Another day brought about another train trip. Unplanned as usual. Good thing to do in India, unplanned train trips. In the tuk tuk to the train station we pulled out the old lonely planet and got the map for India and realised that the only way to go was north and the first place we waned to go north was Goa.

We arrived at the train station and looked around at the confusion and chaos around us and spotted the crowd piled up around the counter and stood patiently at the back. More people seemed to join the throng but it was hard to say because they all looked the same moustached Indian to me. We continued waiting patiently. We didn’t seem to be getting any closer to the counter. We spotted a man laughing at us. So I looked at him and he told us that in India you don’t wait in lines, it’s the survival of the fittest. Get your elbows in and push your way up to the front. Hannah and I had a little chat before deciding that Hannah should try and get into the throng of moustached men and try and get the tickets. I mean last time I checked the book of etiquette it said something about ladies first so I was only too happy to oblige. Hannah tapped the first man on the shoulder and flashed him a million dollar smile.

“Hello” she said.

“Hello, are you wanting to get tickets?” he asked.

“Oh yes please, it is so hard to get tickets isn’t it.” Another smile.

“Well, why don’t I get you to the front.” And he pushed a few people out of the way mumbled in Indian and pointed at the woman and the sea parted before them. This wasn’t the way I planned it going but I could handle that.

When she came back with the tickets, “Did you see that Mika, they just let me right to the front.”

“See I told you, you should go and get the tickets. I knew they would let you through to the front.”

“Mika you said something about if someone had to wait ages in the line it should be me, because you had to go to the toilet.”

“Rubbish.” Girls sometimes get things all so confused. It was about then that I made her the boss of getting tickets at train stations.

So we waited 2 hours for the train to come which had been due any minute and were quite lucky that it had seats. We were right at the start of the train line so we got a seat next to each other but after about 1 hour it started to fill up steadily.

This train was just a regular train and so it didn’t have any facilities besides toilets which I decided not to visit right about the time I walked onto the train. I started sweating and feeling the heat with all the bodies piling up on top of us. The gay couple sitting opposite us didn’t help me feel much better about everything. They were quite friendly with each other. Things started to go steadily worse. About 4 hours into the trip the sweating turned to fever. So in order to feel better I tried to get some fresh air by moving the mans legs off mine and the bag which was on top of that and keep the gay couple getting any more friendly with my ribs and the guy who was sitting on the floor to move a bit so I didn’t have to hold them up and open the window. This more or less didn’t go to plan and only made me feel a bit worse. A few hours later I came the realisation that it wasn’t the sweating moustached men sitting on me which was making me feel sick but rather the sweating feverish shivering feeling I was experiencing. I nudged Hannah and explained to her I felt sick. She wasn’t looking too crash hot herself. An hour later when the people had started to get off the train and I had room to wiggle I pulled out the lonely planet and attempted to diagnose the diseases it had become apparent we were both experiencing.

I flipped open the book. “So Hannah, how are you feeling?” I said after I shifted the bags from between us and moved the guy out of the way.

All I got for reply was a wave of the hand and profuse sweating.

First in the book was jet lag. List of symptoms, Insomnia, fatigue, malaise and nausea. I was pretty sure I was feeling all of that. I didn’t even know what malaise was but I was still sure that I was feeling it because I couldn’t really explain half the pains I was griped with.

“Hannah I think we have jetlag.”

She only started clapping her hands and the sweat dripping off them made me glad that I was only sitting near her and not on her lap like we had almost had to do when the train was fuller.

“But I am convinced that we also have a few other diseases because that sweating isn’t listed as a symptom of jetlag.” She nodded in agreement.

Next on the list of diseases was Coughs, Colds and Chest Infections. I looked around us and realised that the train had not in fact become less crowded but the hacking barking cough I was intermitted producing had given me a buffer and produced some space for the sick white fool tourists. I put a tick next to that one. Even though it could have been 3 different diseases I was sure I had all 3 as well.

Dengue fever was the next on the list. A mosquito borne disease. I thought back to the day I went to the doctor in London and my £35.56 I had to vaccinate me against such things like mosquito’s. I didn’t remember getting any of those shots and when I read longer it went on to say there was no vaccine. Symptoms include high fever, severe headache and body ache. Tick, tick and tick.

