There are a number of things I love to do, shopping for even more beads is not one of them. I did however have a good time watching the cheeky monkeys jumping from roof to roof as I watched on. Nothing quite like monkeys being monkeys I always say. I also managed to snap up a few books for the bus trips. We also embarked on another little chemist expedition resulting in us walking away with yet another load of vallium. Gold dust for bus trips, vallium. Pop a few of those puppies and bus trips are a thing of the past. You get on the bus pop one and the next moment you are at your destination. I’d carefully estimated that we’d spent about 3,088,779 hours on bus’s or trains in the last few months and if I had had vallium earlier it would have drastically cut that figure. I considered slipping Hannah a micky and putting some vallium in a drink of water or something in order to cure her morbid fear of the continuing threat of rabies. I decided against it because I didn’t want her sleeping through the whole bag packing ordeal. After Jaipur our already full bags had reached breaking point. Hannahs had already reached that about day one Cyprus and even though it drove me crazy watching her attempting to pack her bags with absolutely no care and attention I wasn’t about to go delving into that little mission, no sir.

“Mika stop mumbling about rabies and vallium and packing bags, anyone would think your crazy, oh my god I think I feel something.”

“Huh?” she had broken my train of thought.

“The rabies, I felt a bit sick for a moment.”

“When do you not feel sick and feverish? It’s just that over active thyroid of yours playing up again.”

She attempted once again to give me rabies with a clip over the back of the head but I wasn’t having any of her rabies and had been keeping a safe distance the whole day.

In order to get her mind off dying I tried to change the subject, “We better book our bus to Agra now then I guess.”

“Yes I guess so, the onset of this rabies is coming, I can feel it and I want the last days to be special and seeing the Taj Mahal will be a fitting end.”

“Yeah you are probably right.” I consoled her.

“Oh my god, I think I felt the rabies again. Is my forehead hot?”

“Hannah it is like 40C, of course your hot.”

This continued even into the bus ticket seller.

“I want a bus which is comfortable because I have rabies.”

By the end of that ordeal the ticket seller knew more about rabies and how she had contracted it than he knew bus timetables.

“So the bus comes at 6pm, it is going to be my final bus ride you know….”

“I think he knows Hannah you already told him about 12 times.”

I tried to cheer Hannah up by pointing out the people with leprosy and no fingers and hands all around us.

“Leprosy is contagious isn’t it?”

“Erm, ummm.” I knew I had made a mistake here.

“Oh my god I have leprosy as well. Why didn’t you tell me all those beggars had leprosy beforehand?”

About then I remembered exactly why I hadn’t mentioned it before. My brain sometimes plays tricks on me for fun I suspect.

That night we got onto our bus which was a sleeper bus. Sleeper bus’s are just that. You get a bed in which you have to lie down and sleep. Brilliant things. I popped myself a vallium to be sure I would sleep. You never can be too careful. It also helped to ensure that I would sleep through Hannah’s moaning about rabies and leprosy.

However there are some things one vallium can not cure. The first was -45C temperates which had sprung up from goodness knows where. The second is 26 excitable Indian children beneath me all playing a very animated game of who can scream the loudest.

I looked over at the kids and tsk’s. This caused one of them to assume I was speaking white boy language and try to imitate me. This brought on another fresh bout of who could tsk the loudest. I rolled my eyes at Hannah next to me who mistook it for an invitation on a discussion about when I thought the rabies would bring about an end for her. I popped another vallium. By the now the seeping cold was driving me crazy and I was shivering violently. I didn’t want to get too close to Hannah and her rabies so I didn’t want to get any closer to her for warmth. This lasted for about 30 minutes and the kids were still playing their game of who could scream the loudest and with me shivering so much Hannah started hitting me to stop in an effort to stop me making the bed shake so much. I popped another vallium. 5 minutes later I figured since I was awake I hadn’t taken any vallium yet so I popped another. Hannah looked at me funny and started speaking in Hindi.

So I spoke to her in the only language she knew I spoke, “not to worrrrrryyyyyy,, whatsssssss yourrrrrrrr nameeee again? You ssssssshould realllllllly ……….”

She didn’t learn and continued to speak in Hindi and was rude enough to shake me a few times.

