Last night I met up with Helen and reminded her of our trip to India. She remembered that I was very ill most of the time. In fact, wherever we stopped, her first mission was to hail a rickshaw and set off into the twilight searching for a doctor, a chemist or someone/something to keep me alive a little longer. It has prompted me to write what I remember of the rest of that holiday....
I think it was in Udaipur that I first got sick. Before then I had been in my element eating curry for breakfast dinner and tea. We had got into the habit of venturing out to do some sightseeing in the mornings and then getting so worn down by the hustle and hassle of India that by lunchtime we would escape into the peaceful grounds of the nearest plush hotel. We were having a meal in a posh restaurant but from the kitchen I could hear sounds of coughing and plegmy clearing of throats and from that moment on I lost my appetite completely. We were booked on an overnight train and I can honestly say that it was probably the worst journey of my life. You could smell the toilet, a hole in the ground, long before you got there and so not only did I have chronic diarrhoea but acute gagging and sickness. Eventually we got to our destination, the Kipling camp, a beautiful haven in the middle of nowhere and I began to feel better. The Kipling camp had its very own pet elephant, a famous one called Tara, and we spent a lovely afternoon bathing and swimming with her in a muddy watering hole. There we were also able to go on a safari aboard some elephants in search of tigers. A few days before had been one of the worst days of my life and now this was to be one of the best. Sitting on top of an elephant observing tigers only a few feet away was brilliant, although I have to say a little scary. The tiger has always been my favourite animal and here I was close enough to be mauled by one!
I don't remember much more about that holiday except that at the Taj Mahal, I was more concerned with finding a toilet than marvelling at this wonder of the world. Similarly in Goa I don't think I left my room for more than a few minutes. I remember taking a taxi somewhere, I think we had a train to catch and were in a hurry. The driver was a maniac and as we drove around some steep cliff edges, afraid for our lives we were torn between telling him to hurry up and to slow down.
Finally, we arrived home and found that out luggage had not arrived with us. This turned out to be good news as the airline would deliver it for us the next day and we wouldn't have to lug it across London with us. Tired, sunburnt and about a stone lighter I'm still not sure if this was the best or the worst holiday of my life!
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