Destination India (14 page)

Unclubbable (adj.) Having or showing a disinclination for social activity; unsociable

The smells hit me first. Days-old body odour swirled around the packed station concourse mingling with scents of garlic, cow turds and heavy incense. I tried to breathe through my mouth to avoid the worst of it. It wasn’t just the rancid smells turning my still-delicate stomach; we were so tightly packed in, as if it was rush hour on the London Underground, bodies touching other bodies, arms slicked with sweat and eyes darting around anywhere but making eye contact. Welcome to Delhi train station.

I tried to smile reassuringly at the group sandwiched behind me. Chris had his thin lips pressed into a constant frown, Bex was fanning her rosy-cheeked face and Ollie was thumbing through his dog-eared guide book as if the answer to this awful moment would be found within its yellowing pages. We were waiting for the next train to Mumbai. A journey that would take fifteen hours, roll past paddy fields and rocky views from the comfort of our private berth.

Looking at the swathe of people clamouring around the tiny windows of the ticket offices I was so grateful that Nihal was thankfully taking charge. Families carrying what looked like their entire homes shuffled past, plastic
bags upon plastic bags clutched under their arms or on their heads. I was expecting to see people playing extreme sardines sat on the roof of trains, half leaning out of packed windows and overcrowded carriages but instead the only busy spot was the station concourse filled with people, bags and various animals and birds trapped in large cages. Children were skipping around us, seeing this as a game to dart through the static crowd, zipping under legs and through strangers’ knees as their expressionless parents elbowed their way down the platform. Muffled announcements rang out through large speakers, their message incoherent above the buzz and noise of waiting passengers.

‘OK, this way!’ Nihal bellowed, waving a handful of tickets in his outstretched skinny arm whilst eyeballing three overweight men snarling at him for pushing in the queue.

‘Thank the Lord, or should that be Allah?’ Chris mumbled, stepping over a box of ripening mangoes that a gummy-mouthed old woman had plonked by his bright white trainers. The tart smell of the mangoes tickled my nose. The old woman’s hand was outstretched, asking Chris for coins in return for a battered piece of fruit, but his face flushed with an equal mixture of disgust and fear and he ignored her.

I didn’t have the chance to rummage out some change for her as Nihal was as quick as those children at finding gaps between the crowds, ducking and swerving like a boxer in a ring, managing to squeeze into spaces and then parting the way so we could trot behind him to catch up.

‘Up here, guys, but hurry we don’t have long!’ The panic in Nihal’s voice was only just perceptible but taking a look at the length of the train we had to file down to find our cabins, we started to jog in the sticky oven heat, backpacks
bouncing on our shoulders and sweat dripping down our collarbones.

Middle-aged men carrying briefcases were running down empty tracks to move between platforms as people scrambled onto moving trains. The atmosphere was aggressive and very intimidating, as if there were some unwritten rules and invisible lines not to cross. I spotted two guys involved in a punch-up as they hung on to the large door handles of a commuter train where up to thirteen people squeezed into the space of a phone box. Fuck that for a way to start your working day.

Teenage lads were leaning out of the windows calling to other passengers in dialects I didn’t understand, their eyes following us down the platform, some giving us hard stares and some with faces creased in mirth at the sight of us struggling in the suffocating heat.

‘How much longer?’ Bex gasped, her ample breasts jiggling about as she jogged along.

‘Here we go! Come on now, hurry!’ Nihal whipped open a door and hurriedly scanned down the platform, making sure we would all get on before the conductor blew his whistle. Piling in and tumbling up the steps we made it with just moments to spare as the train eased itself away from the station.

Next stop Mumbai!

The group were chatting excitedly about the journey as we found our beds and could finally take off our heavy backpacks. A narrow corridor lined the old, creaking carriage that had metal double decker bunks on either side. Chairs had been laid flat to make a sort of bed; you had to duck to avoid a stranger’s foot in your face that hung over the bunk above your head. Indian men, women, teenagers and children each had their own space. In some cases couples or entire families were sharing, which only
added to both the heat in here and the lively atmosphere too. There was no glass in the window frames; instead thick, bright blue iron slats had been welded on, acting as ventilation for the stuffy carriage along with noisy, huge metal fans stuck on the ceiling providing a warm but pointless breeze.