“Hannah we also have Dengue fever.”

She started to pay attention then.

“You haven’t taken any aspirin have you? It says here that you shouldn’t.”

She croaked out something about having had a couple.

“Well then I am quite sure you have haemorrhaging as well then. It says here that aspirin will do that to you.”

I was glad that I hadn’t taken anything for the pain then. Hannah at least had haemorrhaging, something I was quite sure wasn’t happening to me although I didn’t rule it out.

Hepatitis A, yellow skin and eyes, nausea and lethargy. Infects the liver. Over the last year my liver had taken quite a beating and was still doing whatever it was supposed to be doing so I assumed it could take a little thing like Hepatitis A. Although in certain lights both our skin was looking a little yellow.

Hepatitis B, it said you got it from sex. All the symptoms were there so I assumed I must have got it some other way.

Hepatitis E, transmitted through contaminated food and water. I thought back to Hannah and I sitting down in Indian restaurants and looking at the menu which clearly contained no English.

“Ok Hannah you get the one with the scribble that looks like the ocean and I will get the one which looks like grass.”

We had then confidently looked at the menu, pretended to read it, explained to the Indian who didn’t speak English what we wanted and to avoid any confusion pointed confidently to the menu and hoped we didn’t get fried duck feet. Even after we received the food I wasn’t confident it wasn’t duck feet. I did have nausea and lethargy so I was sure I had Hep E, and coming to think of it I probably had Hepatitis C as well. It wasn’t in the book but I was sure I did have it because to feel this bad it had to be something serious.

HIV, I was pretty sure I didn’t have it but I checked my ribs to see if the gay guys sitting next to me hadn’t given it to me. The rash was there but it wasn’t bleeding yet. I didn’t think I had HIV then.

We went down the list and confidently came to the conclusion that we also had Influenza, Japanese B Encephalitis, Malaria, TB, Typhoid. I didn’t have diarrhoea, but I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t in the near future so I assumed I did have but didn’t know it yet and added, Amoeic Dysentery, Giardiasis and travellers diarrhoea. Also I had been living on a staple diet of anti diarrhoea tablets in the vain hope that prevention was better than a cure.

Hannah seemed to be having all the same diseases as me. Hannah started speaking in Spanish to the man opposite her. I assumed it was Spanish anyway because it was hard to understand, in fact a lot of things were getting hard to understand.

The man she spoke to smelt a lot like alcohol and started giving Hannah the eye. So I gave him the old red/yellow bung eye back which not only seemed to inflame my eye more from staring so hard but inflame the whole situation. Our stop was coming up soon, I wasn’t sure how I knew that but I did and so got up with all our gear and went to the doors with Hannah. Angry alcohol fingers grabbed my arm and started speaking to me angrily. I hacked a cough which didn’t seem to do anything except add sore throat to the growing list of my ailments as well as a now sore wrist from alcohol smelling fingers. At least I knew where that little problem was coming from. I looked at the fingers unsteadily and explained to them between hacking coughs that they had my arm. This didn’t seem to do much and the fingers stayed were they were.

“Dude you have to speak English for me to understand what you want.”

“Mika, he is speaking English.”

By now the whole train was crowding around and yelling at the body the fingers on my wrist were connected to. He got a little closer and I knew then that I hadn’t imagined the alcohol smell and it was from the breath of the body of the fingers still connected to my wrist. I couldn’t understand what was going on much but somehow I managed to release his hold on me at the stop. Hannah and I walked off the train. I tried to think clearly about anything but it wasn’t really happening so Hannah took the lead. She wasn’t in a much better state than me. There were a few things that I could understand though and one was the crowds of people coming up to me saying they had called the police and they had taken the man away. I tried to remember something about a man but the only thing clear was that a little earlier some fingers smelling like alcohol had been grabbing my wrist but nothing about a man.

Hannah somehow managed to get us to the front of the tuk tuk line and people must have felt sorry for the sweating white couple both obviously in some kind of fever and they even told us how much it was for the taxi beforehand and got us the tuk tuk cheaper than we had ever got before.

Upon arrival at the hostel I noted with faint surprise that the hotel was swaying from side to side. A smiled happily. A swaying hotel, how fabulous. The next thing I remember it was morning.