A summer in India. We had so many hopes and so many picture postcard ideas: the vivid saris; the calls of chai wallahs and the smells of rich Indian cooking served on banana leaves.
The disaster that was our six weeks in India began on the train from Pushkar to Chandigarh. The colour slowly drained from my boyfriend's face. Sweat beaded his forehead. Returning from his 14th trip to the toilet he announced that he had to get off the train. As we drew closer to the next stop, Delhi, he began to vomit - at great length. Had I not been so disgusted, I would have been quite impressed.
Anyone who has ever been to a train station in India, especially at night, knows how grim it can be. Rats crawl over your feet as flying cockroaches bat off your head. I stumbled out, dragging my luggage, my boyfriend's luggage and my boyfriend, and pulled us into the first "hotel" I saw. A glistening layer of grease and tobacco stained the walls.
My boyfriend collapsed on the bed shivering and I surveyed the room. The bathroom wall had an easily climb-through-able hole in it leading to someone else's bedroom. A buzz of insects swooshed round the bare light bulb. (You can probably guess what the sheets were like.) I glanced at my boyfriend and knew we'd have to stay.
Next day, he stopped vomiting long enough for me to persuade him to get the hell out of Delhi. "Let's go to the mountains," I cried. Fresh air, beautiful views … We'd book into a honeymooners' hotel and spoil ourselves for a few days. Bliss.
Not exactly. We took the single-gauge "toy train" to Shimla. I could have out-walked it. "Toy" was not a quaint, jokey adjective. Our knees were up to our chins and our backpacks strained our aching backs. Then it was my turn to change colour. I spent the eight-hour journey vomiting through the hole (which passed as a toilet) in the floor of the train.
It was no honeymoon. We were too weak to go anywhere and, rather romantically, we took turns to vomit and explode with diarrhoea in the squat toilet. There was no shower, just a bucket of icy water, which we took turns pouring over each other to wash away the spew.
A truly memorable Indian summer!
