I boarded yet another sleeper bus. I was only in Ujjain for 3 days but it did me in. Home to the Mahakal Temple and the precious stone than sits within it, Ujjain is a huge pilgrimage site for Hindus all over the country. I had seen the cows and touched the holy stone and now it was time to move on. I couldn’t wait to reach the Pink City… otherwise known as Jaipur.
Just before the bus took off, a guy who worked for the bus operator came on to wish me farewell. What a transformation a simple well-wish or a goodbye from people makes to your journey. Unfortunately the warmth I received upon my Ujjain departure could not save my journey to Jaipur from being absolute hell…
The roads in India are always bumpy, but the road from Ujjain to Jaipur was relentlessly so. We bumped, banged, careered and veered all over the place. The jolts came twice, three times, four times as often as all my previous journeys. I was shaken up in a horrible way and my stomach began to protest.
Up came the sun in the morning – as vicious as the vertiginous road. I was shouted off the bus and hurled instantly into the jaws of a dosen auto-rickshaw drivers, all attempting to drag me into their vehicles. Was there any point in explaining to them I had no cash?
The coercion of the auto-drivers and their desperation was maddening. My stomach had turned dangerously from sedition to full-scale revolt. I stumbled along the streets of Jaipur like a sick horse tormented by a swarm of flies. If these auto-drivers didn’t move out of my way soon, I was going to start spewing my guts over them.
One by one, they buzzed off, but I felt ready to pass out. As uncomfortable as the bus ride had been I knew now that my sickness was the work of something more than just a rough journey. This was food poisoning not car sickness. It was a long time before I reached my hostel and while it was a relief to get off the streets, it did not bring an end to my suffering.
My ill-luck presented me with an overly talkative hostel worker who chatted happily away to me as a fever took hold of my body. Cold sweat ran down my face and I did all I could not to yell at him to hurry the hell up. I felt like I had the Tudor sweating sickness.
It was still very early in the morning, but the rest of my day was spent in bed fading in and out of a sickly sleep and shivering beneath the sweat soaked covers.
Late in the evening, I dragged myself out of the hostel and through the streets to the nearest restaurant I could find, procuring a roll of plain naan to keep me from wasting away. I did not realise that fate would tie me to this restaurant. In a weird way…