‘OK, so this isn’t exactly luxury but it’s the best place to be to experience Indian train travel. Did you know that India’s rail network is the third largest in the world?’ Nihal stated proudly before muttering something under his breath as a fat Indian man with bushy black back hair tried to push past. ‘It can be a little busy so please chain up your bags to the locks under your seats and don’t drop food on the floor as the mice will be all over you.’

‘Mice?’ Liz shuddered and whipped her feet onto the seat, quickly scanning the dubiously stained floor for signs of vermin.

‘Yep, but they’re quite cute actually,’ Nihal said. ‘Get yourselves comfy as we have a long journey ahead – and enjoy!’

Trying to take my mind away from the fact I may be sharing my bed with the rodent chef from
Ratatouille,
I looked around at the other commuters on this journey with us. I smiled to myself seeing a young Indian couple in a bunk a little further down the carriage. The woman was sat upright with her slender legs outstretched as he lay with his head on her lap and his eyes closed, relaxed into a blissful sleep. She gently ran her fingers through his thick black hair and held a well-worn novel in her other hand. Back in the early days when I knew that Ben was going to be working with me running Lonely Hearts Travels, I’d daydreamed that we would get to travel through exotic countries, entwined around each other and sharing these precious moments together – just like them. I hadn’t
realised that although we worked in a travel agency and talked about travel all day every day, we were usually the ones staying firmly in one place. Literally and figuratively. The woman caught me staring at her and gave me a strange look, making me blush and dart my eyes away.

It was either gaze out of the window or stare at the soles of an older man lying opposite my bunk. They were almost grey due to the amount of dried dust caked to his rubber sandals. His gnarled and jaggedy toenails made my stomach turn. I focused my attention out on the tracks. Just inches away was a group of six or so children having a game of cricket using the dry patch of land between crumbling, half-painted derelict brick houses as their pitch. They shouted and laughed as the tallest one missed a shot again and stepped over piles of rubbish to retrieve his ball before waving to the train as we rumbled past.

To be fair, it was better than any of the views you get on the trains back in England. Here you could spend the whole journey gawping at the outside world tumbling past, and every few minutes there was something new to see. From school children playing games to families sat on brick walls waiting to cross the tracks to the other side, to herds of goats and white dirty cows with visible ribcages and bony haunches aimlessly wandering along, oblivious to anything but the dry tufts of grass they were munching on.

‘Everything OK, Louise?’ Ollie asked warmly, pulling my attention back to the noisy carriage. Since arriving in India freckles had covered his neat nose, and they made his green eyes sparkle even more.

‘Yeah fine. How are you feeling?’

His broad grin broke over his face. ‘Better than I was a few days ago, thank God. Been ages since I’ve felt that rough.’

‘Ah, I guess it’s a rite of passage over here.’ I smiled.

There was something about him that made me happy. I didn’t know if it was his easy-going personality, genuine smile, or that he seemed interested in how I was feeling rather than just making small talk. I listened to him tell a story about one of his mates, someone called Hard Sam who had wanted to impress a girl in their local pub by doing bench presses with bar stools that ended up in a trip to A and E.

I was half listening to him speaking with ease and confidence and half thinking about Ben. I had to finally admit that us as a couple was never going to work. If it hadn’t happened by now then I guessed it never would. He had seemed desperate for me to come here, to ‘take a break from each other’ – my stomach clenched as I thought back to the sting of those words he had uttered. Plus the fact he had jumped at the chance to hire a glamazon replacement, moments after I left, spoke volumes about how he felt about me – we were work colleagues and nothing more. I needed to get over that spark that I was convinced we had both felt when we were in Thailand last year and pass it off as nothing more than a brief holiday romance, if you could even call it that. We hadn’t even shared a kiss.

I looked fondly at Ollie laughing at his own story; he was cute and it had been so long since I’d had sex. Marie had told me once that if you didn’t use it then it seals back up. I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. Ollie had this charming, cheeky-chappie persona, always wanting to make people smile; he was adorable. Ben could have Serena and I’d have Ollie. Simple.

