Tales from the beyond the grave

Soy muerte! I’m expired… six feet under… dead as a doorknob! I’ve passed on, I’ve checked out… I am, no more!

OK, so strictly speaking I’m not actually dead, but I am in a coffin. (I can’t be dead, cos I promised my Mum I wouldn’t die on this trip). I’m in a coffin with my laptop. It’s actually worse than a coffin cos I would imagine that my family would splurge on a coffin that I might fit into. This particular coffin is about half a foot short of my height and fits snugly around my midsection with enough headroom for me to fold open my laptop while it rests on my crotch.

OK, OK, stop shouting… Jesus H. Christ… can a man not use some mild hyperbole to illustrate his point. I’m in a sleeper bus and have a single sleeper cell/bed/coffin. When I was in Turkey I remember an Ozzie girl telling me that the best thing about India was sleeper buses… Mental note to unfriend her on facebook and notify the Australian mental retardation authorities that they have a loony on the loose with a round-the-world ticket.

Give me my trains any day… I’m being shaken to shit here (I have to go bcak and erspell veery word afresh). Its just after midnight and I left Udaipur at half nine this evening for a place called Jaisalmer in the Northwest of Rajasthan. So either I’ll arrive there or at the pearly gates at half eight tomorrow morning. I hope it’s Jaisalmer, cos if it’s the pearly gates, St. Pete will probably tell me to take a long walk of a short pier.

Udaipur was luvly altogether… If anyone remembers the Bond film Octopussy, well that was all set in Udaipur… it’s all palaces and lakes and that kind of malarkey. I met some cool Danes on the train from Bomgay (oh dear, a Freudian slip) and we walked around the old town, ate some good chow and drank tea and beer. The weather played ball as well, and despite foreboding warnings of extreme heat, it was quite pleasant. In fact, this evening we were sitting down having a final Udaipur beer when thunder and amazing lightning started up and it started pissing rain. First rain in India, it was great.

On Wednesday, we also went for a days trekking, which turned out to be very, very, very relaxed trekking. Like a frickin’ loser, I decided that I was gonna wear my heart rate monitor and maybe get an aul’ cardio session out of it. So we started off and after about four minutes we stopped for our first break at this cave temple on the side of a mountain. There was a big group of delinquents hanging around outside who invited us for tea and chillums. An hour and a half later we set off again on our grueling quest. We walked around the corner to another temple (a Shiva temple to be precise)… oh fuck, my bus just stopped and the engine turned off… the sheer peace and tranquility… Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Anyway, where woz I? Yeah, so we stopped at another Shiva temple where we were given an audience with a Sadhu (a holy man). We were ushered into his quarters and sat down cross-legged in front of him on his bed. We had a little Shiva shrine behind us and everything was painted red. He must have been at least ten thousand years old. His hair and beard merged into one rug-like unit that collected on the floor in front of him, broken only by random black teeth-like objects protruding from the area where I would imagine his mouth must have been located. He sat on his bed in the lotus position, his torso bare and shriveled. Behind his beard, every rib and bone in his upper body was clearly defined with dark brown skin stretched over it like cling film.

We sat there for a while. He had a couple of young acolytes who prepared chillum after chillum and passed them our way. The Sadhu appeared to take a liking to me and ranted away about god-knows-what. At least I think he was talking, his beard was moving slightly and muffled noises were coming out. Every now and then one of his bony fingers would extend in the direction of the Shiva shrine in front of him, his eyes would light up and I’d hear a name of one of the Gods … One of the acolytes tried to translate for me. He seemed to be talking of the Hindu trinity: Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu, and how they were all really one God.

After so many chillums, I could only really just sit there and stare at him, nodding occasionally and feigning an understanding of what he was saying. But he was a nice guy… At one point he took a wooden flute out of his bag, stuck it into his beard and started playing away, happy as larry! He was a nice man… when we were leaving, he gave us some sweets and a pat on the head… which was nice!

After that, we sauntered up to a lake which I had informed everyone I was going to swim in, no matter what state it was in. The first thing we saw was a big bloated cow, it’s body submerged, it’s feet sticking up out of the water. It was like a caricature of what a bad place to swim looks like. We went to the other side of the lake and after a few minutes of playing amateur scientists, we decided that swimming wasn’t going to be an option, so we continued on our merry way. (It was more of a delirious way actually).

So then we walked back around the corner and we were back where we started, having spent most of the day sitting around talking shite and having taken about seventeen footsteps. My heart rate monitor indicated that my heart had beaten about twelve times in the five and a half hours we were gone. So it was a lovely relaxing day.

Right, apparently my peace and tranquility is over again… the engine just roared up and we’re away bumping across the countryside again. As soon as I close the screen on this laptop I’ll be landed back in a claustrophobic nightmare… St. Pete has it so easy up there with his little register of who was bad and who was good. Anyway, I don't care about all that... I’ve decided I’m gonna be reincarnated as a cow in India.

Signing off… ur man in a coffin…

PS: I was actually good with photos in Udaipur, so I’ve decided to post them below bringing me completely and utterly butterly up-to-date with my viz-oo-als… Gimme some skin…

Post-ed: I've now actually arrived in Jaisalmer and am posting this entry. It's supposed to be hot as hell here but it ain't actually that bad... This evening it's been quite windy and it even rained a little. I've signed myself up for a three day camel safari starting tomorrow morning at 7.30am... So I'm going to bed early now and I'll prepare my bum for some camel riding... (ehhhhh, as in using the camel as a means of propulsion...). I'll lash up some photos when I get back.