“Timeeee tooo sleeeeepppppp.” I then fell into a shivering sleep to show her that there was nothing to worry about, I had indeed gone to sleep and this shouting competition and -54C Siberian weather couldn’t hold me back. Somewhere in the middle of the night I dreamed someone, possibly me had found my sleeping bag and had got me in it somehow. You can always count on vallium to get you out of tight spots of impending hyperthermia.

A few minutes later after falling asleep Hannah rudely pulled her wake me up early trick. I wasn’t about to fall for that one again and fell straight back to sleep. Then she got a bit cheeky and rolled me off the top bunk into the isle.

“Wake up Mika its our stop.” The girl in my dream who looked a lot like Hannah was telling me.

“Well you don’t need to roll me into the isle.” I said.

The girl pretending to be Hannah grabbed me and forced me out onto the curb.

“You know you look a lot like my friend Hannah, she would never be so rude as to put me to sleep on the curb though.” I said and got myself as comfortable as I could in the gravel before falling asleep again.

This got me a kick in the back.

Once upon a time I had given Hannah a bit of information I regretted. Boys have two weaknesses. The first is obvious; the second is the piece of hair near the ear which when pulled causes pain. The same pain this girl was causing me right that moment in my dream who was trying to get me to gather my sleeping bag and get in this tuk tuk. I wasn’t going to have any part of that so snuggled a bit deeper into my nice warm sleeping bag.

She tried to get me up but as what happens in dreams when you want to move you are stuck in glue and slow motion and no matter how hard you try you can barely move. I tried my hardest to accommodate the pain girl’s wishes but my body was having none of it. I gave up and my dreams soon changed. The next moment I felt something hard hit my head and myself being placed in a seat. Seats are not very comfortable so I crawled down onto the ground instead and snuggled.

The next morning I woke and looked around startled. I was alone in this room and Hannah was nowhere to be seen. I checked my ribs to see if my pancreas was still there and not been donated to the Indian mafia. Everything seemed to check out besides a sore head, multiple bruises on my back, stomach and a sore ear.

Finally Hannah came in, “Oh my god Mika.”

“What? I told you if you have a vallium for the bus it will get you to your destination with no problems.” I said and smiled charmingly at her.

“Wipe that stupid grin off your face Mika before I wipe it off for you.”

It was really quite uncalled for and I almost told her that. Almost but then I started remembering a certain dream girl laying into my back quite viciously for a girl with her foot.

“What I only had one or two?” At which point I looked at the previously full packet which now was half empty. “Hey someone stole 5 valliums Hannah!”

“…….”

Someone had to get this show on the road so I changed the subject, “We cant sit here all day arguing about this and that, we should go see the Taj Mahal.”

I tried to stand up at this point and fell straight back over.

“Shivers! Earthquake Hannah!”

“No Mika I think it has something to do with the 5 valliums you just had.”

“Lets not going into who did this and who did that, hey you know what maybe we should just sleep some more.” I was feeling rather tired and all, I mean I had only had a few hours sleep.

Later that day when the earthquake tremors had stopped we got out and about with a tuk tuk driver who kept grinning at me and had somehow got it into his head to joke with Hannah about how I was called stupid for some reason.

It ended up being quite a splendid day with a visit to the Agra castle which was just massive and amazing, quite a bit larger than the castles in England. We then went on to see a mini taj and the Taj Mahal from across the river.

Here we met up with 3 little kids who we played around with. They were quite cheerful and fun to muck around with so we searched around our pockets for loose change.

I suspected they spoke a little English so I said to Hannah, ‘IOnlyHaveOneCoinWhatAboutYou?” as fast as I could.

“MeTooButTheyLookLikeGoodBuddiesSoWillShare.”

“NoDoubt.”

So we gave them the 2 coins to share between the three of them. A BIG mistake. This brought on a violent scrap for the coins between the three previous friends.

“I think they are going to kill each other lets get out of here.”

So we ran off back to our tuk tuk.

Driving back I spotted a cheeky little kid peeing on the head of another little kid doing a dump in the gutter. All highly amusing, probably not so hygienic.

“Hannah look! I don’t quite see why the kid on the business end of everything didn’t seem to mind so much.” I said pointing out the spectacle.

“Gross Mika!”

That night we went across the road to a silver shop where we met an ‘authentic’ Australian Indian. Our tuk tuk driver was obviously paid to take all his customers there.

“I know David Boon you know.” The store owners ‘brother’ told us.

“Oh right.”

