The red faze over my eyes proceeded to memory blank me for much of the next few days. I mean not anyone can go to 12 on the anger scale and become a normal person again. Being sick still did nothing to ease the red faze and kind of killed any will to live I may have ever experienced in the past. After another trip in which we tried to sneak into first class and succeeded for a blissful 15 seconds before we moved to second class and so on down and down until we ended up back in cattle class. Although they seem to treat cattle a whole lot better than I was being treated travelling on that train. This time we spotted a 30cm gap in the baggage racks so we both crawled up there. The screw which was situated at a very unfortunate spot did nothing for the level of comfort. I was happy however not to be sitting on the floor in front of the toilet or in the doorway with 16 other people all vying for the same position and having to share it with 3 of them.

I didn’t much pay attention to where we were headed and only did as Hannah was telling me to. I was too busy coughing and fevering and feeling very sorry myself. Somewhere along the line we ended up in Goa.

Apparently we met some people on the trip there but they were not very friendly and didn’t respond to my grunts very well and soon left us. Some people can be so rude.

By this time all I wanted was to relax and not be on my guard. As any traveller knows when you are travelling around the place every day you cannot trust anyone, you have to work out where you are going, how to get there, the correct price, avoid getting ripped off, know the best way to get somewhere even though you don’t know the place of speak the language, find a good place to sleep, find a place which is clean, find a restaurant which has clean food and isn’t charging you an arm and a leg, and so on. This task is repeated every single day, especially on a lightning tour such as we were doing. Not something you can easily mentally handle for 3 months straight. With the sickness and the train trip added up I had snapped. I just wanted it to end, yet at the same time understood exactly what it was I was doing and couldn’t leave because I knew I would regret it later. This left me in a bit of a pickle and Hannah’s constant pretending to enjoy some crappy book which I knew she wasn’t enjoying at all and ignoring me wasn’t helping my mood much. I mean who could enjoy some crappy book called “What Jennifer Saw”. I mean I had tried to read it a while ago and it was the most boring thing ever. And did she have to wrinkle her nose and pretend to flip a page when I said something when she had just flipped a page already.

Our awkwardness even caused me to not buy a wicked tshirt I really liked because Hannah had pointed it out to me and I hadn’t bought it to spite her. That would sure show her.

We went for a walk down the beach in order to fill the awkward silences and meandered around avoiding the cows until stumbling along I noticed a needle in the sand and we beat a hasty retreat. I started to pay attention then and was surprised to see quite a few heroin addicts stumbling along. Not that I have ever seen one before and would recognise one but people who are skinny and veiny and full on green are to my mind heroin addicts and if they weren’t then maybe they should become one because they were green! Aliens. They needed to fly somewhere. In fact I think they had all flown here, back in the 70’s. Apparently in Goa lots of hippies set up a little shanty town here in the 70’s and spent the time rolling joints and growing copious amounts of weed amongst other things. This of course led to harder and harder drugs and thus the whole heroin community. Damn hippies. However this did lead to a vibrant dance scene and if there is one thing I am good at, well it isn’t dancing but sometimes I like to think I can really boogie. So Hannah and I organised to spend a night out on the town after visiting the markets. Visiting the markets was such a drag and a total mission for me. I could hardly breathe and was still feeling really bad and the will to live was approximately equal to the hippie alien heroin addicts. Except they had something to live for, the next hit.

Hannah soon took offence to my moping about and in no uncertain terms let me know exactly what was on her mind. This didn’t bring about much in the way of conversation topics and we soon spoke even less.

“Mika maybe you should go and see one of those natural doctors.”

I grunted.

“Good come with me then” she said and dragged me to the doctor.

“Doctor man sir, can you give this man back life?” she asked the doctor.

“I think my heart stopped from biotics.” I blurted out, “now I don’t feel like doing anything.”

Hannah gasped at what was the longest sentence I had spoke in about a week besides the constant muttering she had just pointed out to me I was in the habit of lately.

“For 4000 rupees ($120.00) I have such the thing” and pulled out a packet of something white and powdery.

I considered it for a second, I mean he was a doctor, but Hannah grabbed me and we went to the bar instead.

I then proceeded to have a cracking night out. We walked up to this dance bar on the beach and danced the night away. On one side was the DJ and bar and the other side was the beach and you walked along the beach to go from one bar to the next. It was just the thing to lift the flagging spirits. We had to get up early the next morning to catch our train so we couldn’t stay out too late. We had tigers to hunt! Ranthambhore National Park. How exciting.