(Pictures will be up in a few days!)
Drink two glass bottles of Coca Cola.
Shatter the empty containers into a fading, rusty, and 3 wheeled Radio Flyer.
Remove your pants.
Attach one end of chain to either one of your ankles or wrists (your choice!).
Sit down in the wagon.
Attach other end of chain to the barely hanging on bumper of a 1994 Geo Metro that has flat tires, bad struts, an exhaust problem, and questionable brakes.
Now drive West to East from the extreme borders of Montana at 65 Miles Per Hour.
Or, if you want the after effect of a 17 Indian bus ride without the actual experience-time: shove your face into a belt sander for 25 minutes :-)
Mcleod Ganj (Upper Dharamsala), capital in exile of Tibet. After being forced out of his homeland with many of his fellow Tibetans, the Dalai Lama moved himself into a monastery here in this small Northern Indian mountain town. I got to see him today, but only briefly as he drove by in one of about 4 or 5 cars filled with his "entourage," though it was incredibly minimal to be honest. That's right, now perhaps some of you can tell people that you know somebody who once maybe got to see the Dalai Llama whiz by on the streets of India! I'll try remaining humble, but it could be difficult.....
There is a bus that goes from Wonderful Rishikesh to Beautiful Mcleod Ganj. It supposedly takes 14 hours, this time it took 17. Arrived at 9am, rented a room, slept.
Woke up at 5pm, it was cloudy outside so none of the presumable beautiful mountains could be seen. I met a girl named Eleanor, joined her group for dinner at the first "nice" restaurant I'd even seen in India (what a mistake). By the time we left my hotel had locked its front doors. Eleanor had a large bed and extra blankets that she said'd be no problem for me to use.
Went to bed.
I woke up in a shivering spell that was actually my muscles vibrating and twitching out of synchronization.
Oh God!
Ran to the balcony, there was only a communal bathroom two floors up.
I threw up violently, letting out a very pathetic grunt as each explosive regurgitation reached its climax, bile exiting my esophogus against its will and with zero bodily cooperation.
I put my head in my hands, "my god, I am really in bad shape here....."
Deep breaths, centered my Chi, back to bed. Perhaps in a few hours I'll be straight.
No Thorazine in this bag.
As I made my 20ft journey back to the bed, I thought if an irresponsible assumption I'd made. It is this: that because of all my years eating Totino's with Tapatio and Sriracha, a solid decade or more of gas-station cheddardogs (on a regular basis), and multiple sittings of eating entire bags of Gorton's, Reser's bean and cheese, and innumerable trips to burrito trucks whenever possible; that my gullet had be trained for kicking the ass of anything I could put into it.......
I bow to you India, cheddar dogs ain't got shit on you.
I crawled back to my side of the bed, covered up and fell asleep.
I woke up 15 minutes later, delirious and sweating.
I hear the mountains are lovely here.
I would lie in a pool of sweat, fall asleep, wake up a short time later freezing cold and in need of a blanket, cover up, fall asleep, then wake up sweating absurdly.
So about every 15-40 minutes for the next 14 hours I would switch from one extreme to the other.
I've been with a 103/104 degree temperature twice in my life and it causes some strange mental operations. Things seem dreamy, hazy, painfully you view the world as an infant and are equally pretty helpless. You drift into and out of lucid dreams and foggy reality and have a hard time discerning between the two. The only sign you have that you are not dreaming is the convulsive purge of your belly seizing in on itself angrily; food long gone now, bile the only emittance.
It hurts.
Water.
Some pills.
Sleep.
Wake.
Burning up.
Hunger?
Puke.
Sleep.
Wake.
Freezing.
Drink.
Cover up.
Puke.
Lie down.
Hot.
Sweaty.
Sleep.
Wake.
Freezing.
Puke.
Hot.
Sleep.
Sweat.
Cold.
Puke.
Like some Ergot Clockwork, my life clicked by. Seconds of sleep. Minutes of Hot/Cold. Hours of stomach violence.
So, Eleanor. Eleanor went into Mom-Mode. She brought me fresh water, sat to be sure I was okay for periods of time, asked what I needed, grabbed juice in case I felt any batter, left, returned, repeated.
I thought "poor girl just did something nice for a near stranger and now she has some pathetic boy running into and out of her room to puke and pass out"
She never had the slightest air of inconvenience. In fact, she was simply nice.
Because she is a nice person, honest and good deep down. Something that seemed so pure, that it was unique to experience. In my duration of weakness and in the heart of an odd delirium, I found a moment comprised of absolute optimism: perhaps Nice does still exist in the world.
Don't forget it.
That is the moral.
I spent around 72 hours sick as I've ever been, bed ridden and for 35 of those hours I was alone and miserable, but I experienced a valuable lesson. In the former half of my illness I was cared for, looked after, and beneficiary of a simple human condition that shouldn't seem as rare as it sometimes seems:
Basic Kindness.
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