirty great shit in my mouth. I take a swipe and he spins away into the darkness.
So, in short, fuck the night train. It's hot, it's dirty, the toilets are like punishments for doing evil, and not even the ugliest bird I ever violated can compare to sharing a bed with a thousand cockroaches. It's an experience, yes, but not one you'd want to repeat. Good thing we have to do just that three weeks down the line.
The next morning we arrive in Barmer, the capital of our district, a 40min drive from our camp in Shiv. There are 2million people in the Barmer (pronounced Barmere) district, and 4thousand in the village of Shiv. We are in a restricted zone, maybe only 70km from the Pakistan border, so we have to hand in our passports and wait for permission to enter.
The officials here are clearly corrupt. First, they circle us, easy targets because of the colour of our skin, and Farouq has to negotiate our way out of paying a bribe. Then, we have to wait six hours in a park for our clearance, a process made all the more frustrating when we're told everything is in order and we are just waiting for the official to sign the papers. Instead of doing this, he is sitting a few feet from us, with his colleagues, shuffling papers, pretending to work so he can sit and enjoy the sun.
Eventually, we get the go ahead. We drive to Shiv (Shu), sign papers at the police station, and then we arrive at camp.
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Tinny
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Cracking Stuff
Good work Patsy, you have single handedly reduced me to tears of laughter, whilst spraying my laptop with soup. Death to the Roaches. Peace.