Back in f***in' Bombay Boys!

So.  Yes.  The famous 52 hour train ride.  My 'window bearth' was too short for me and I have this abiding memory of having to get up every hour or so to stretch my legs - day and night.  The memory that remains is that I did so in the corridor, looking out the window, smoking those awful 'Gold Spot' cigarattes.  Or was 'Gold Spot' their version of Tango?  Anyway.

And, for some reason, no food.  My cullinary discovery for this journey seemed to be orange cream biscuits and that's it.  The 'train food' had to be ordered in advance - something that I'd failed to do, resulting in only having two small, paper-wrapped meals in the whole 2.5 days.  Being put with other Westerners (a trend) was a pain (unwelcome company) and a mercy (he gave me a banana).

A combination of literary discovery (The Madness of a Seduced Woman) and reflection kept the journey occupied.  Lots of thinking about the last five weeks.  Thinking about becoming swiftly comfortable, by necessity, with travelling on one's own, but also through discovering the sort of traveller one was and the sort of traveller one wanted to spend time with.  I was dilligent to remind myself that I wanted to remain friends with J, but it was clear that were weren't compatible travellers - his incessant smoking and keenness to out do all and sundries' backpacking stories.  That was then, not now (as we know).


And back to Bombay - which I swiftly realised I hated.  I was stationed in a guesthouse out of town a little - something that involved, unlike last time, a train into the city centre.  If I cast my mind back, my first journey in with some other Brits was so packed that I lost both them and the contents of my pockets which were emptied blatantly by someone pushed up against me.  Busy, corrupt and expensive.  I seem to have spent the majority of those final four days writing letters, thinking about the play I was writing and reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  Such limited activity seems to have resulted in me spending a great deal of time in my hotel room rather than exploring Bombay on my last opportunity to do so.  There was a little bit of administration - confirming flights, changing money, going to the GPO, visiting the posh bookshop in the Taj Hotel - but that's about it.  No regrets - I seem quite content. 

And so to the airport.  A touch of apprehension about what this next furlong brings.  The majority of said apprehension seems to be based around the flight(s) being somewhat uneven.  But the vibes were good.  A Korean chap bought me a beer, a couple of Australians told me how they were returning to Thailand after only a short trip to India because Thailand was so much nicer.  And a shared taxi into town to share a room with a beardy English chap in the 'New Merry V'.

Goodbye India - it's late October 1994.  Over twenty years ago.  I'd return to India, but it wouldn't  be until 2007 at the age of 35.