“Yes, I am from Tasmania and he lives near us.”

He did have an Indian Australian accent so it was hard to tell how much he was lying. There were some cracking pieces in there though so we stuck around to look at everything. Hannah spotted this cool bracelet which even my boy eyes had to admit was really cool and I wished I was a chick so I could buy it. I began reminiscing about a ring I once owned and how you could never buy them anywhere. Goa had given me a cheap imitation but the ring was a lot skinnier than the one I used to have. I said this to Abdul Boon and his eyes lit up.

“Why I can get my factory to make you one to your specifications.”

“Awesome!”

So we sat down and drew out detailed plans for my new old ring. We started to get excited so Hannah and I widened the plan to make us each a pinkie ring in remembrance of our trip. One for Ariane, one for Hannah and one for myself.

Abdul Boon tried to clear things up for us, “So you want the pinkie ones fat and the old new one skinny.”

“Ummm no, the pointer finger one fat and the pinkie skinny.”

“Yes, of course the pinkie one with a groove and the pointer one fat.”

“No, the pinkie one skinny with the pointer one fat with a groove.”

After much deliberation and to scale drawings from Hannah and we finally got him to realise what we wanted.

“So we can have it tomorrow before noon?”

“Sure you can.”

I was a bit dubious but really excited to have a chance to maybe get the same ring made up for me again. I was feeling generous so we even paid up front. Something I never have done before and something you should never ever ever do. I think it was the fact that it was the end of the trip, he sounded Australian and I wasn’t worried about my money situation and the pieces were all very cheap and he offered to make us dinner.

In celebration we decided to get ourselves a drink for the dinner. Our trusty tuk tuk driver was also invited to the dinner so he drove us to the bottle-o.

Outside the shop he stopped and whispered to us, “You should give me the money, if they see you are a white person they will charge you twice as much.”

“Likely story but ok” we agreed because he only asked for like $5 for a 750ml bottle of whiskey.

For some reason he then became in charge of the alcohol until we got to dinner. Abdul Boon had cooked us up a feast of goat with rice.

“How do you like it!?” Abdul Boonie asked us.

We looked at each other, “Its very, ummmm, ..”

“Spicey is the word your looking for Hannah.”

“Yes, absolutely, its very spicey.”

“Spices are good!” I added to make sure he didn’t correctly assume spiciness as us not wanting to be rude to the man making us a free dinner and who had our money invested in making some rings.

The tuk tuk driver certainly liked his spices and dug in like it was the last meal he had had in a long time.

“Hey why don’t we open this bottle of whiskey.” Someone suggested, probably Hannah.

We looked over to the tuk tuk driver expectingly.

“Ok, wait a moment.” He said and reached into the bag and started rustling the bag under the table for an inordinate long time. For some reason he even popped his head under the table for a moment before producing the bottle proudly minus half its label.

I looked under the table to see what had been causing him so much trouble. It seemed that it was the other half of the label so I stealthly grabbed it to see what he had ripped off. As I suspected it was the price of the whiskey, about $1 cheaper than the driver had quoted us. I decided to show Hannah but we didn’t want to cause any trouble right then so we left it.

About 30 minutes later our bottle of whiskey was almost empty and as far as Hannah and I could tell we had only had one drink each.

“Hannah did you drink the whiskey?”

“Right as rain, only had the one.”

We both looked over to the tuk tuk driver.

“I sssssaaaayyyy, thisssss whisssssskey isssss niccceeee.” he slurred.

“You look a little red in the face mate.”

“Itssss a bitt hotsssss.”

“I think we solved that mystery, Mika”

“Indeed.” I said moving the whiskey out his reach. He had had quite enough and was absolutely flogged.

“Cant hold their liquor it seems.”

By this time Abdul Boon left us to our beers and half a bottle of whiskey. Hannah and I soon became quite red in the face as well.

Hannahs eagle eyes soon spotted some Japanese across the room and pointed them out to me.

“DOZO HI ARIGATO” I greeted them quite loudly.

“Dojdo sus uouo hiuy” they returned.

“Yes absolutely, same to you.”

For some reason they didn’t seem to want to come sit with us no matter how hard we tried.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come over?” I insisted.

“Zen zen digy my zen”.

“Mika I think they just said no not ever.” Hannah whispered to me.

By this time it was getting late and we had an early morning in order to get into the Taj Mahal for sunrise.