‘You OK, Louise?’ Ollie said interrupting me from my thoughts. ‘You’ve got a weird look on your face. Is it the smell from my feet? I sometimes suffer from athlete’s foot and in this sticky heat it can flare up,’ he said sheepishly before trying to sniff his battered trainers. And just like
that, the spell was broken. I couldn’t deceive my heart into trying to like someone else, especially not someone with rancid foot fungus, no matter how cute he was.

I laughed. ‘No, sorry, I was miles away there.’

Ollie nodded and pulled out a tatty book to read before taking a final sniff of his feet.

‘Chai, chai, garam chai.’

I’d dozed off thanks to the humid air and rocking motion of the train, but woke with a start when someone began non-stop hollering down our carriage. I rearranged myself and grumpily turned over to make eye contact with a lanky man selling tea, known as a chaiwallah, who’d stopped at my feet and put out his rough palm.

‘Chai. You want chai?’ he ordered.

I shook my head. Nihal had warned us about the toilets on the trains and I was trying to see how long I could last before finding out for myself how filthy they actually were.

‘Only three rupees,’ the tea man pushed.

‘No thank you,’ I said politely.

He muttered something in Hindi before continuing on his way, his foghorn voice echoing off the metal walls.

‘You don’t like chai tea?’ a smartly dressed man with half-moon glasses and a bushy greying beard who was sat opposite me asked.

‘Oh no, it’s really nice. I just don’t want one right now.’

‘Well he’ll be doing the rounds throughout the whole journey,’ beard man said. ‘So where are you from?’

‘Manchester, England,’ I replied.

‘What do you do? Are you studying? It is very good for people to study and learn new things.’

‘No, not studying. I …’ I was about to say I run my own business but thankfully bit my tongue and remembered this alter-ego pretence I had to keep up. ‘I work as a hairdresser.’

I understood that local people were curious about foreigners. I also quickly understood that being trapped on a long train journey with no form of escape meant the perfect time for them to chat to you. Although I hadn’t realised that ‘chatting’ meant a nosy Indian man with a strange twitch asking you so many questions you could hardly keep up. After saying for the third time that ‘no I don’t have a husband’ and that ‘my father is retired’ I was getting pretty sick of doing my bit for international relations.

‘If you don’t mind I really want to get some sleep,’ I half apologised.

Beard man nodded and continued to stare at me to see if I was telling the truth or not. I smiled weakly, turned onto my side and closed my eyes as he continued to rabbit away about how it wasn’t right I was single, not at my age. As I did I felt this sense of homesickness wash over me. I felt like I’d been consumed by India. I was sick of feeling so sticky and clammy all the freaking time, sick of trying to keep up this pretence of feeling positive, wanting to make sure the others were having a great time as
technically
I was a guest on this tour, not the boss in charge. I was sick of being stared at, constantly feeling like strangers’ eyes were following me all the time. I tried to block out the noise of the rest of the carriage and just let myself be for a while. I felt dizzy with dehydration due to the relentless suffocating heat and constant sweating; I was even repulsed by my own reeking body odour.

I couldn’t cope with the poverty that was right outside the window, the never-ending pushing and pulling from sellers and rickshaw drivers, the maddening way you couldn’t get a solid answer out of anyone and the scabby, uncared-for street dogs just abandoned to roam through mounds of litter vying for scraps like the destitute street
children. This country broke my heart. I felt completely wiped out, sick of eating curry, sick of using squat toilets and sick of being the one trying to keep everything together all of the time.

Not just here but back home too. A deep ache rattled through my chest as I allowed myself to cry, silent body-clenching sobs into the grubby pillow. I had returned home from Thailand fired up with this business idea, determined to help other travellers like me, but was I even helping anyone? I had pushed my family and friends away as I tried to conquer the world flying solo. I hadn’t realised just how much Alex had destroyed my trust and faith in others. I’d clammed up my heart through fear; was that it, fear that Ben would get deep inside and hurt me the way Alex had done?