I was supposed to spend four nights in Mumbai according to my own completely arbitrary estimations. However, Mumbai is so vast that I get the impression you could spend a decade there and keep discovering new sidestreets, so I settled on viewing a few key hotspots and heading to Goa early. I was craving a real shindig after the myriad stoned balcony evenings across Rajasthan. Continue reading
My fourth day in Udaipur was spent doing glorious beautiful wonderful nothing. Two weeks into my trip, and I was feeling exhausted. Heat and booze and a constant flurry of new faces and the ever-looming dread of food poisoning, which has ravaged literally every single person I’ve met bar me, all conspire to leave me absolutely knackered. I spent a half hour in the morning doing yoga on the rooftop with Sandeep, and then happily committed myself to a blissful day of fuck all. Continue reading
I’m writing these a few days behind, so some days are a little trickier to recall. However, as far as memory serves, I spent most of my second morning in Udaipur doing very little, apart from nursing a hangover on the terrace. As time has gone on I’ve found exhaustion setting in; I’ve gotten lazier and lazier in the intense heat, and when you’re shattered in the first place, it quickly becomes a huge task to simply get up, get dressed, and leave the relative serenity of the hostel for the rapture of the streets. Continue reading
Next day was to be another transit day; a frustration given my limited time here. But then, I suppose that’s me viewing transit as a chore or wasted hours, and I suppose that really, I’m wrong; the key to enjoying every minute of life must surely be to view everything as an opportunity for new happiness. And so, although James and Jonas and I were smash packed onto a sweating local bus made entirely of screaming rust, we had an unforgettable ride.
Continue readingIndia, man. Fucking India. I’m astonished.
I woke up around 10am and had breakfast on the roof terrace with Jonas and James, and met an English girl called Ellie. She’s been travelling for sixth months and it shows; she’s covered in scars and bruises with a wild story for every one of them. We spent an hour talking, then I set out into the town of Pushkar with Jonas – see, while Jonas had recovered from his stint with food poisoning, James had tagged in to the sickness ring, and was curled up on his bunk sweating and groaning. Continue reading
Today has been a transit day, mostly, but that’s not to say it hasn’t been silly fun. I got up at 10 and had eggs on toast for breakfast on the balcony and chatted to the Argentinian girls. Showered and dressed, and realised that the reason I’ve been having freezing cold showers for the past week is that the hot and cold taps have been put on the bloody wrong way around. Continue reading
Every day in this country is insane and the further I travel the more absurd it gets. I love it.
Dave has been in Delhi this whole time, doing god knows what, and he messaged me last night to say he’d be arriving in Jaipur at midnight. I left a note with Sid at reception for Dave, telling him hello and that if he tried waking me I would fucking shank him. I spoke to Sid in the morning and asked if Dave had arrived, and he said yes, four hours late, and that they smoked hash together sitting on the floor. I said yes, that sounds very much like Dave. Continue reading
It was the morning after the strangeness of the night before – and India doesn’t let up, man. I woke up late. I’ve been sleeping in most days until 10am because, well, why not? I’m on holiday. I like exploring, but I want to go slow. It’s so hot and mad here that if you tried to keep to the same pace of sightseeing as people manage in Europe, you’d explode. Buying breakfast in the morning is lunacy. Taking a shower is a quest. Getting a beer is a fucking odyssey. Continue reading
Got up in Agra at 6am because I had a bus to Jaipur booked for 7.30 with two guys I met the previous evening, James from Auckland, New Zealand and Jonas from Copenhagen, Denmark. I told Jonas I know Denmark pretty well but he wasn’t particularly interested. Nobody ever is. Perhaps I should stop using it as an ice breaker with Danish people. Perhaps. Continue reading
A year ago I wrote an article titled ‘A List of Shit I’m Going to Do This Year Unless the World Ends, Which It Probably Will, Because Donald Trump is a Moron’. If you would care to join me now, I am rather curious to revisit this list and assess how well I performed over the past 12 months. Of course, there’s every chance you couldn’t physically care less about my personal goals and ambitions, and that is fine. Good day to you. To anybody still reading, let’s creep our peepers over the bafflingly long and wildly optimistic list I made, one year ago today… Continue reading