A Trip Round the
In-Continent
by Roger
Pattison
Geography
was never my strong point at school. The
situation wasn't helped as I could never find the
classroom. Really though, this has never been big
issue because I've never been far enough to need
to know where I might be at any given time. The
corner shop is a day trip out in my book (that's
the book I could never find because it was in the
geography room); and I always pack a tent and a
primus to go to Tesco just in case.
With this
sort of background it has become obvious that I
should write travelogues. Let's face it; it's
easy to write a travelogue for somewhere you've
been to. But I haven't been anywhere, so the
World, the Solar System; the Universe, even, is
my oyster. Here is a quick spin around my oyster.
The colour of your shades I leave to your
discretion, but mine are welding goggles.
A
Trip Round the In-Continent.
It's a big
place, is a continent; and far too big when you're
sat next to an incontinent dog on a sight-seeing
trip around India after an evening meal of
vindaloo; the continent seems never to know when
to stop and the incontinent when to go. But, on
the other hand, it's not nearly big enough to
allow the kind of space you'd like to put between
yourself and the next seat.
There's no
doubt in my mind that as a travel writer I have a
distinct edge over the competition having never
been anywhere. Take the following names, for
instance:-
Duncan Rhodes,
Tim Cahill, Jeff Greenwald.
I’ve
never heard of any of them. That’s another
plus for not going anywhere; but...if you happen
to be one of those folks who do go somewhere? You
might read something of one of these much
travelled gentlemen, and they would never so much
as mention in passing the incontinent dog I sat
next to for a million miles. You would therefore
be likely to suffer a major disappointment on
your trip across the in-continent on meeting that
dog; whereas, if I’d written it, you
wouldn’t have believed it anyway.
India to me is
full of sacred cows and bullshit; a sort of annex
of the Houses of Parliament. Having never seen
one, I can give a perfect description of a sacred
cow. It's brown. That's also my description of
just about everything else. I might do Russia
next; which will be brown, also.
Just so that
you might not miss the point; the only things I
know for certain about India is that it's very
big, definitely brown, and I've never been
anywhere near it. That goes for everything else
as well.
The train was
an 'Orient Express' sort of thing, built entirely
of walnut and corridors that don't go anywhere.
They had a pile of small Poirot figurines at the
blank wall at the end of each corridor. This was
evidently proof of something, but I never found
out what. The continent stretched out to infinity
across the paddy fields (or whatever), to a
golden sun-something, depending a lot on whether
it was going down or up. Rather like the lift at
Debenhams in Sheffield, that could do strange
things when you weren't looking. Thanks to my
fellow passenger's (I christened him Dongo-Pongo),
problems, I'd survived a good part of the journey
with my head stuck out of the window (thereby
acquiring enough dead mosquitoes in my teeth to
keep the whole train in mozzie vindaloo for a
week) except for the odd times I had to pull it
in quick to avoid the bits that fell off the
engine at intervals. These kept me on my toes
like a butterfly in a blizzard (?) and after a
week of this exercise, I had a hyper-fit neck and
destitute everything else. Well, I wasn't going
to start anything with Dongo was I? He was twice
my height and weight. It was a mystery how he
managed to keep his weight as he evacuated his
entire internals every five minutes or so.
Sepia
photographs dating from the heyday of the Raj
tend to mask the actuality of the transport of
the time, as you can't see it at all. Rarely is
the romantic vision of the Orient Express
responsible for depicting a bald guy with a
mouthful of flying insects ducking shrapnel.
The sleeping
arrangements were similarly marred. Dongo had the
bunk above mine. I slept with an umbrella up. Why
I'd actually brought one along in the first place
I put down to pessimism. For a continent that
only sees a teacupful of rain every fifty years
it was bound to pee down when I got there. It
always does at Blackpool at any rate. We pulled
into the station at Bongawaka, or somewhere, and
were besieged by the whole of India in total. I
had never realised the extent of the mania for
autographs there. I managed to get one of David
Beckham and Prince Walter, two sacred cows who
had 'David Beckham' and 'Prince Walter' stamped
across their arses.
We were
transported to our hotel on a fleet of
wheelbarrows. Mine was 'David Beckham' and I got
its autograph.
The hotel was
the epitome of opulence. Silk carpets, gold leaf,
fountains; it was just that there was nothing in
there I could eat. Dongo was ok; whatever he put
in at the front came out of the back within
twenty seconds of its disappearance so it didn't
seem to matter much. I ate the rush mats. I ran
out of them pretty quick because of Dongo's
problem; with edibility you really have to draw
the line somewhere.
We moved on. I was disappointed that I wasn't
wheeled back to the train on David Beckham; the
one I had was Adele; she looked about the same
though; rusty handles, square wheels and a flat
tyre. Nobody's perfect.
The next stage
was (we were told by somebody who had plastic tag
to remind her of her name), a relatively short
jaunt across some open space. Pluto suddenly
sprang to mind, but was hurriedly pushed to the
back burner. We were going to see a spectacular
monument, a stunning piece of history, a never-to-be-forgotten
experience. The experience was soon forgotten by
me, because I can't remember how to spell it, so
the most memorable experience of that leg of the
journey was relegated to unsuccessful attempts to
hold onto a bowl of soup in the dining car. As it
swept past under my nose to the east, most of it
dashed against the window and on its fractured
and emaciated return journey it fell to the floor,
where Dongo pursued it up and down the aisle,
swerving and feinting between the diners' legs
while they in turn attempted to hold onto their
shipwrecked soup.
That was about
it for India. We were thrown off the train (unfairly,
I thought; it wasn't Dongo's fault that he
converted everything he ate into a laxative), and
made the long walk back without any form of
navigation aid other than feet. Lucky really;
with my expertise in geography a map would have
been confusing.
Dongo and I
lived happily ever after that, having found that
he liked to eat sticks of chalk and half bricks
which alleviated his irritable bowel syndrome in
favour of irritating me.
We might do
Eurasia next.
It's brown.
I don't
suppose there's much point now.
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